(The Hindu Magazine, June 18, 2011)
The Konkani Saraswat Cookbook by Asha S Philar
The perfect cookbook is easy to use. The perfect cookbook has lovely pictures that whet the appetite and culinary ambition, inspiring people to try the recipes in it. The perfect cookbook is made of the right paper; that is easy to write on, easy to read even through various identifiable and anonymous stains of spices, oils and the occasional singed hole. And the perfect cookbook has pages that stay open to a page; that can be turned with the handle of a ladle, wiped clean of spilled stock or coconut milk and put away without any worries that a damp volume could cause a whole shelf of books to catch fungus. Along the way, the perfect cookbook makes cooking simple, fun and not too stressful, with delicious results.
Unfortunately, Indian food being the genre it is, and publishers of Indian cookbooks interested more in a mass buyer base and low prices than the contents, very few Indian cookbooks handle any of the above-mentioned issues to any degree of satisfaction, making them in general very difficult to like...for me, at least.
This one has its moments, though not enough. It is exciting because the food is usually found in a home kitchen rather than a public eating space, and the recipes may vary from kitchen to kitchen, cook to cook, eater to eater. As with any recipe book speaking of food that is not familiar or comfortably classifiable, everything is subjective and a little tinkering works better than following every instruction faithfully. Fortunately, the organisation of the recipes was immaculate; from breakfast to festival menus, food segued smoothly through the day...and the year.
Once the aspiring cook (myself) of Konkani-Saraswat cuisine untangled the minor mysteries involved — since here usli equals upma, both of which are rather different in the Tam-Bram repertoire, some translation and de-confusing had to be done — and got past the phonetically graphic imagery of Mashinga Saang Ghalnu Kholmbo, it was fun to work on. Goli Baje, which sounded like a song from a Hindi movie, was a fritter that developed interesting shapes in the hot oil and tastes fabulous with a more western yoghurt dip. Gradually, things got more familiar with the Ravey Unde earning demands for more, the level of the Tomato Jam falling faster than manna from heaven and the Batate ‘High Jump' causing its fan club to leap up to catch the last, slightly crispy morsel of sautéed potato. The seafood, for which the Konkan region and the Saraswat kitchen are so well reputed, were highly spiced, redolent with the sweetness of grated coconut or coconut milk and ideal with thick buttery roti or a heap of fresh, hot, ghee-laden rice.
Does this book meet all the requirements for a perfect cookbook? No, but for its sheer ‘home food' value, for the little notes that the writer adds as helpful hints at the end of some recipes, for the effort and the involvement that has gone into it, the book is a treasure worth owning. Also, perhaps by the end of it, the user can figure out just what Konkani-Saraswat life is all about!
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Book review
(Times of India Crest Edition, July 2, 2011)
SUMMER AND THE CITY by Candace Bushnell
Once upon a time there was a naïve, simple, small town girl called Carrie Bradshaw. She made friends, she lost them and, once in a rare while, found them again. But along the way, with each person that she met, she grew up a little, learned a little more about life and living it and found friends that could, fingers crossed, be forever. When she moved to the Big Apple, she was initially swept away by the glitz and glamour of New York City. But again, that growing up thing happened and she found herself in a place that she, over time, graduated to calling her own.
The Carrie Diaries told that story. This one takes up where the other left off – Carrie finds herself in her new friend Samantha’s apartment, the plan she was supposed to take sliding right off track and out of her mind. The older woman was kind, but in a sort of absent-minded though affectionate manner, and took Carrie to all sorts of interesting parties without keeping tabs on her or behaving in any way like an inhibiting adult. Samantha made the introductions, Carrie could do what she wanted with them.
A dream existence for any young person who wanted to live the glamorous life. But is that what college in the big, bad city was all about? Parties, getting drunk, making out, meeting famous people? Carrie was there to study, to become a writer to find herself and hone her skills. She did do a little more playing around than she had planned to, but found her groove soon enough and settled into making a career of her writing.
Along the way, she met some fascinating men. She liked one, but found that she was not important enough in his life. She was sought after by others, but did not want them to be important to her life. How she finds the balance between love and living, life and work, friends, family and professional contacts is what the books is all about.
Writing done with a happy, fluffy kind of tone, knowing itself not to be a serious, significant piece of literature is perhaps what makes the book work, as a quick read, one bought for a flight and perhaps left on the plane. There are insider jokes and insights right through, and a solid awareness that this is embroidery on an American television icon – the best-selling, high TRP Sex and the City series. And take it all with a huge pinch of salt, preferably the designer kind, and sip on a Manhattan while you read…
SUMMER AND THE CITY by Candace Bushnell
Once upon a time there was a naïve, simple, small town girl called Carrie Bradshaw. She made friends, she lost them and, once in a rare while, found them again. But along the way, with each person that she met, she grew up a little, learned a little more about life and living it and found friends that could, fingers crossed, be forever. When she moved to the Big Apple, she was initially swept away by the glitz and glamour of New York City. But again, that growing up thing happened and she found herself in a place that she, over time, graduated to calling her own.
The Carrie Diaries told that story. This one takes up where the other left off – Carrie finds herself in her new friend Samantha’s apartment, the plan she was supposed to take sliding right off track and out of her mind. The older woman was kind, but in a sort of absent-minded though affectionate manner, and took Carrie to all sorts of interesting parties without keeping tabs on her or behaving in any way like an inhibiting adult. Samantha made the introductions, Carrie could do what she wanted with them.
A dream existence for any young person who wanted to live the glamorous life. But is that what college in the big, bad city was all about? Parties, getting drunk, making out, meeting famous people? Carrie was there to study, to become a writer to find herself and hone her skills. She did do a little more playing around than she had planned to, but found her groove soon enough and settled into making a career of her writing.
Along the way, she met some fascinating men. She liked one, but found that she was not important enough in his life. She was sought after by others, but did not want them to be important to her life. How she finds the balance between love and living, life and work, friends, family and professional contacts is what the books is all about.
Writing done with a happy, fluffy kind of tone, knowing itself not to be a serious, significant piece of literature is perhaps what makes the book work, as a quick read, one bought for a flight and perhaps left on the plane. There are insider jokes and insights right through, and a solid awareness that this is embroidery on an American television icon – the best-selling, high TRP Sex and the City series. And take it all with a huge pinch of salt, preferably the designer kind, and sip on a Manhattan while you read…
Getting away with murder
(bdnews24.com, July 1, 2001)
Grabbing headlines and TV slots in India lately, is one big deal of a case: murder. About three years ago, on May 7, 2008, a young man called Neeraj Grover was brutally killed by an ex-navy officer called Emile Jerome Mathew in the apartment of a Kannada actress called Maria Susairaj. Mathew and Susairaj were in a relationship, but she also had a ‘sleeping partnership’ with Grover, a producer with a private television channel. The story was almost farcical, but had tragic consequences.
As far as it can be reconstructed, this is how the morning went: Grover was at Susairaj’s apartment early that morning. Unfortunately for him, his presence could not be put down to his being a colleague or a reporter or even an electrician or deliver man, since he was naked. Susairaj’s regular boyfriend, Mathew dropped in without warning and lost his temper at seeing an unclad man in the flat. In a fit of passion, he stabbed Grover with a kitchen knife. Grover collapsed and died soon after.
But there is more to the story. First, Mathew had heard Grover’s voice in the background the evening before, when he called Susairaj on the phone. The woman told her boyfriend that Grover was merely helping her move into her new apartment, but Mathew warned her not to let the ‘friend’ stay overnight. The anger in his mind over the new man in his lady love’s life had already been ignited.
Second, and worst of all, once the murder had been committed, Mathew and Susairaj apparently had sex, with the body in the same room, before dismembering the corpse and then packing it in plastic before getting rid of it. And the disposal was as macabre – they wrapped each part of the cut-up body in garbage bags that they went out to buy, then stuffed the bags into the boot of a borrowed car, took it to a wooded area on the outskirts of Mumbai, poured liquid fuel on the remains and set fire to the heap.
Then came the great cover-up. They reported Grover missing, they made up stories about knowing him or not, they lied at every corner and with every word they spoke.
And, after all that, they got caught. Susairaj has spent the last three years in jail. So has Mathew. And while they have done their time, the case has been fought in court, all the evidence presented and debated.
Yesterday, the verdict was pronounced. And Mumbai is stunned. Maria Susairaj was sentenced to three years in jail for attempting to conceal evidence, while Emile Jerome Mathew was given ten years in jail for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and attempting to conceal evidence.
This means that Susairaj will walk free, having already served that term, while Mathew has just seven years to go, probably getting out earlier for good behaviour, if he manages that. Grover’s parents are shocked and demand that the case be reopened.
His father has told the press: “We were expecting death sentence for both Maria and Jerome. I think the investigating agency has not probed the case properly. I am not going to sit quiet. I will spend every single penny of mine to get Neeraj’s killers the death sentence.”
It is not just Mumbai and the Grover family, but the judiciary that is horrified by this sentence. Most judges and lawyers asked their opinion believe that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice.
The public, of course, has been voicing their collective protest on the matter and its outcome. Most want to know how such a blatant and horrific murder could be excused so easily. Is it that easy to kill and get away with it, with no consequences? That is the questions many are asking.
The same kind of question was asked some years ago, when a young model called Jessica Lal was shot and killed by Manu Sharma when she refused to serve him another drink. The murder happened in front of a huge party of people well known in the Delhi circuit, but Sharma managed to walk free for many years… until the power of public opinion went to work and managed to get the case reopened, re-heard, re-judged and the murderer re-accused.
Justice did get served in that instance, with the killer being handed a life sentence. It took years of fighting by the media, by Jessica’s sister and by those who believed that the law should be upheld honourably and fairly, for an unnatural death to be appropriately dealt with.
Is that what needs to happen in this case, when a young man’s fault was to be enamoured of a pretty young woman? And will any murder, done for passion, be considered so trivial a pursuit that the killer can walk free without too much trouble? Is this what justice is all about?
Is anyone listening?
Grabbing headlines and TV slots in India lately, is one big deal of a case: murder. About three years ago, on May 7, 2008, a young man called Neeraj Grover was brutally killed by an ex-navy officer called Emile Jerome Mathew in the apartment of a Kannada actress called Maria Susairaj. Mathew and Susairaj were in a relationship, but she also had a ‘sleeping partnership’ with Grover, a producer with a private television channel. The story was almost farcical, but had tragic consequences.
As far as it can be reconstructed, this is how the morning went: Grover was at Susairaj’s apartment early that morning. Unfortunately for him, his presence could not be put down to his being a colleague or a reporter or even an electrician or deliver man, since he was naked. Susairaj’s regular boyfriend, Mathew dropped in without warning and lost his temper at seeing an unclad man in the flat. In a fit of passion, he stabbed Grover with a kitchen knife. Grover collapsed and died soon after.
But there is more to the story. First, Mathew had heard Grover’s voice in the background the evening before, when he called Susairaj on the phone. The woman told her boyfriend that Grover was merely helping her move into her new apartment, but Mathew warned her not to let the ‘friend’ stay overnight. The anger in his mind over the new man in his lady love’s life had already been ignited.
Second, and worst of all, once the murder had been committed, Mathew and Susairaj apparently had sex, with the body in the same room, before dismembering the corpse and then packing it in plastic before getting rid of it. And the disposal was as macabre – they wrapped each part of the cut-up body in garbage bags that they went out to buy, then stuffed the bags into the boot of a borrowed car, took it to a wooded area on the outskirts of Mumbai, poured liquid fuel on the remains and set fire to the heap.
Then came the great cover-up. They reported Grover missing, they made up stories about knowing him or not, they lied at every corner and with every word they spoke.
And, after all that, they got caught. Susairaj has spent the last three years in jail. So has Mathew. And while they have done their time, the case has been fought in court, all the evidence presented and debated.
Yesterday, the verdict was pronounced. And Mumbai is stunned. Maria Susairaj was sentenced to three years in jail for attempting to conceal evidence, while Emile Jerome Mathew was given ten years in jail for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and attempting to conceal evidence.
This means that Susairaj will walk free, having already served that term, while Mathew has just seven years to go, probably getting out earlier for good behaviour, if he manages that. Grover’s parents are shocked and demand that the case be reopened.
His father has told the press: “We were expecting death sentence for both Maria and Jerome. I think the investigating agency has not probed the case properly. I am not going to sit quiet. I will spend every single penny of mine to get Neeraj’s killers the death sentence.”
It is not just Mumbai and the Grover family, but the judiciary that is horrified by this sentence. Most judges and lawyers asked their opinion believe that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice.
The public, of course, has been voicing their collective protest on the matter and its outcome. Most want to know how such a blatant and horrific murder could be excused so easily. Is it that easy to kill and get away with it, with no consequences? That is the questions many are asking.
The same kind of question was asked some years ago, when a young model called Jessica Lal was shot and killed by Manu Sharma when she refused to serve him another drink. The murder happened in front of a huge party of people well known in the Delhi circuit, but Sharma managed to walk free for many years… until the power of public opinion went to work and managed to get the case reopened, re-heard, re-judged and the murderer re-accused.
Justice did get served in that instance, with the killer being handed a life sentence. It took years of fighting by the media, by Jessica’s sister and by those who believed that the law should be upheld honourably and fairly, for an unnatural death to be appropriately dealt with.
Is that what needs to happen in this case, when a young man’s fault was to be enamoured of a pretty young woman? And will any murder, done for passion, be considered so trivial a pursuit that the killer can walk free without too much trouble? Is this what justice is all about?
Is anyone listening?
Saturday, June 25, 2011
The female of the species
(bdnews24.com, June 24, 2011)
Many years ago, my parents decided it was time to have a child and went about the job with one aim in mind: they wanted a daughter. They got one. And they were happy. But this not always the case in this country that I call home: India.
A long time ago, or so we were taught in school, most Indian families wanted boy-children, for various reasons, some religious, some financial, some a matter of prestige and power. Most of all, a boy was necessary in a Hindu family, since only men were considered suitable to light the funeral pyre of the male head of the family when he died.
To make things worse, the girl child had to be married off at the appropriate age and to get that done, a dowry had to be provided; which meant extra expenditure for the family. Put all this together and it is understandable that a female infant was not preferred by many couples. But we would all expect that attitude to change with time, progress, education and better socio-economic status. In fact, the change has happened, though not for the better.
According to the recently released results of the census in India (2011), the sex ratio, instead of improving in favour of females, has become even worse. The number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group 0-6 over the last ten years is now 914, down 13 points. Any plans to decrease or prevent female foeticide and infanticide are, the authorities admit, not working well at all.
Astonishingly, these figures reflect not just in what most would consider ‘backward’ areas, but in urban, educated populations as well. Sex determination, though made illegal and punishable by law, is still being practiced in the worst way possible, sometimes with scores of female foetuses being aborted by clinics of doubtful repute, the remains found dumped in gutters or septic tanks to rot or be eaten by vermin.
Way back in 1990 reputed economist Amartya Sen spoke of the “missing women of Asia” when he tried to understand why 50 million women in China and 100 million in India were just not there any more. He explained that on a global level, at birth there are many more boys than girls; women last longer and survive better, since they are hardier. This is the case even in sub-Saharan Africa, devastated as it often is by natural calamity and war.
However, in much of Asia, especially India and China, the numbers are reversed and there are far more boys than girls, men outnumber women significantly. As Sen says, “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.” He believes the reason to be, simply and emphatically, a matter of gender discrimination, something that could possibly be corrected with a suitable environment of employment, literacy and economic rights, including property rights.
But I, as a woman, a girl child, empowered, educated, literate, employed, economically stable, with a right to family property, wonder about that one. I have seen my own peers, classmates in college and colleagues at work worry that the child they carry within themselves as young to-be mothers could be female. I have even heard, much to my amazement and a certain incredulous horror, a close friend telling me with great relief that she was glad that her baby had been a son, or else life would have been far more difficult.
To make the situation even more confusing and, to me, irksome – to say the least – I read a CNN report recently that told me this: “If Americans could have only one child, they would prefer that it be a boy rather than a girl, by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin”. This, the report says, is not too much different from “what Gallup measured in 1941, when Americans preferred a boy to a girl by a 38 percent to 24 percent margin”. And this, in what considered itself to be the most highly developed nation in the world.
But Bangladesh seems to be in a rather more enlightened zone with reference to this particular subject. According to reports, the country’s population is more balanced apropos the male-female ratio, at about 0.93 (male to female) in the adult age-group.
What bothers me is one simple fact – for a nation that reveres the female deity, Shakti, in Her various forms and powers, India is abysmally ignorant in its behaviour towards women and its overall attitude to the girl child. The female cannot stay the weaker sex, as she is generally thought to be, and needs to be given her rightful place in society, in the family, in the ethos of the people.
We as a nation seem to forget one small but very important fact – if there were no women, there would be no men!
Many years ago, my parents decided it was time to have a child and went about the job with one aim in mind: they wanted a daughter. They got one. And they were happy. But this not always the case in this country that I call home: India.
A long time ago, or so we were taught in school, most Indian families wanted boy-children, for various reasons, some religious, some financial, some a matter of prestige and power. Most of all, a boy was necessary in a Hindu family, since only men were considered suitable to light the funeral pyre of the male head of the family when he died.
To make things worse, the girl child had to be married off at the appropriate age and to get that done, a dowry had to be provided; which meant extra expenditure for the family. Put all this together and it is understandable that a female infant was not preferred by many couples. But we would all expect that attitude to change with time, progress, education and better socio-economic status. In fact, the change has happened, though not for the better.
According to the recently released results of the census in India (2011), the sex ratio, instead of improving in favour of females, has become even worse. The number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group 0-6 over the last ten years is now 914, down 13 points. Any plans to decrease or prevent female foeticide and infanticide are, the authorities admit, not working well at all.
Astonishingly, these figures reflect not just in what most would consider ‘backward’ areas, but in urban, educated populations as well. Sex determination, though made illegal and punishable by law, is still being practiced in the worst way possible, sometimes with scores of female foetuses being aborted by clinics of doubtful repute, the remains found dumped in gutters or septic tanks to rot or be eaten by vermin.
Way back in 1990 reputed economist Amartya Sen spoke of the “missing women of Asia” when he tried to understand why 50 million women in China and 100 million in India were just not there any more. He explained that on a global level, at birth there are many more boys than girls; women last longer and survive better, since they are hardier. This is the case even in sub-Saharan Africa, devastated as it often is by natural calamity and war.
However, in much of Asia, especially India and China, the numbers are reversed and there are far more boys than girls, men outnumber women significantly. As Sen says, “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.” He believes the reason to be, simply and emphatically, a matter of gender discrimination, something that could possibly be corrected with a suitable environment of employment, literacy and economic rights, including property rights.
But I, as a woman, a girl child, empowered, educated, literate, employed, economically stable, with a right to family property, wonder about that one. I have seen my own peers, classmates in college and colleagues at work worry that the child they carry within themselves as young to-be mothers could be female. I have even heard, much to my amazement and a certain incredulous horror, a close friend telling me with great relief that she was glad that her baby had been a son, or else life would have been far more difficult.
To make the situation even more confusing and, to me, irksome – to say the least – I read a CNN report recently that told me this: “If Americans could have only one child, they would prefer that it be a boy rather than a girl, by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin”. This, the report says, is not too much different from “what Gallup measured in 1941, when Americans preferred a boy to a girl by a 38 percent to 24 percent margin”. And this, in what considered itself to be the most highly developed nation in the world.
But Bangladesh seems to be in a rather more enlightened zone with reference to this particular subject. According to reports, the country’s population is more balanced apropos the male-female ratio, at about 0.93 (male to female) in the adult age-group.
What bothers me is one simple fact – for a nation that reveres the female deity, Shakti, in Her various forms and powers, India is abysmally ignorant in its behaviour towards women and its overall attitude to the girl child. The female cannot stay the weaker sex, as she is generally thought to be, and needs to be given her rightful place in society, in the family, in the ethos of the people.
We as a nation seem to forget one small but very important fact – if there were no women, there would be no men!
Monday, June 20, 2011
MF Husain...RIP
(Written for the Hindu, but used rather differently there....)
So much has been said and written about the artist often called the ‘Picasso of India’. Many speak of the sadness that MF Husain felt at being exiled from the land that was his home and most feel that he would have wanted to end his life in India. But the ‘barefoot painter’, as he is known, died in London, with friends and family in attendance, leaving behind a host of memories and an enormous body of work. That work, and the aura of the man himself, will live for ever. As artist Anjolie Ela Menon has said, “I consider him sort of immortal in my mind – even if he is not physically there, his whole body of work stands.”
Artists old and young see him as an icon, almost a God, albeit a very human one, perhaps even something that he himself may have painted. Jitish Kallat intellectualises his impression of Husain: “He forged a language very early on, in the decades immediately after Independence,, that in some ways merged the tenor and texture of an emergent India with the language of modern Europeanism – he found a novel middle ground with his typically agile and intuitive manner.” To Kallat, “He will always be seen as a visionary cultural figure, for the entire transformative effect he has had on the landscape of contemporary Indian art and for expanding its circumference to where we have it today.” And doom and gloom was not the artist’s story once he fled the country. “He dodged the tragedy of his exile and the legal brouhaha through humour, a kind of insightful equanimity,” and his fantastic artistic legacy is more relevant than the hate felt by the few who objected to some of his works so many years ago.
The lawsuits, the exile, the analysis – all this did not detract from the very warm and funny human being called Maqbook Fida Husain. Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Gallery remembers, “Whenever I was in Dubai or London I would call and meet with him – on one occasion I was going to visit some gallery and he immediately put his Jaguar and driver at my disposal! In the morning of the same day he invited me over to tea and in the backyard he had a proper Bedouin tent set up, fully furnished, tent style, and served me chai from a samovar. And he told me that if I had come in the evening, he would have arranged for a belly dancer!” He was always great fun, Mehra says fondly, “His joie de vivre was amazing – i use to tell him he was always my ideal person. He had time for everyone actually, no matter who they were, and the capacity to take whatever he found in anyone.” And exile was not that big a deal, for Husain, she believes. “I think he was a man who lived practically out of the boot of his car – it held audio cassettes, CDs, a quilt, books and brochures, even an Armani suit! He could sleep anywhere, travel at short notice; he carried his paintbrush and some paints and could set up a studio anywhere. He lived in his head – he did have his favourite restaurants and tea stalls, but that we all have terms of endearments. He was having a ball living between continents.”
Art collector Ashwini Kakkar owns six Husains, last count. “My favourite work is Bull Leading a Procession – it never had a formal name, but it is from the Bull series and is almost like a Ganpati procession, with people dancing and singing, except that the Ganpati head is replaced by a bull-head.” And Kakkar has a favourite memory to share of the “man with a very large heart”, one that has him laughing as he tells it: “One day I was driving out of my office in Mumbai and saw this man walking along barefoot - it was so hot, the peak of summer and the road must have been burning – I offered him a lift. He was going to Regal cinema. We chatted in the car and when he got off, he said ‘You send your car to me tomorrow and I will paint the whole thing for you!’ It was a brand new white Fiat and I completely chickened out – to this day I regret not having sent my car to him!”
There are some who may never have spoken to Husain, but revere him. Artist Sudarshan Shetty explains that “I never met him formally, I only saw him a few times. The first time I really saw his work was when I was in art school, in a book published in the ’80s by Abrams. I think his work in the ’50s and ’60,s was truly marvellous. Moreover, I was always fascinated by the distinction that he was able to create between the artist and his persona.”
There will always be life after death, in a legacy that lives forever. After all, that was the way Maqbool Fida Husain would have painted it!
So much has been said and written about the artist often called the ‘Picasso of India’. Many speak of the sadness that MF Husain felt at being exiled from the land that was his home and most feel that he would have wanted to end his life in India. But the ‘barefoot painter’, as he is known, died in London, with friends and family in attendance, leaving behind a host of memories and an enormous body of work. That work, and the aura of the man himself, will live for ever. As artist Anjolie Ela Menon has said, “I consider him sort of immortal in my mind – even if he is not physically there, his whole body of work stands.”
Artists old and young see him as an icon, almost a God, albeit a very human one, perhaps even something that he himself may have painted. Jitish Kallat intellectualises his impression of Husain: “He forged a language very early on, in the decades immediately after Independence,, that in some ways merged the tenor and texture of an emergent India with the language of modern Europeanism – he found a novel middle ground with his typically agile and intuitive manner.” To Kallat, “He will always be seen as a visionary cultural figure, for the entire transformative effect he has had on the landscape of contemporary Indian art and for expanding its circumference to where we have it today.” And doom and gloom was not the artist’s story once he fled the country. “He dodged the tragedy of his exile and the legal brouhaha through humour, a kind of insightful equanimity,” and his fantastic artistic legacy is more relevant than the hate felt by the few who objected to some of his works so many years ago.
The lawsuits, the exile, the analysis – all this did not detract from the very warm and funny human being called Maqbook Fida Husain. Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Gallery remembers, “Whenever I was in Dubai or London I would call and meet with him – on one occasion I was going to visit some gallery and he immediately put his Jaguar and driver at my disposal! In the morning of the same day he invited me over to tea and in the backyard he had a proper Bedouin tent set up, fully furnished, tent style, and served me chai from a samovar. And he told me that if I had come in the evening, he would have arranged for a belly dancer!” He was always great fun, Mehra says fondly, “His joie de vivre was amazing – i use to tell him he was always my ideal person. He had time for everyone actually, no matter who they were, and the capacity to take whatever he found in anyone.” And exile was not that big a deal, for Husain, she believes. “I think he was a man who lived practically out of the boot of his car – it held audio cassettes, CDs, a quilt, books and brochures, even an Armani suit! He could sleep anywhere, travel at short notice; he carried his paintbrush and some paints and could set up a studio anywhere. He lived in his head – he did have his favourite restaurants and tea stalls, but that we all have terms of endearments. He was having a ball living between continents.”
Art collector Ashwini Kakkar owns six Husains, last count. “My favourite work is Bull Leading a Procession – it never had a formal name, but it is from the Bull series and is almost like a Ganpati procession, with people dancing and singing, except that the Ganpati head is replaced by a bull-head.” And Kakkar has a favourite memory to share of the “man with a very large heart”, one that has him laughing as he tells it: “One day I was driving out of my office in Mumbai and saw this man walking along barefoot - it was so hot, the peak of summer and the road must have been burning – I offered him a lift. He was going to Regal cinema. We chatted in the car and when he got off, he said ‘You send your car to me tomorrow and I will paint the whole thing for you!’ It was a brand new white Fiat and I completely chickened out – to this day I regret not having sent my car to him!”
There are some who may never have spoken to Husain, but revere him. Artist Sudarshan Shetty explains that “I never met him formally, I only saw him a few times. The first time I really saw his work was when I was in art school, in a book published in the ’80s by Abrams. I think his work in the ’50s and ’60,s was truly marvellous. Moreover, I was always fascinated by the distinction that he was able to create between the artist and his persona.”
There will always be life after death, in a legacy that lives forever. After all, that was the way Maqbool Fida Husain would have painted it!
Killing the story
(bdnews24.com, June 17, 2011)
Over the past few days in India, all media headlines have been focused on one issue – the killing of crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, in the daytime, in well-populated Mumbai city. The story is tragically simple – Dey was riding his motorbike, on his way home to his wife, when four other bikes veered around him. He was shot a number of times before the bikers sped off. He died of his wounds before he could be admitted into hospital.
The murder took all of 45 seconds. Just last month, Pakistan – a country facing more trouble than ever before as regards law and order is concerned – was the scene of a ruthless killing. Journalist Saleem Shahzad had vanished soon after leaving home in Islamabad, headed for a studio to film his segment for a television talk show. He was found dead two days later, his body showing signs of interrogation under torture, it was reported.
According to the organisation Reporters Without Borders, since the beginning of 2010, 16 journalists have been killed in Pakistan. The country ranks a dismal 151 of 178 countries in its press freedom index.
In the Philippines, in Nabua, Camarines Sur, Romeo Olea was on his way to a radio office when he was shot, most likely for some story that he had done or was working on. This was the third murder of its kind in the nation in 2011. And there have been many more over the past year.
In Bangladesh, the toll is two (in recent times) – Hossain Altaf, publisher of the daily Bajrakontha, was found in a decomposed state in the septic tank of his own home, nine days after he was reported missing. Mahbub Tutul of the Ajker Prottasha and Ajker Surjodoy was killed in Chittagong, but the crime is likely to be business connected, since he had already quit journalism a few years ago.
These countries figure on the CPJ Impunity Index published this year. In the latest index, unsolved journalist killings that occurred between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2010 have been examined and analysed and the 13 nations with five or more such cases included in the list. To explain a little, the Community to Protect Journalists is an independent, non-profit organisation formed in 1981 to promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report news without any fear of reprisal. The index was first published in 2008, with the aim of identifying countries where journalists are murdered more frequently than natural deaths occur, and governments fail to solve the crimes – not identifying the culprits or not bringing them to justice. “The index calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population” is the way the process is defined.
The focus of the 2011 Impunity Index is to highlight countries where “journalists are slain and killers go free”. On top of the list is Iraq, still a lawless and dangerous place to be, where killers of 92 media persons were never caught and/or punished. Pakistan joins the list at number 10. Unfortunately for your country and mine, Bangladesh, Brazil and India follow close behind.
As the executive director of CPJ Joel Simon says, “The findings of the 2011 Impunity Index lay bare the stark choices that governments face: either address the issue of violence against journalists head-on or see murders continue and self-censorship spread.”
But somewhere along the way, there is a flip side to the whole story. It is not just doom and gloom and the fault of governments or nations, or even the criminals alone. Many journalists rush in where armour-plated fighting machines fear to roll in, and are killed because of their foolhardy behaviour. Sure, it is the job of a journalist to hound for news. But in countries like Iraq or, more currently, Libya, there is strife, ongoing for a while now. This could better be defined as a state of war rather than armed hostility.
In other words, for a journalist to run into such an environment, it needs caution, training, protection and, always, always, always, full knowledge that death could be around the corner.
The same goes for a more ‘safe’ country where news is being made. A city like Mumbai, for instance, has crime, has an underworld, has dealings that, if exposed, could create a situation of grave personal danger for a journalist. There should be protection from the state, yes, but the media also needs to be ultra-cautious about getting into corners that there is no backing out of. Tragedy is often the result of a misstep.
They say that Dey was killed for knowing too much about the wrong people. Perhaps he died because he did not keep the right people informed about what he knew?
Over the past few days in India, all media headlines have been focused on one issue – the killing of crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, in the daytime, in well-populated Mumbai city. The story is tragically simple – Dey was riding his motorbike, on his way home to his wife, when four other bikes veered around him. He was shot a number of times before the bikers sped off. He died of his wounds before he could be admitted into hospital.
The murder took all of 45 seconds. Just last month, Pakistan – a country facing more trouble than ever before as regards law and order is concerned – was the scene of a ruthless killing. Journalist Saleem Shahzad had vanished soon after leaving home in Islamabad, headed for a studio to film his segment for a television talk show. He was found dead two days later, his body showing signs of interrogation under torture, it was reported.
According to the organisation Reporters Without Borders, since the beginning of 2010, 16 journalists have been killed in Pakistan. The country ranks a dismal 151 of 178 countries in its press freedom index.
In the Philippines, in Nabua, Camarines Sur, Romeo Olea was on his way to a radio office when he was shot, most likely for some story that he had done or was working on. This was the third murder of its kind in the nation in 2011. And there have been many more over the past year.
In Bangladesh, the toll is two (in recent times) – Hossain Altaf, publisher of the daily Bajrakontha, was found in a decomposed state in the septic tank of his own home, nine days after he was reported missing. Mahbub Tutul of the Ajker Prottasha and Ajker Surjodoy was killed in Chittagong, but the crime is likely to be business connected, since he had already quit journalism a few years ago.
These countries figure on the CPJ Impunity Index published this year. In the latest index, unsolved journalist killings that occurred between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2010 have been examined and analysed and the 13 nations with five or more such cases included in the list. To explain a little, the Community to Protect Journalists is an independent, non-profit organisation formed in 1981 to promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report news without any fear of reprisal. The index was first published in 2008, with the aim of identifying countries where journalists are murdered more frequently than natural deaths occur, and governments fail to solve the crimes – not identifying the culprits or not bringing them to justice. “The index calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population” is the way the process is defined.
The focus of the 2011 Impunity Index is to highlight countries where “journalists are slain and killers go free”. On top of the list is Iraq, still a lawless and dangerous place to be, where killers of 92 media persons were never caught and/or punished. Pakistan joins the list at number 10. Unfortunately for your country and mine, Bangladesh, Brazil and India follow close behind.
As the executive director of CPJ Joel Simon says, “The findings of the 2011 Impunity Index lay bare the stark choices that governments face: either address the issue of violence against journalists head-on or see murders continue and self-censorship spread.”
But somewhere along the way, there is a flip side to the whole story. It is not just doom and gloom and the fault of governments or nations, or even the criminals alone. Many journalists rush in where armour-plated fighting machines fear to roll in, and are killed because of their foolhardy behaviour. Sure, it is the job of a journalist to hound for news. But in countries like Iraq or, more currently, Libya, there is strife, ongoing for a while now. This could better be defined as a state of war rather than armed hostility.
In other words, for a journalist to run into such an environment, it needs caution, training, protection and, always, always, always, full knowledge that death could be around the corner.
The same goes for a more ‘safe’ country where news is being made. A city like Mumbai, for instance, has crime, has an underworld, has dealings that, if exposed, could create a situation of grave personal danger for a journalist. There should be protection from the state, yes, but the media also needs to be ultra-cautious about getting into corners that there is no backing out of. Tragedy is often the result of a misstep.
They say that Dey was killed for knowing too much about the wrong people. Perhaps he died because he did not keep the right people informed about what he knew?
Monday, June 13, 2011
MF HUSAIN: An artist who made history
(bdnews24.com, June 10, 2011)
Many many years ago, when I was a very small girl, I remember going to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai with my parents and looking up at an enormous wall. There were these huge horses galloping toward me, all black, white, grey and brown, their tails flowing, their manes waving, their eyes wild, nostrils flared. They were beautiful, free and fast, running against the wind along an open plain. And I was awed, even then, by the fast that all that freedom, all that movement, all that speed, was captured in just a few brushstrokes on a wall. The artist was a man who epitomised the spirit of the city he made his home for many years, Mumbai, colourful, always excited, youthful and just that wee bit crazy. He was MF Husain, who went on to earn titles like ‘Picasso of India’, and died earlier this week in London at the age of 95.
Maqbool Fida Husain, born in Pandharpur, a Hindu pilgrimage town in Maharashtra. His father made kandeels, or lanterns and the family was not very wealthy. The young Maqbool made his way to Mumbai, where he eked out a living – at one stage, he hand-painted posters for Hindi films, developing a passionate interest in the world of cinema, which led him to make a couple of movies with popular Bollywood stars. By the late 1940s, he was making a name for himself as an artist and had joined FN Souza’s Progressive Artists’ Group, a clique of like-minded artists who wanted to foster the avant-garde, with an Indian flavour, and break away from the more traditional portrayals familiar in the Bengal School of art. In 1952 he had his first international showing in Zurich and over the next few years had become known all over the United States and Europe. Along with his art, he also made films – his 1967 Through the Eyes of a Painter won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; Gaja Gamini, starring Madhuri Dixit (who became his muse after he saw her in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun?) showed off the various manifestations of a woman; Meenaxi: A Take of Three Cities was a paean to actress Tabu. None of these was commercially successful, but they were appreciated by a discerning audience. A film on his life, his autobiography, is planned for a film called The Making of a Painter.
Controversy could have been Husain’s very believable alter ego. Some of his works have been incomprehensible, mystifying fellow artists, critics and viewers alike. I remember, when I had just started working as a journalist, I walked into a major Mumbai gallery to see Husain’s new show. Called Shwetambari, it made little sense to me, but it somehow gave me a feeling of clean serenity, a peace that could only come from within and radiate towards the rest of my world. Seen from a more practical perspective, it was all about white – the walls of the large space were draped in white handloom fabric, while the floor was covered in torn, crumpled bits of newspaper. When asked about it by a rather outraged public, Husain’s explanation was simple, and in a strange way, logical: “It is a powerful statement that is meant to be experiences, not understood and interpreted,” he maintained, “I wanted people to come and stand there and feel the overabundance of white, which is the basis of all colour.” To him, the man with the artistic soul, it was only in the presence of white that other colours could be seen and felt and appreciated. From that point of view, it all made perfect sense.
I have seen Husain often in Mumbai, wandering around art galleries, at parties, in hotels, even in bookshops. He was usually barefoot – until the time he, as rumour had it, developed some kind of fungal infection in the foot and was made to wear shoes – and carried a long paintbrush. His white beard was immaculately neat, his glasses glinted with his passion for life and he eyes watched the world as it moved around him. He walked fast, spoke gently and laughed delightedly. And he got into messes of all sorts – from the controversial works of goddesses as nude figures to an unclad Mother India used in an advertisement – which, eventually, made him flee India in 2006 to settle in the Middle East. Qatar was thrilled to have him there and offered him citizenship, which he accepted in 2010. Even in exile, he had to face problems – the government of Kerala was to give him the Raja Ravi Varma award, but a petition was filed against it for various reasons.
Right now, in India, there is a sadness at the death of an artist of such stature. But many of us feel another grief – that we ourselves could not prevent a treasure slipping out of our own hands. And even here there is controversy – many believe that he wanted to be buried in his homeland, India. He did say in a television interview last year, “My heart will always be in India...it is my beloved land.” But his family tells us that “He said he should be buried wherever he dies.” And though he is no longer here, he will live for ever in the work that he left behind – work that is thought-provoking, thoughtful, beautiful and always worth seeing.
Many many years ago, when I was a very small girl, I remember going to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai with my parents and looking up at an enormous wall. There were these huge horses galloping toward me, all black, white, grey and brown, their tails flowing, their manes waving, their eyes wild, nostrils flared. They were beautiful, free and fast, running against the wind along an open plain. And I was awed, even then, by the fast that all that freedom, all that movement, all that speed, was captured in just a few brushstrokes on a wall. The artist was a man who epitomised the spirit of the city he made his home for many years, Mumbai, colourful, always excited, youthful and just that wee bit crazy. He was MF Husain, who went on to earn titles like ‘Picasso of India’, and died earlier this week in London at the age of 95.
Maqbool Fida Husain, born in Pandharpur, a Hindu pilgrimage town in Maharashtra. His father made kandeels, or lanterns and the family was not very wealthy. The young Maqbool made his way to Mumbai, where he eked out a living – at one stage, he hand-painted posters for Hindi films, developing a passionate interest in the world of cinema, which led him to make a couple of movies with popular Bollywood stars. By the late 1940s, he was making a name for himself as an artist and had joined FN Souza’s Progressive Artists’ Group, a clique of like-minded artists who wanted to foster the avant-garde, with an Indian flavour, and break away from the more traditional portrayals familiar in the Bengal School of art. In 1952 he had his first international showing in Zurich and over the next few years had become known all over the United States and Europe. Along with his art, he also made films – his 1967 Through the Eyes of a Painter won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; Gaja Gamini, starring Madhuri Dixit (who became his muse after he saw her in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun?) showed off the various manifestations of a woman; Meenaxi: A Take of Three Cities was a paean to actress Tabu. None of these was commercially successful, but they were appreciated by a discerning audience. A film on his life, his autobiography, is planned for a film called The Making of a Painter.
Controversy could have been Husain’s very believable alter ego. Some of his works have been incomprehensible, mystifying fellow artists, critics and viewers alike. I remember, when I had just started working as a journalist, I walked into a major Mumbai gallery to see Husain’s new show. Called Shwetambari, it made little sense to me, but it somehow gave me a feeling of clean serenity, a peace that could only come from within and radiate towards the rest of my world. Seen from a more practical perspective, it was all about white – the walls of the large space were draped in white handloom fabric, while the floor was covered in torn, crumpled bits of newspaper. When asked about it by a rather outraged public, Husain’s explanation was simple, and in a strange way, logical: “It is a powerful statement that is meant to be experiences, not understood and interpreted,” he maintained, “I wanted people to come and stand there and feel the overabundance of white, which is the basis of all colour.” To him, the man with the artistic soul, it was only in the presence of white that other colours could be seen and felt and appreciated. From that point of view, it all made perfect sense.
I have seen Husain often in Mumbai, wandering around art galleries, at parties, in hotels, even in bookshops. He was usually barefoot – until the time he, as rumour had it, developed some kind of fungal infection in the foot and was made to wear shoes – and carried a long paintbrush. His white beard was immaculately neat, his glasses glinted with his passion for life and he eyes watched the world as it moved around him. He walked fast, spoke gently and laughed delightedly. And he got into messes of all sorts – from the controversial works of goddesses as nude figures to an unclad Mother India used in an advertisement – which, eventually, made him flee India in 2006 to settle in the Middle East. Qatar was thrilled to have him there and offered him citizenship, which he accepted in 2010. Even in exile, he had to face problems – the government of Kerala was to give him the Raja Ravi Varma award, but a petition was filed against it for various reasons.
Right now, in India, there is a sadness at the death of an artist of such stature. But many of us feel another grief – that we ourselves could not prevent a treasure slipping out of our own hands. And even here there is controversy – many believe that he wanted to be buried in his homeland, India. He did say in a television interview last year, “My heart will always be in India...it is my beloved land.” But his family tells us that “He said he should be buried wherever he dies.” And though he is no longer here, he will live for ever in the work that he left behind – work that is thought-provoking, thoughtful, beautiful and always worth seeing.
‘I want a thali of movies...'
(Hindu Magazine, June 12, 2011)
... says film journalist and author Anupama Chopra as she discusses her addiction to Bollywood films, her writing on that subject and her latest book First Day First Show, released recently.
Of movies and more...
She is passionate about Hindi movies, be it the classic Sholay (a ‘ perfect film') or the rather disastrous Kambakth Ishq, which she drove miles to see when holidaying in the US because she had serious withdrawal from the song-and-dance routine she is addicted to. For many years now Anupama Chopra has been expressing this passion through reviews, articles, interviews and so much more, as a film journalist and writer. She has compiled a number of these articles, written for India Today, Variety, the New York Times, LA Times, NDTV (from her popular review show, Picture This) and more in her latest book, First Day First Show. This is her fourth, after Sholay: The Making of a Classic, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema.
Chopra says about her latest, “The idea was to sort of create a way to see the history of modern Bollywood, because it has evolved so much from when I started; 1993 to 2011; it's another world now. We wanted to record that change. The articles are not chosen for being the best written, but for being a snapshot of the time. When I look at it, I look at the kind of questions being asked, the issues discussed and the kind of films being made, I realise how much things have changed and how much things haven't. This book is my testament to my enduring love affair with Hindi movies!”
Surprising choice
Bollywood was a rather surprising choice of journalistic focus for Chopra, who grew up in privileged South Bombay (as it was then). Educated in St Xavier's college, with a first class first in English Literature, she laughs, anything filmi was considered déclassé. “I was just seduced by Hindi cinema. When I began, my mother was mortified that I would think of film journalism!” Her mother Kamna Chandra — who wrote two very big films Prem Rog for Raj Kapoor and Chandni for Yash Chopra among others — said things like “You say you want to roam around Film City and interview Sunjay Dutt and Sunny Deol! Oh my God, how can you! What did we do wrong?”
Chopra recalls, “You just did not go into movies in any capacity! I did not grow up watching a lot of Hindi films; if you were a South Bombay person, you didn't even go beyond Worli! But, truly, I just did it first as a lark, a job to have because I did not know what I wanted to do.”
But she knew what she did not want to do. “I wanted to do film journalism, but knew I couldn't spend my life worrying about who is sleeping with whom.” She went to Northwestern University, US, because “I wanted to learn the craft of journalism and I came back after working for a year at Harper's Bazaar magazine. I got myself a job at Sunday magazine and then joined India Today specifically with the aim of covering the film industry in a way that looks at the movies.”
At the right moment
She was exceptionally fortunate, because just when she came into the field (1994-95) things changed. “If it had been somewhere with just the men in safari suits and suitcases of cash, I don't know how long I would have lasted, but 1995 was DDLJ and Rangeela; there was a generational change. And I had a ringside view on this complete evolution. It was really fortunate I was at the right place at the right time.”
The attitude of film-folk towards journalists has also changed. “You have the classic stories of Dharmendra chasing Devyani Chaubal and Anupam Kher slapping someone from a magazine, but now I think everyone is savvier; marketing teams have realised that they need the media to sell movies. Some journalists have great relationships with some stars, but I also hear stars complaining that they are asked either very offensive questions or very inane ones. I just hope it doesn't get more aggressive like in the West. There is such a hunger for scoops, for information, it's hard to sustain quality and standards.”
With all her passion for and knowledge of Hindi films, Chopra will not consider writing a film script. She insists, “Never ever! I think it takes way more talent than I have. I tell other peoples' stories, which is much easier and does not require the same level of talent or confidence or ambition. To write fiction you need a great soaring imagination, to be able create other worlds. I honestly don't think I have the talent or have ever had the interest. I have no interest in creating, I just like to consume.”
Anyone would think that Shah Rukh Khan was her favourite person, considering that three of her books feature him prominently; he starred in DDLJ and has written the foreword for her new book.
She is amused, “So many people say that to me! He is somebody I first interviewed in 1996 or 1997. Since then, our paths have crossed often. As it happened, Salman never talked to the press and Aamir was extremely reserved and not accessible. Shah Rukh is superbly articulate, superbly entertaining, tells the best stories, so it's never been a chore to go back to him. It's so much fun. He talks very passionately; he always seems engaged in the conversation. There is never a boring moment. I have a great time listening to him. He said to me that he needs to entertain all the time, whether on the big screen or one on one. He has this compulsive need to make you happy!”
Improved quality
In her tracing of cinema for all these years, has there been improvement in the quality of films from Bollywood? “Oh my God, yes! You see some of the films made in 1992-93, they are appalling! People hammed like crazy! I think they have vastly improved. You are getting more voices, and there aren't as many second generation kids as those from other backgrounds. In terms of craft, it has hugely improved. What we do need to go back to is the fundamentals of storytelling; we do not invest enough in writers or time in writing. But in every other way we have really moved ahead.”
For Chopra, the world of movies is a driving need. And she likes her dose of masala as much as she likes an off-beat thriller. She says, “I think anything different is a good thing. It's great to have the traditional Bollywood film, mainstream masala, but it's also great to have a Shor in the City! But I was heartbroken when Karan Johar said he was going serious with My Name is Khan. I loved Udaan, but am as happy to weep when Shahrukh died in Kal Ho Naa Ho. I want it all, the Guju thali of movies, not a minimalist French meal with one dish at a time!”
... says film journalist and author Anupama Chopra as she discusses her addiction to Bollywood films, her writing on that subject and her latest book First Day First Show, released recently.
Of movies and more...
She is passionate about Hindi movies, be it the classic Sholay (a ‘ perfect film') or the rather disastrous Kambakth Ishq, which she drove miles to see when holidaying in the US because she had serious withdrawal from the song-and-dance routine she is addicted to. For many years now Anupama Chopra has been expressing this passion through reviews, articles, interviews and so much more, as a film journalist and writer. She has compiled a number of these articles, written for India Today, Variety, the New York Times, LA Times, NDTV (from her popular review show, Picture This) and more in her latest book, First Day First Show. This is her fourth, after Sholay: The Making of a Classic, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema.
Chopra says about her latest, “The idea was to sort of create a way to see the history of modern Bollywood, because it has evolved so much from when I started; 1993 to 2011; it's another world now. We wanted to record that change. The articles are not chosen for being the best written, but for being a snapshot of the time. When I look at it, I look at the kind of questions being asked, the issues discussed and the kind of films being made, I realise how much things have changed and how much things haven't. This book is my testament to my enduring love affair with Hindi movies!”
Surprising choice
Bollywood was a rather surprising choice of journalistic focus for Chopra, who grew up in privileged South Bombay (as it was then). Educated in St Xavier's college, with a first class first in English Literature, she laughs, anything filmi was considered déclassé. “I was just seduced by Hindi cinema. When I began, my mother was mortified that I would think of film journalism!” Her mother Kamna Chandra — who wrote two very big films Prem Rog for Raj Kapoor and Chandni for Yash Chopra among others — said things like “You say you want to roam around Film City and interview Sunjay Dutt and Sunny Deol! Oh my God, how can you! What did we do wrong?”
Chopra recalls, “You just did not go into movies in any capacity! I did not grow up watching a lot of Hindi films; if you were a South Bombay person, you didn't even go beyond Worli! But, truly, I just did it first as a lark, a job to have because I did not know what I wanted to do.”
But she knew what she did not want to do. “I wanted to do film journalism, but knew I couldn't spend my life worrying about who is sleeping with whom.” She went to Northwestern University, US, because “I wanted to learn the craft of journalism and I came back after working for a year at Harper's Bazaar magazine. I got myself a job at Sunday magazine and then joined India Today specifically with the aim of covering the film industry in a way that looks at the movies.”
At the right moment
She was exceptionally fortunate, because just when she came into the field (1994-95) things changed. “If it had been somewhere with just the men in safari suits and suitcases of cash, I don't know how long I would have lasted, but 1995 was DDLJ and Rangeela; there was a generational change. And I had a ringside view on this complete evolution. It was really fortunate I was at the right place at the right time.”
The attitude of film-folk towards journalists has also changed. “You have the classic stories of Dharmendra chasing Devyani Chaubal and Anupam Kher slapping someone from a magazine, but now I think everyone is savvier; marketing teams have realised that they need the media to sell movies. Some journalists have great relationships with some stars, but I also hear stars complaining that they are asked either very offensive questions or very inane ones. I just hope it doesn't get more aggressive like in the West. There is such a hunger for scoops, for information, it's hard to sustain quality and standards.”
With all her passion for and knowledge of Hindi films, Chopra will not consider writing a film script. She insists, “Never ever! I think it takes way more talent than I have. I tell other peoples' stories, which is much easier and does not require the same level of talent or confidence or ambition. To write fiction you need a great soaring imagination, to be able create other worlds. I honestly don't think I have the talent or have ever had the interest. I have no interest in creating, I just like to consume.”
Anyone would think that Shah Rukh Khan was her favourite person, considering that three of her books feature him prominently; he starred in DDLJ and has written the foreword for her new book.
She is amused, “So many people say that to me! He is somebody I first interviewed in 1996 or 1997. Since then, our paths have crossed often. As it happened, Salman never talked to the press and Aamir was extremely reserved and not accessible. Shah Rukh is superbly articulate, superbly entertaining, tells the best stories, so it's never been a chore to go back to him. It's so much fun. He talks very passionately; he always seems engaged in the conversation. There is never a boring moment. I have a great time listening to him. He said to me that he needs to entertain all the time, whether on the big screen or one on one. He has this compulsive need to make you happy!”
Improved quality
In her tracing of cinema for all these years, has there been improvement in the quality of films from Bollywood? “Oh my God, yes! You see some of the films made in 1992-93, they are appalling! People hammed like crazy! I think they have vastly improved. You are getting more voices, and there aren't as many second generation kids as those from other backgrounds. In terms of craft, it has hugely improved. What we do need to go back to is the fundamentals of storytelling; we do not invest enough in writers or time in writing. But in every other way we have really moved ahead.”
For Chopra, the world of movies is a driving need. And she likes her dose of masala as much as she likes an off-beat thriller. She says, “I think anything different is a good thing. It's great to have the traditional Bollywood film, mainstream masala, but it's also great to have a Shor in the City! But I was heartbroken when Karan Johar said he was going serious with My Name is Khan. I loved Udaan, but am as happy to weep when Shahrukh died in Kal Ho Naa Ho. I want it all, the Guju thali of movies, not a minimalist French meal with one dish at a time!”
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Book review
(The Times of India Crest Edition, June 4, 2011)
THE CONVERT
Deborah Baker
Once upon a time there was a young woman called Margaret Marcus. She lived in Larchmont, a postwar suburb of New York City, and was born and brought up a Jew. As she grew into an adult, she became absorbed in certain questions that, to her, were important. And these have been discovered, read, mulled over and re-presented by the author as a book that highlights the disconnect between the beliefs and tenets of Islam and the ways of the West. The subject, Margaret, did something unusual for the time and unexpected for her context – she converted to Islam, left her country and moved to Lahore, Pakistan, to live a far more restricted life and yet become one of the best known individuals in the discussion on what Islam is in the modern world. As Maryam Jameelah comes through as a woman not at peace with herself or her life, but one who teeters on the edge of fundamentalism and wrote loud and long and profusely about and against her former existence and the West in general.
As a character with issues Maryam is not the first of her kind that Baker has profiled. She has written about suicidal poet Laura Riding and about the mentally fragile Beats of India. But in Maryam she finds a subject who is the personification of the age-old debate between Islam and the West, sometimes loud and hectoring, sometimes quiet and strangely frightening, always edgy and just that fraction off a balance that could tip either way with unwanted, unwonted results. As she trolled through anonymous grey boxes that made up the archives at the New York Public Library, Baker found a little surprise: a Muslim name where most were Christian or Jewish. There were nine boxes containing letters home to parents and astonishingly contrasting texts written with a fanatic flavour and cited and respected in madrassas, vignettes of a life that changed so dramatically and drastically that it was as if one person had died and another had been born. It was a choice made – “a life lived by the sacred laws laid out in the Holy Qur’an or one blackened by hell-bent secular materialism”.
The book is in some ways confusing, wavering between Baker’s thoughts and Maryam’s rather more radical arguments, but it is absorbing, interesting, informative and, eerily, acceptable. There is a culture that to an Indian – especially a modern-day Hindu - is familiar, but as if seen from behind a veil composed of all the traits, characters and quirks of a religion that is not fully known or understood. And there is a personality that is so swept away by faith and the people with whom she associates that it is difficult to accept that degree of trust. There is suspense, there is an almost-soap-opera like story that twists and turns and goes from secrets about very intimate feelings, situations and happenings to a forum that is very public and global. And there is the underlying and growing awareness that Maryam is indeed a woman who is mentally disturbed, one who has demons to face that only she can see and hear.
Whether Maryam was unusual in her beliefs and decisions is not for anyone except herself and her conscience to say. But whether Baker should have recorded this life should not be in question – it is one worth knowing, if not living.
THE CONVERT
Deborah Baker
Once upon a time there was a young woman called Margaret Marcus. She lived in Larchmont, a postwar suburb of New York City, and was born and brought up a Jew. As she grew into an adult, she became absorbed in certain questions that, to her, were important. And these have been discovered, read, mulled over and re-presented by the author as a book that highlights the disconnect between the beliefs and tenets of Islam and the ways of the West. The subject, Margaret, did something unusual for the time and unexpected for her context – she converted to Islam, left her country and moved to Lahore, Pakistan, to live a far more restricted life and yet become one of the best known individuals in the discussion on what Islam is in the modern world. As Maryam Jameelah comes through as a woman not at peace with herself or her life, but one who teeters on the edge of fundamentalism and wrote loud and long and profusely about and against her former existence and the West in general.
As a character with issues Maryam is not the first of her kind that Baker has profiled. She has written about suicidal poet Laura Riding and about the mentally fragile Beats of India. But in Maryam she finds a subject who is the personification of the age-old debate between Islam and the West, sometimes loud and hectoring, sometimes quiet and strangely frightening, always edgy and just that fraction off a balance that could tip either way with unwanted, unwonted results. As she trolled through anonymous grey boxes that made up the archives at the New York Public Library, Baker found a little surprise: a Muslim name where most were Christian or Jewish. There were nine boxes containing letters home to parents and astonishingly contrasting texts written with a fanatic flavour and cited and respected in madrassas, vignettes of a life that changed so dramatically and drastically that it was as if one person had died and another had been born. It was a choice made – “a life lived by the sacred laws laid out in the Holy Qur’an or one blackened by hell-bent secular materialism”.
The book is in some ways confusing, wavering between Baker’s thoughts and Maryam’s rather more radical arguments, but it is absorbing, interesting, informative and, eerily, acceptable. There is a culture that to an Indian – especially a modern-day Hindu - is familiar, but as if seen from behind a veil composed of all the traits, characters and quirks of a religion that is not fully known or understood. And there is a personality that is so swept away by faith and the people with whom she associates that it is difficult to accept that degree of trust. There is suspense, there is an almost-soap-opera like story that twists and turns and goes from secrets about very intimate feelings, situations and happenings to a forum that is very public and global. And there is the underlying and growing awareness that Maryam is indeed a woman who is mentally disturbed, one who has demons to face that only she can see and hear.
Whether Maryam was unusual in her beliefs and decisions is not for anyone except herself and her conscience to say. But whether Baker should have recorded this life should not be in question – it is one worth knowing, if not living.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Hunger is a good weapon
(bdnews24.com, June 3, 2011)
For the past few months in India, protest has been the name of various games. People want something, they protest; if they don’t want something, they protest; if they think something is wrong, they protest; and, once in a strange while, if they think something is right, they do a little bit of a protest too. And one very Indian way of protesting is to stop eating, the practice known as a ‘hunger strike’.
Many years ago, when I was a student doing a kind of internship at a high-level research facility, the worker’s union at the institute decided to go on a mass hunger strike to protest, among other issues, the fact that I wore a sweatshirt with the official logo emblazoned on it. Why that should have been a point of contention I do not know, since the shirt had been made for me by my father and had nothing to do with any official permissions or commercial transaction.
Any which way, the union members gathered outside the cafeteria at about 10:30 in the morning, nicely fortified with sweet tea, snacks and slogans shouted under a big banner. They sat there reading magazines, gossiping, listening to music and got slowly more and more hungry. Crowds walked in and out, stopped to stare, chat and sympathise, official security did a quick and regular check every now and then and I watched from the balcony overlooking the scene.
It was a long, slow, painful time, as hunger gradually crept upon the strikers, inch by tortuous inch until finally, unable to bear the suffering any longer, they unanimously declared the strike over, their cause, if not won, at least made clear to the management. It was time to stop the protest; it was time to regroup and re-strategise; most importantly, it was time for lunch.
This one left me – for one – in giggles, but not all hunger strikes lend themselves to levity. Take, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, as we Indians like to call him, the man who fought for freedom and won it by a shrewd mixture of politics, diplomacy and bargaining. He had many routes to getting what he wanted, the most effective, perhaps, being a foodless one. Not getting his way through logical and more devious means of argument, good sense and political discussion, he would take the emotional route and retreat into a shell, either not speaking – because of the intense sadness he felt, he has said – or, as a last resort, not eating.
Fasting was a non-violent way of communicating, of getting the message across, he believed, in keeping with the tenets of satyagraha, or civil resistance. And it worked, though it did occasionally cause the British, who were the opposing team, to dig in their colonial heels and stand firm against such blandishment – on at least one occasion, this brought Gandhi rather too close to death for comfort!
Hunger has been used to make the point not just in India, but all over the world. It was a favourite method of protesting injustice in pre-Christian Ireland, according to the Internet, but had all sorts of rules, caveats and codes by which it could be done. In 1909 suffragette Marion Dunlop decided to go on a hunger strike while she was in jail for wanting the right to vote. She was quickly released, because the authorities did not want her to die in their jurisdiction – unfortunately, many women died after being force-fed, a process that was painful and injurious.
In the US, too, women demanding rights went on hunger strikes and had to undergo force-feeding while in prison. Other such horror stories have come out of Tibet, Cuba, Turkey, Canada and Iran, Japan, Venezuela and Palestine – anywhere that ordinary people have a point to make and no other way to deal with it. This is peaceful, non-intrusive and very personal. And, as history shows again and again, it works.
Why this topic at this time? Various reasons, actually. At the moment, a glorified yoga teacher called Baba Ramdev has been holding my country to ransom as he threatens to go on a hunger strike to protest the government’s inaction against the evils of black money and corruption. Just a few weeks ago well-known social activist Anna Hazare did the same, staying off food for 96 hours – a significant time period considering the gentleman’s age (71) and state of health (needs medication and care) – but at the end of it convincing a recalcitrant government to think about his demands and start the wheels of investigation and change turning, albeit excruciatingly slowly.
But for me, personally, all this makes little sense. Apart from the fact that I like food and I think eating is one of the pleasures of everyday living, it does not make sense to starve to win a battle – where do you get the strength to fight then? How does that work into making the protest, for whatever cause, powerful and convincing?
If someone can answer that one for me, I will fast…at least until dinner time!
For the past few months in India, protest has been the name of various games. People want something, they protest; if they don’t want something, they protest; if they think something is wrong, they protest; and, once in a strange while, if they think something is right, they do a little bit of a protest too. And one very Indian way of protesting is to stop eating, the practice known as a ‘hunger strike’.
Many years ago, when I was a student doing a kind of internship at a high-level research facility, the worker’s union at the institute decided to go on a mass hunger strike to protest, among other issues, the fact that I wore a sweatshirt with the official logo emblazoned on it. Why that should have been a point of contention I do not know, since the shirt had been made for me by my father and had nothing to do with any official permissions or commercial transaction.
Any which way, the union members gathered outside the cafeteria at about 10:30 in the morning, nicely fortified with sweet tea, snacks and slogans shouted under a big banner. They sat there reading magazines, gossiping, listening to music and got slowly more and more hungry. Crowds walked in and out, stopped to stare, chat and sympathise, official security did a quick and regular check every now and then and I watched from the balcony overlooking the scene.
It was a long, slow, painful time, as hunger gradually crept upon the strikers, inch by tortuous inch until finally, unable to bear the suffering any longer, they unanimously declared the strike over, their cause, if not won, at least made clear to the management. It was time to stop the protest; it was time to regroup and re-strategise; most importantly, it was time for lunch.
This one left me – for one – in giggles, but not all hunger strikes lend themselves to levity. Take, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, as we Indians like to call him, the man who fought for freedom and won it by a shrewd mixture of politics, diplomacy and bargaining. He had many routes to getting what he wanted, the most effective, perhaps, being a foodless one. Not getting his way through logical and more devious means of argument, good sense and political discussion, he would take the emotional route and retreat into a shell, either not speaking – because of the intense sadness he felt, he has said – or, as a last resort, not eating.
Fasting was a non-violent way of communicating, of getting the message across, he believed, in keeping with the tenets of satyagraha, or civil resistance. And it worked, though it did occasionally cause the British, who were the opposing team, to dig in their colonial heels and stand firm against such blandishment – on at least one occasion, this brought Gandhi rather too close to death for comfort!
Hunger has been used to make the point not just in India, but all over the world. It was a favourite method of protesting injustice in pre-Christian Ireland, according to the Internet, but had all sorts of rules, caveats and codes by which it could be done. In 1909 suffragette Marion Dunlop decided to go on a hunger strike while she was in jail for wanting the right to vote. She was quickly released, because the authorities did not want her to die in their jurisdiction – unfortunately, many women died after being force-fed, a process that was painful and injurious.
In the US, too, women demanding rights went on hunger strikes and had to undergo force-feeding while in prison. Other such horror stories have come out of Tibet, Cuba, Turkey, Canada and Iran, Japan, Venezuela and Palestine – anywhere that ordinary people have a point to make and no other way to deal with it. This is peaceful, non-intrusive and very personal. And, as history shows again and again, it works.
Why this topic at this time? Various reasons, actually. At the moment, a glorified yoga teacher called Baba Ramdev has been holding my country to ransom as he threatens to go on a hunger strike to protest the government’s inaction against the evils of black money and corruption. Just a few weeks ago well-known social activist Anna Hazare did the same, staying off food for 96 hours – a significant time period considering the gentleman’s age (71) and state of health (needs medication and care) – but at the end of it convincing a recalcitrant government to think about his demands and start the wheels of investigation and change turning, albeit excruciatingly slowly.
But for me, personally, all this makes little sense. Apart from the fact that I like food and I think eating is one of the pleasures of everyday living, it does not make sense to starve to win a battle – where do you get the strength to fight then? How does that work into making the protest, for whatever cause, powerful and convincing?
If someone can answer that one for me, I will fast…at least until dinner time!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
From real to reel – life goes to the movies
(bdnews24.com, May 27, 2011)
In 2006, Bangladesh found itself in the international media spotlight, for all the right reasons. One of its well-known citizens, Muhammad Yunus, an economist and one-time professor of the subject, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, which also shared the honour: the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides small loans to people on or below the poverty line who have no collateral to use for credit from other banks that lend money. Yunus made what could be considered a mistake – he aimed to step into the political arena and had already become rather too well known on a global platform.
And where there is worth, there will be enemies. And, they came crawling out of the woodwork and attacked just when they thought the time was perfect and ended the whole thing. In March this year, the Bangladesh government removed Yunus from his post in the Grameen Bank, saying that after long scrutiny legal violations had been discovered and the Nobel laureate had overshot his age-eligibility limit.
The facts of the case are well known, especially in Bangladesh. But there is one ramification that is of interest to the ordinary Indian now, especially one who watches movies and is a fan of one particular actor: Irrfan Khan. The star has bagged a new and prestigious project to play Yunus in a film called Banker to the Poor, based on the eponymous bestseller. Being directed by Italian filmmaker Marco Amenta, it will show how and why, from a very human perspective, the Grameen Bank was opened and how it managed to boost the economy of a section of the Bangladeshi population that needed all the help it could get. It is reported that the actor will be meeting Yunus to get an insight into his role and the functioning not only of the bank, but of the man who created the institution. With someone of the thespian credibility and involvement of Khan, the film will be realistic and graphic, but whether it will find an audience is another question completely.
Meanwhile, international cinema has taken a number of true stories and made them come alive onscreen. A couple of years ago, Angelina Jolie and the same Irrfan Khan were reliving the tragic tale of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by al-Quaeda in Pakistan. More recently and closer to home, Monica told the story of Shivani Bhatnagar, another journalist, who was murdered in her home in New Delhi; it starred Divya Dutta, as talented as Khan, but not as well acknowledged for some reason. Somehow so many of these ‘true story films’ are about death and disaster, grief and revenge, but perhaps that is because that is what sells, certainly more than happy tales of roses and sunshine and everyone being happy.
Consider some of the film made on real subjects over the last year or so: Green Zone (2010), about events from the end of the invasion phase of the Gulf War until the transfer of power to the Iraqis; Mad in Italy (2010), based on events about a girl’s ordeal to stay alive at the hands of a young maniac; The Social Network (2010), on the creation of Facebook and the lawsuits that followed; 127 Hours, the story of Aron Ralston, the American mountain climber who amputated his own arm to free himself after being trapped by a boulder for six days; No One Killed Jessica (2010), on the real life murder case of Jessica Lall, a young socialite and model in New Delhi; Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey(2010), a Hindi movie version of the Chittagong uprising In 1930 and so many more.
But cinema is not just about box offices and fan clubs, but can be an educative tool as well. How many young people would be willing to read about the story behind one of the most successful networking tools ever: Facebook? I know very few adults who will even recognise the name of Aron Ralston, but so many youngsters will have seen 127 Hours and know it for a Danny Boyle film with music by AR Rahman! Children may not listen to Indian mythology, but after seeing My Friend Ganesha, they will know the entire story behind the baby elephant god and his creation and virtues. In fact, a number of schools and colleges have started understanding the positive qualities of commercial cinema, seeing it as more than just escapist fare or a dream world, and using it to educate, to mentor, to set examples of qualities that young people need to accept and absorb to be responsible, progressive and mature world citizens.
And the story of Mohammad Yunus could be another small step in that direction too.
In 2006, Bangladesh found itself in the international media spotlight, for all the right reasons. One of its well-known citizens, Muhammad Yunus, an economist and one-time professor of the subject, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, which also shared the honour: the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides small loans to people on or below the poverty line who have no collateral to use for credit from other banks that lend money. Yunus made what could be considered a mistake – he aimed to step into the political arena and had already become rather too well known on a global platform.
And where there is worth, there will be enemies. And, they came crawling out of the woodwork and attacked just when they thought the time was perfect and ended the whole thing. In March this year, the Bangladesh government removed Yunus from his post in the Grameen Bank, saying that after long scrutiny legal violations had been discovered and the Nobel laureate had overshot his age-eligibility limit.
The facts of the case are well known, especially in Bangladesh. But there is one ramification that is of interest to the ordinary Indian now, especially one who watches movies and is a fan of one particular actor: Irrfan Khan. The star has bagged a new and prestigious project to play Yunus in a film called Banker to the Poor, based on the eponymous bestseller. Being directed by Italian filmmaker Marco Amenta, it will show how and why, from a very human perspective, the Grameen Bank was opened and how it managed to boost the economy of a section of the Bangladeshi population that needed all the help it could get. It is reported that the actor will be meeting Yunus to get an insight into his role and the functioning not only of the bank, but of the man who created the institution. With someone of the thespian credibility and involvement of Khan, the film will be realistic and graphic, but whether it will find an audience is another question completely.
Meanwhile, international cinema has taken a number of true stories and made them come alive onscreen. A couple of years ago, Angelina Jolie and the same Irrfan Khan were reliving the tragic tale of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by al-Quaeda in Pakistan. More recently and closer to home, Monica told the story of Shivani Bhatnagar, another journalist, who was murdered in her home in New Delhi; it starred Divya Dutta, as talented as Khan, but not as well acknowledged for some reason. Somehow so many of these ‘true story films’ are about death and disaster, grief and revenge, but perhaps that is because that is what sells, certainly more than happy tales of roses and sunshine and everyone being happy.
Consider some of the film made on real subjects over the last year or so: Green Zone (2010), about events from the end of the invasion phase of the Gulf War until the transfer of power to the Iraqis; Mad in Italy (2010), based on events about a girl’s ordeal to stay alive at the hands of a young maniac; The Social Network (2010), on the creation of Facebook and the lawsuits that followed; 127 Hours, the story of Aron Ralston, the American mountain climber who amputated his own arm to free himself after being trapped by a boulder for six days; No One Killed Jessica (2010), on the real life murder case of Jessica Lall, a young socialite and model in New Delhi; Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey(2010), a Hindi movie version of the Chittagong uprising In 1930 and so many more.
But cinema is not just about box offices and fan clubs, but can be an educative tool as well. How many young people would be willing to read about the story behind one of the most successful networking tools ever: Facebook? I know very few adults who will even recognise the name of Aron Ralston, but so many youngsters will have seen 127 Hours and know it for a Danny Boyle film with music by AR Rahman! Children may not listen to Indian mythology, but after seeing My Friend Ganesha, they will know the entire story behind the baby elephant god and his creation and virtues. In fact, a number of schools and colleges have started understanding the positive qualities of commercial cinema, seeing it as more than just escapist fare or a dream world, and using it to educate, to mentor, to set examples of qualities that young people need to accept and absorb to be responsible, progressive and mature world citizens.
And the story of Mohammad Yunus could be another small step in that direction too.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Art worth owning
(Hindu Magazine, May 29, 2011)
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. That seems to have been the working principle of Stuart Cary Welch’s life. Welch (1928-2008) was a curator, scholar, gifted teacher, celebrated connoisseur and collector, who spent over 50 years studying the art and aesthetics of India and the Middle East. And his passion for the objets he admired was matched by the careful and meticulous way in which he collected pieces that touched his intellect, his instincts and his heart. Part of his vast and wonderful collection, Arts of the Islamic World, was offered on sale at Sotheby’s, London in April, bringing in an astounding £20.9 million, an auction record for any single such sale of Islamic art.
And, at the end of this month, May 31, 2011, Part II will be offered to a discerning public. With 204 lots, this will include, as Sotheby’s says, “many dramatic and exquisite works of great rarity, including Rajput, Deccani, later Mughal, Company School and Himalayan paintings, drawings and works of art, as well as a wide range of more affordable drawings, sketches and decorative arts from the 13th to the 20th century.” Star of this particular show will be a "Vasudhara Mandala, the earliest recorded Nepalese paubha that contains a date within its dedicatory inscription, and was painted in 1365 by Jasaraja Jirili. It is estimated at £300,000-400,000.” Other highlights include a rare and important, finely painted Monumental Portrait of a Monkey, Mewar, Udaipur, circa 1700, estimated at £70,000-90,000 (estimated prices do not include buyer’s premium).
According to Holly Brackenbury, Director and Head of Sotheby’s Indian Art Department, “Stuart Cary Welch was a scholar, connoisseur and collector. His lectures, exhibitions and publications inspired many people in the West to look at Indian art for the first time. He looked at every piece individually and brought about a new understanding of Indian art, this is particularly apparent in his collecting; every miniature, sketch and object was collected for a reason, he identified not only the historical importance of a piece but also its beauty.” She explains that “This collection of Indian art is one of the most important to have come to the auction market within the last fifty years. There are some exceptional pieces in the sale. Not only do these pieces have the provenance of coming from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection, but many have also been widely published and exhibited in leading institutions across the world. This sale offers collectors and museums globally a wonderful opportunity to acquire some fantastic works of art with impeccable provenance.” Brackenbury says that “Welch took great pleasure in collecting art and his family is keen for other collectors in to have the opportunity to acquire some of these remarkable pieces.”
Welch was a lecturer at Harvard University, and a curator of Islamic and Indian art at Harvard Art Museums for over 40 years. Pieces in his collection are symbolic of his passion, beautiful, rare and valuable works that include the Vasundhara Mandala and Monumental Portrait of a Monkey, as well as an exquisite folio from the Gita Govinda, Radha and Krishna in a Bower, dated perhaps to about 1780. It is in opaque watercolour, with touches of gold, estimated at a value of about £60,000-80,000. The Krishna theme is also seen in Bhairavi Raga: Lord Krishna Enthroned and Adored, a circa 1650 miniature in the early Pahari style, one of the Ragmala series. Its estimated price tag: £15,000-25,000. Celebrating Holi, Awadh, 1760-1764, is another treasure, offered at about £30,000-40,000, a work vibrant and energetic, showing off the colours and spirit of the festival. And Entertainment in a Harem Garden shows off a place that any harried city dweller would love to escape to – dating to about 1765, it has courtyards and gardens in a large palace complex, with a princess and her female attendants in a terrace watching a dancer perform. A getaway priced at a fabulous £40,000-60,000!
Even as Welch’s august reputation makes the collection being auctioned even more prized and covetable, the Internet offers an interesting and fun piece of information on the collector-connoisseur: “The 1978 Merchant Ivory film, Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, film follows art stalkers yearning to acquire a maharajah’s hidden collection of miniatures. When, finally, the dusty cloth bundles are unwrapped, the screen dances with colourful images of painted works—all of which belonged to Welch.” A man worth knowing, art worth owning.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. That seems to have been the working principle of Stuart Cary Welch’s life. Welch (1928-2008) was a curator, scholar, gifted teacher, celebrated connoisseur and collector, who spent over 50 years studying the art and aesthetics of India and the Middle East. And his passion for the objets he admired was matched by the careful and meticulous way in which he collected pieces that touched his intellect, his instincts and his heart. Part of his vast and wonderful collection, Arts of the Islamic World, was offered on sale at Sotheby’s, London in April, bringing in an astounding £20.9 million, an auction record for any single such sale of Islamic art.
And, at the end of this month, May 31, 2011, Part II will be offered to a discerning public. With 204 lots, this will include, as Sotheby’s says, “many dramatic and exquisite works of great rarity, including Rajput, Deccani, later Mughal, Company School and Himalayan paintings, drawings and works of art, as well as a wide range of more affordable drawings, sketches and decorative arts from the 13th to the 20th century.” Star of this particular show will be a "Vasudhara Mandala, the earliest recorded Nepalese paubha that contains a date within its dedicatory inscription, and was painted in 1365 by Jasaraja Jirili. It is estimated at £300,000-400,000.” Other highlights include a rare and important, finely painted Monumental Portrait of a Monkey, Mewar, Udaipur, circa 1700, estimated at £70,000-90,000 (estimated prices do not include buyer’s premium).
According to Holly Brackenbury, Director and Head of Sotheby’s Indian Art Department, “Stuart Cary Welch was a scholar, connoisseur and collector. His lectures, exhibitions and publications inspired many people in the West to look at Indian art for the first time. He looked at every piece individually and brought about a new understanding of Indian art, this is particularly apparent in his collecting; every miniature, sketch and object was collected for a reason, he identified not only the historical importance of a piece but also its beauty.” She explains that “This collection of Indian art is one of the most important to have come to the auction market within the last fifty years. There are some exceptional pieces in the sale. Not only do these pieces have the provenance of coming from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection, but many have also been widely published and exhibited in leading institutions across the world. This sale offers collectors and museums globally a wonderful opportunity to acquire some fantastic works of art with impeccable provenance.” Brackenbury says that “Welch took great pleasure in collecting art and his family is keen for other collectors in to have the opportunity to acquire some of these remarkable pieces.”
Welch was a lecturer at Harvard University, and a curator of Islamic and Indian art at Harvard Art Museums for over 40 years. Pieces in his collection are symbolic of his passion, beautiful, rare and valuable works that include the Vasundhara Mandala and Monumental Portrait of a Monkey, as well as an exquisite folio from the Gita Govinda, Radha and Krishna in a Bower, dated perhaps to about 1780. It is in opaque watercolour, with touches of gold, estimated at a value of about £60,000-80,000. The Krishna theme is also seen in Bhairavi Raga: Lord Krishna Enthroned and Adored, a circa 1650 miniature in the early Pahari style, one of the Ragmala series. Its estimated price tag: £15,000-25,000. Celebrating Holi, Awadh, 1760-1764, is another treasure, offered at about £30,000-40,000, a work vibrant and energetic, showing off the colours and spirit of the festival. And Entertainment in a Harem Garden shows off a place that any harried city dweller would love to escape to – dating to about 1765, it has courtyards and gardens in a large palace complex, with a princess and her female attendants in a terrace watching a dancer perform. A getaway priced at a fabulous £40,000-60,000!
Even as Welch’s august reputation makes the collection being auctioned even more prized and covetable, the Internet offers an interesting and fun piece of information on the collector-connoisseur: “The 1978 Merchant Ivory film, Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, film follows art stalkers yearning to acquire a maharajah’s hidden collection of miniatures. When, finally, the dusty cloth bundles are unwrapped, the screen dances with colourful images of painted works—all of which belonged to Welch.” A man worth knowing, art worth owning.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Book review
(The Times of India Crest Edition, May 14, 2011)
The Cloud Messenger
By Aamer Hussein
Indian literature is replete with the most evocative images of amazingly interesting ways and means of communication. There are parrots that can carry love from lover to beloved; pipal leaves are an oft-used and bio-recyclable form of letter-paper; flowers tell stories that sound like poems whispered into shell-like ears; and the wind sings songs that convey messages between people separated by wars and distance. Kalidasa in his Meghadoota (or ‘cloud messenger’) devised a more ethereal form of ‘mail’ in his 111-stanza lyric poem. It tells the story of a homesick yaksha who is in exile for not doing his job for King Kubera diligently enough. The yaksha misses his wife and tells her via a cloud, a messenger who is coaxed into doing the job through a seductive travelogue describing the delights of the journey from the plains to the city of Alaka, in the Himalayas, where the yaksha’s wife is waiting for her husband. The cloud links the separated lovers, and gives its title to the eponymous new novel from Aamer Hussein.
The Cloud Messenger is about Mehran, the narrator, who moves from a luxe life in Karachi as the youngest son and heir of a khandaan to adulthood as a student of Urdu and Persian in London. There is an almost autobiographical flavour to the character, and the “novel is the story of some of the paths I might have taken”, the author writes, describing his career development from working in a bank to studying languages, psychoanalysis and philosophy to finally becoming a much-lauded writer of culturally Asian-British fiction. The words are simple, neatly strung together, drawing pictures that alternately provoke and depress, speaking of love won, lost and languishing, a world where relationships change as quickly as the cloud formations above London.
When Mehran was a child, he and his sister Sara would listen to stories of a time that seemed to them to be strangely exotic, where they could only imagine the tastes of strawberries and crumpets, the cold of ice and snow and the sight of a lady wearing a yellow-petalled hat and called the ‘Queen of England’. England, the children knew, was “much further than India, very far away”. Mehran learned more from the Enid Blyton books that he read as he grew up and then about other lands from Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, the Old Testament, the Qur’an, the Iliad, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and so much else that he devoured so eagerly. By 1978, when the narrative swerves into the first person, he has not only read his way around the world, but done a fair bit of travelling as well, seeing and wondering through an existence that in any sense of the word would be extremely interesting, satisfying and educative.
And then he meets people who make more of a difference to his world than his reading or travel ever did. There is Marco Feliciani, “a bit of a lad”, Lady L, aka the Professor, “reputed to be a martinet”, Riccarda, an older married woman who becomes Mehran’s lover and causes Marco some jealousy, and the tragically destructive Marvi, who manages to enchant the young man into an affair that lasts into the painful and prolonged end of her life. In each relationship there is a story, and as these tales weave into each other, Mehran finds, like the ephemeral beauty of the clouds, change is about the only permanence he has. And in that, he finds himself.
The Cloud Messenger
By Aamer Hussein
Indian literature is replete with the most evocative images of amazingly interesting ways and means of communication. There are parrots that can carry love from lover to beloved; pipal leaves are an oft-used and bio-recyclable form of letter-paper; flowers tell stories that sound like poems whispered into shell-like ears; and the wind sings songs that convey messages between people separated by wars and distance. Kalidasa in his Meghadoota (or ‘cloud messenger’) devised a more ethereal form of ‘mail’ in his 111-stanza lyric poem. It tells the story of a homesick yaksha who is in exile for not doing his job for King Kubera diligently enough. The yaksha misses his wife and tells her via a cloud, a messenger who is coaxed into doing the job through a seductive travelogue describing the delights of the journey from the plains to the city of Alaka, in the Himalayas, where the yaksha’s wife is waiting for her husband. The cloud links the separated lovers, and gives its title to the eponymous new novel from Aamer Hussein.
The Cloud Messenger is about Mehran, the narrator, who moves from a luxe life in Karachi as the youngest son and heir of a khandaan to adulthood as a student of Urdu and Persian in London. There is an almost autobiographical flavour to the character, and the “novel is the story of some of the paths I might have taken”, the author writes, describing his career development from working in a bank to studying languages, psychoanalysis and philosophy to finally becoming a much-lauded writer of culturally Asian-British fiction. The words are simple, neatly strung together, drawing pictures that alternately provoke and depress, speaking of love won, lost and languishing, a world where relationships change as quickly as the cloud formations above London.
When Mehran was a child, he and his sister Sara would listen to stories of a time that seemed to them to be strangely exotic, where they could only imagine the tastes of strawberries and crumpets, the cold of ice and snow and the sight of a lady wearing a yellow-petalled hat and called the ‘Queen of England’. England, the children knew, was “much further than India, very far away”. Mehran learned more from the Enid Blyton books that he read as he grew up and then about other lands from Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, the Old Testament, the Qur’an, the Iliad, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and so much else that he devoured so eagerly. By 1978, when the narrative swerves into the first person, he has not only read his way around the world, but done a fair bit of travelling as well, seeing and wondering through an existence that in any sense of the word would be extremely interesting, satisfying and educative.
And then he meets people who make more of a difference to his world than his reading or travel ever did. There is Marco Feliciani, “a bit of a lad”, Lady L, aka the Professor, “reputed to be a martinet”, Riccarda, an older married woman who becomes Mehran’s lover and causes Marco some jealousy, and the tragically destructive Marvi, who manages to enchant the young man into an affair that lasts into the painful and prolonged end of her life. In each relationship there is a story, and as these tales weave into each other, Mehran finds, like the ephemeral beauty of the clouds, change is about the only permanence he has. And in that, he finds himself.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
All news is good news
(bdnews24.com, May 21, 2011)
It is amazing how clichés can be fiddled with and made to fit the occasion…any occasion. Take my title for this piece, for instance. For the last week, I have been trying to get the brand new website that my team has been working on seen and talked about, using any and every means at my command – ruthlessly, with Machiavellian cunning and without being squeamish about it all.
I know it is a new concept for the environment it has been launched into and, while what we have to say with it is not anything so far unseen, the way we are saying it is, at least in this part of the world. I am admittedly rather chuffed, puffed and pleased about the whole thing, and though there may be glitches and goofs that I have not yet caught up with peppered through the site, I am proud of what we have created – me, my team and all those who have helped us get to this point.
And, if my editor will allow me to say so, we are at www.bollywoodlife.com. It has been a good six months of a tough, arduous and often frustrating journey, but when we saw it live on the Internet, all the arguments, the long hours, the wait, the struggle and the chewed nails have been so worth it.
Now comes the more difficult part, I know. Since we are online, we now need to find an audience that will make the entire process pay off for all of us, in revenue, in page views, hits, accesses, whatever, but most of all in an audience. Now don’t get me wrong. We – or I, since I am the one writing this…am not looking for appreciation without balance. I want to know what is wrong, not just what is right.
I want people to look at what we have done and be realistic, not just praise us for doing a good job more because I write well, or I look good or – yes, it has happened – I am who I am. I don’t even care if people want to be nasty about the site. Following the cardinal rule of any media hound, follower or creator, any news is indeed good news, at the moment.
Having done my little bit of advertising for the product, I will get to the point which, as you will read, is relevant and related. Over the past few weeks, a number of scandals have hit the headlines, some of which have been read on this very website that you happen to be reading me. The most reported, perhaps, has been the 3G spectrum brouhaha, where licenses have been issued not as per worthiness, but according to who can pay the most to the people with the power to grant clearances.
After many weeks of to-ing and fro-ing with the government unable to find proof, identify perpetrators, nab them and bring them to justice, arrests have at last been made. Most recently Kanimozhi, the daughter of one of the most prominent political figures in South India, joined her partner in crime, A Raja, in jail, a place far less luxurious than the homes and comforts that they have been used to.
Joining them is Suresh Kalmadi, a familiar face and name on the subcontinent in the world of sports, indicted for his role in the multimillion dollar misappropriation of funds during the Commonwealth Games held at the end of last year in New Delhi. Sports has been dogged by more scandal than usual, or so it seems, with Shane Warne – as the most recent instance – getting into a fight with the authorities and having to pay an enormous fine to get out of it, the Sri Lankan cricketers refusing to obey the orders of their government to go home, ad infinitum.
But in all this, one aspect stands out: all these people, named or not, are or have just been in the relentlessly targeting spotlight that the media focuses on anything and anyone who creates a noise of any kind. Consider it from this point of view – if Kanimozhi gets off the sentence that will be pronounced, and comes out of jail, free, she will be considered a martyr, a woman who has suffered for her cause, never mind that she made her little fortune on it. Which makes all the publicity she is getting now not a reason to hide her head under her dupatta, but to hold it high and present the best angle for all the photographers to record for posterity.
A Raja has until now faced the media with a beaming smile on his face, assuring all who are interested in hearing it that he is innocent and will be exonerated. Once he gets out of jail, whether proven innocent or guilty, people will remember that smile and that self-assurance, giving him points for it rather than condemning his arrogance. Kalmadi may not recover easily from having an eggy face, but he made his millions, presented a sports spectacular and made his name known all over the Commonwealth. Shane Warne, a fading sports star known more for his sex life than his game these days, finds a fresh new look for the limelight and is obviously enjoying every moment, never mind that few reports are positive, laudatory or kind.
This is the story of so many others – movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes, be it the rather substantial but couture clad Aishwarya Rai Bachchan or the abysmally outfitted Mallika Sherawat or a multitude of international faces who have had fashion disasters; Lindsey Lohan and her addictions; Julien Assange and his troubles and, perhaps most recently, Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was caught in a rather awkward situation and has been put under house arrest, bailed out by his wife. They may all be rather red-faced when they are caught in the camera but then realise that it is indeed true – any news about them is, for them, indeed good news!
It is amazing how clichés can be fiddled with and made to fit the occasion…any occasion. Take my title for this piece, for instance. For the last week, I have been trying to get the brand new website that my team has been working on seen and talked about, using any and every means at my command – ruthlessly, with Machiavellian cunning and without being squeamish about it all.
I know it is a new concept for the environment it has been launched into and, while what we have to say with it is not anything so far unseen, the way we are saying it is, at least in this part of the world. I am admittedly rather chuffed, puffed and pleased about the whole thing, and though there may be glitches and goofs that I have not yet caught up with peppered through the site, I am proud of what we have created – me, my team and all those who have helped us get to this point.
And, if my editor will allow me to say so, we are at www.bollywoodlife.com. It has been a good six months of a tough, arduous and often frustrating journey, but when we saw it live on the Internet, all the arguments, the long hours, the wait, the struggle and the chewed nails have been so worth it.
Now comes the more difficult part, I know. Since we are online, we now need to find an audience that will make the entire process pay off for all of us, in revenue, in page views, hits, accesses, whatever, but most of all in an audience. Now don’t get me wrong. We – or I, since I am the one writing this…am not looking for appreciation without balance. I want to know what is wrong, not just what is right.
I want people to look at what we have done and be realistic, not just praise us for doing a good job more because I write well, or I look good or – yes, it has happened – I am who I am. I don’t even care if people want to be nasty about the site. Following the cardinal rule of any media hound, follower or creator, any news is indeed good news, at the moment.
Having done my little bit of advertising for the product, I will get to the point which, as you will read, is relevant and related. Over the past few weeks, a number of scandals have hit the headlines, some of which have been read on this very website that you happen to be reading me. The most reported, perhaps, has been the 3G spectrum brouhaha, where licenses have been issued not as per worthiness, but according to who can pay the most to the people with the power to grant clearances.
After many weeks of to-ing and fro-ing with the government unable to find proof, identify perpetrators, nab them and bring them to justice, arrests have at last been made. Most recently Kanimozhi, the daughter of one of the most prominent political figures in South India, joined her partner in crime, A Raja, in jail, a place far less luxurious than the homes and comforts that they have been used to.
Joining them is Suresh Kalmadi, a familiar face and name on the subcontinent in the world of sports, indicted for his role in the multimillion dollar misappropriation of funds during the Commonwealth Games held at the end of last year in New Delhi. Sports has been dogged by more scandal than usual, or so it seems, with Shane Warne – as the most recent instance – getting into a fight with the authorities and having to pay an enormous fine to get out of it, the Sri Lankan cricketers refusing to obey the orders of their government to go home, ad infinitum.
But in all this, one aspect stands out: all these people, named or not, are or have just been in the relentlessly targeting spotlight that the media focuses on anything and anyone who creates a noise of any kind. Consider it from this point of view – if Kanimozhi gets off the sentence that will be pronounced, and comes out of jail, free, she will be considered a martyr, a woman who has suffered for her cause, never mind that she made her little fortune on it. Which makes all the publicity she is getting now not a reason to hide her head under her dupatta, but to hold it high and present the best angle for all the photographers to record for posterity.
A Raja has until now faced the media with a beaming smile on his face, assuring all who are interested in hearing it that he is innocent and will be exonerated. Once he gets out of jail, whether proven innocent or guilty, people will remember that smile and that self-assurance, giving him points for it rather than condemning his arrogance. Kalmadi may not recover easily from having an eggy face, but he made his millions, presented a sports spectacular and made his name known all over the Commonwealth. Shane Warne, a fading sports star known more for his sex life than his game these days, finds a fresh new look for the limelight and is obviously enjoying every moment, never mind that few reports are positive, laudatory or kind.
This is the story of so many others – movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes, be it the rather substantial but couture clad Aishwarya Rai Bachchan or the abysmally outfitted Mallika Sherawat or a multitude of international faces who have had fashion disasters; Lindsey Lohan and her addictions; Julien Assange and his troubles and, perhaps most recently, Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was caught in a rather awkward situation and has been put under house arrest, bailed out by his wife. They may all be rather red-faced when they are caught in the camera but then realise that it is indeed true – any news about them is, for them, indeed good news!
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Knowing the bad guys
(bdnews24.com, May 6, 2011)
The news is full of it. And that does not imply what it commonly does in everyday casual lingo, honest! I was actually speaking of the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden, which fascinating topic has been the focus of all and every television news channel, newspaper, magazine (when printing schedules permit) and conversation. As some bubble-headed Bollywood starlet tweeted, this even did its best to upstage the royal wedding, which everyone had been watching for a couple of days earlier.
But even as the debate raged on how it all happened, how long it had taken, how hard they had worked, how secrets are kept and then revealed and how death comes as the unexpected end, there were questions that demanded answers, some that will never be, not to everyone’s complete satisfaction. Main among them: What actually happened that day at the house where Osama was said to be hiding out? And was that really honest-to-God Osama bin Laden who was killed by the US SEALS who managed to attack his hideout with such stealth and sublime secrecy?
That is something I worry about at some dispassionate level, me and a whole lot of people who cannot completely accept that the man who caused so much grief to so many is really dead and sleeping, as some wag pointed out, with the fishes.
I remember that long-ago evening when Osama’s most stunning piece of work was unveiled for so many to watch, stunned, amazed, horrified. I had just come home and turned on the television to watch a travel show that my parents, many miles away in a different city, had been praising. There was an incredible scenario unfolding as I stopped my pottering to stare at: there was a huge, smoking, red-rimmed hole in the side of a building I knew so well – the World Trade Centre in Manhattan, New York.
As I stared, wondering what bad movie I was seeing the preview of, a plane flew towards the second tower, banked slightly and then dove in. Then, astonishingly, horribly, one tower slowly fell down into itself; then the other crumbled. Without my knowing it, there were tears salting my lips, my nails were digging red dents into my palms. There would have been people I had met in that building complex, maybe on the planes that flew into them. And as news of the other two crashes came in, more tears followed, of a strange empathic grief, of a dread that evil reigned, of a sense of overwhelming sorrow for a world that seemed to have gone mad.
Over the next few days, weeks, months, the extent of the horror slowly unfurled. There was a man who pulled the strings that made all this happen, we all learned, a monster who was called Osama bin Laden. He had created and controlled a network that destroyed, killed, pillaged, all in the name of some warped form of a religion that in its pure form did not advocate murder, friends who were of the same faith educated me. And over the years more people died, friends, children, brothers, sisters, parents, those who had done nothing to earn that kind of fate.
It became oddly personal when someone whom I considered a friend was killed by the same hate-clan, his neck sliced open after days of tortuous confinement, the killing caught on video tape that was made available for the world to see and gasp at. Daniel Pearl, journalist and a nice guy, slaughtered like an animal in a sacrifice. We had met, chatted, drunk coffee, met again, spoken on the phone and emailed; I liked him, I liked his then-shy wife Mariane, I liked the person who had introduced us to each other, a woman called Asra Nomani that I was proud, pleased and happy to call “buddy”.
And with one stroke of a knife, that circle of friendship was destroyed. As were a few planeloads of people who had no connection at all to any of this, no reason to even know that a rather twisted mind called Osama bin Laden existed at all. But, in some ways, the biggest tragedy of the whole plot was the fact that the open, accepting, often-naive and generally friendly American warmth became dark-tinged with shades of suspicion, with the cold waves of hate, intolerance, anger and sadness.
Travel to the US, UK and elsewhere was not as much of a pleasure as it had been. Racial profiling changed from being a concept that raised eyebrows to a reality that turned individuals into sniffer dogs ready to snarl instead of smile. And what was once a theoretically-fuelled debate on one faith being as good as another became a real argument about which belief system could be categorised as ‘killer’ more easily that any other.
Now that Osama bin Laden is reportedly dead – God help us all – will that change, albeit gradually? Will the world ever be the same again? Or will that shadow that he hid behind cloud eyes, judgements and life for ever and ever?
The news is full of it. And that does not imply what it commonly does in everyday casual lingo, honest! I was actually speaking of the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden, which fascinating topic has been the focus of all and every television news channel, newspaper, magazine (when printing schedules permit) and conversation. As some bubble-headed Bollywood starlet tweeted, this even did its best to upstage the royal wedding, which everyone had been watching for a couple of days earlier.
But even as the debate raged on how it all happened, how long it had taken, how hard they had worked, how secrets are kept and then revealed and how death comes as the unexpected end, there were questions that demanded answers, some that will never be, not to everyone’s complete satisfaction. Main among them: What actually happened that day at the house where Osama was said to be hiding out? And was that really honest-to-God Osama bin Laden who was killed by the US SEALS who managed to attack his hideout with such stealth and sublime secrecy?
That is something I worry about at some dispassionate level, me and a whole lot of people who cannot completely accept that the man who caused so much grief to so many is really dead and sleeping, as some wag pointed out, with the fishes.
I remember that long-ago evening when Osama’s most stunning piece of work was unveiled for so many to watch, stunned, amazed, horrified. I had just come home and turned on the television to watch a travel show that my parents, many miles away in a different city, had been praising. There was an incredible scenario unfolding as I stopped my pottering to stare at: there was a huge, smoking, red-rimmed hole in the side of a building I knew so well – the World Trade Centre in Manhattan, New York.
As I stared, wondering what bad movie I was seeing the preview of, a plane flew towards the second tower, banked slightly and then dove in. Then, astonishingly, horribly, one tower slowly fell down into itself; then the other crumbled. Without my knowing it, there were tears salting my lips, my nails were digging red dents into my palms. There would have been people I had met in that building complex, maybe on the planes that flew into them. And as news of the other two crashes came in, more tears followed, of a strange empathic grief, of a dread that evil reigned, of a sense of overwhelming sorrow for a world that seemed to have gone mad.
Over the next few days, weeks, months, the extent of the horror slowly unfurled. There was a man who pulled the strings that made all this happen, we all learned, a monster who was called Osama bin Laden. He had created and controlled a network that destroyed, killed, pillaged, all in the name of some warped form of a religion that in its pure form did not advocate murder, friends who were of the same faith educated me. And over the years more people died, friends, children, brothers, sisters, parents, those who had done nothing to earn that kind of fate.
It became oddly personal when someone whom I considered a friend was killed by the same hate-clan, his neck sliced open after days of tortuous confinement, the killing caught on video tape that was made available for the world to see and gasp at. Daniel Pearl, journalist and a nice guy, slaughtered like an animal in a sacrifice. We had met, chatted, drunk coffee, met again, spoken on the phone and emailed; I liked him, I liked his then-shy wife Mariane, I liked the person who had introduced us to each other, a woman called Asra Nomani that I was proud, pleased and happy to call “buddy”.
And with one stroke of a knife, that circle of friendship was destroyed. As were a few planeloads of people who had no connection at all to any of this, no reason to even know that a rather twisted mind called Osama bin Laden existed at all. But, in some ways, the biggest tragedy of the whole plot was the fact that the open, accepting, often-naive and generally friendly American warmth became dark-tinged with shades of suspicion, with the cold waves of hate, intolerance, anger and sadness.
Travel to the US, UK and elsewhere was not as much of a pleasure as it had been. Racial profiling changed from being a concept that raised eyebrows to a reality that turned individuals into sniffer dogs ready to snarl instead of smile. And what was once a theoretically-fuelled debate on one faith being as good as another became a real argument about which belief system could be categorised as ‘killer’ more easily that any other.
Now that Osama bin Laden is reportedly dead – God help us all – will that change, albeit gradually? Will the world ever be the same again? Or will that shadow that he hid behind cloud eyes, judgements and life for ever and ever?
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Wedding wows
(bdnews24.com, April 29, 2011)
It is being called the wedding of the decade. But then they said that about another wedding that happened many years before, in 1981, when Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, heir to the throne of the British empire. On April 29, today, her first son, Prince William of Wales, married Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. And, we hear, that it all took so long to actually come about (ten years since the happy couple first met in 2011) because the two of them wanted to be absolutely sure that they would remain a happy couple indeed and not live separate and unhappy lives after a few seasons together as man and wife.
Whatever the two still-fairly-young people have decided to do, and for whatever reason they have decided to do it, it is after all their lives – or life, when it is all done and signed – and we, as bystanders, however interested, have no business sticking our noses into it. And isn’t that what got Diana killed? Too many people taking too much of an interest in her business? In a way it is all part of life as it is today. Enquiring minds, as the catchphrase goes, want to know and the media is duty-bound in its role as media to provide that information. So when it comes to the wedding of the son of a star personality that the press went crazy chasing, that frenzy starts up all over again.
The hype over the wedding of Prince William and his lady love is not without parallels in less royal circles. In India, the hype-bug struck very recently when paparazzi tried to storm the venue for the big day that Bollywood star Lara Dutta and tennis biggie Mahesh Bhupati were celebrating with a circle of close friends and family. A few years ago, the wedding of former Miss World Aishwarya Rai and Bollywood scion Abhishek Bachchan had the press photographers camped outside various places that the different ceremonies were scheduled to be held, with someone actually sneaking very private images of the actual nuptials out to the waiting newshounds for instant ‘scoop’ publication. And of course, on an international level, there is the ever-hungry public waiting to know more about when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to make their relationship legal. Gossip websites the world over focus on these issues, never mind that they do not really impact the state of the world apropos peace, global warming, nuclear winter or the price of…well…eggs!
What really amuses me is the so-called ‘educated speculation’ that people indulge in. While there is some justification for the royal PR people to divulge ‘insider’ information – that bit about how the royal couple wanted to be sure they would stay happily married before actually committing to a date comes from them – to have the man (or woman) on the street professing to know all sorts of confidential tidbits about how Kate and William will live their lives as husband and wife, from the colour of their bedsheets to the flavour of their toothpaste to the swimwear they will use during their honeymoon seems a bit too much to digest. However public a figure, whatever their profile, wherever in the world they may be, no one has a right to poke their snoopy noses into a private and personal existence; the outside world needs to learn how to stop at the bedroom door, for one!
Oddly enough, it is the new princess’ fashion sense that is attracting the most comment. From her figure – now even slimmer than before, perhaps because of the stress of becoming a wife so publicly – to her wedding gown, everyone has something to say. Along the way, comparisons are being made, naturally of course, to her late mother-in-law, Diana, with editorial opinions and photo-features by the dozen talking about how Diana wore this so what will Kate wear on a similar occasion? The burning question editors of websites, newspapers and magazines have right now is what will Kate wear for her wedding? Should it be sexy and a la mode, as befits a young woman with a decidedly modern personal style, or should it be modest and reflective of a future queen who will lead by example? Should she buy British or opt for a more global design statement? And should it be white, which seems out of sync since the pair has been together for so long, or include a touch of colour, which would make it more edgy, contemporary and young? Everything that is the bride’s prerogative has become a matter of open debate.
Is this fair? Doesn’t a young woman, especially one newly married, deserve some privacy? She has a life, she has so many changes to adjust to, she needs time and space to be a princess, a wife, a part of a very large and even more illustrious family, she needs to feel like she is still who she essentially is, a young woman with a mind and a psyche that has the freedom to be what it is. And it is up to us, as the general public, to give her that respect.
It is being called the wedding of the decade. But then they said that about another wedding that happened many years before, in 1981, when Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, heir to the throne of the British empire. On April 29, today, her first son, Prince William of Wales, married Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. And, we hear, that it all took so long to actually come about (ten years since the happy couple first met in 2011) because the two of them wanted to be absolutely sure that they would remain a happy couple indeed and not live separate and unhappy lives after a few seasons together as man and wife.
Whatever the two still-fairly-young people have decided to do, and for whatever reason they have decided to do it, it is after all their lives – or life, when it is all done and signed – and we, as bystanders, however interested, have no business sticking our noses into it. And isn’t that what got Diana killed? Too many people taking too much of an interest in her business? In a way it is all part of life as it is today. Enquiring minds, as the catchphrase goes, want to know and the media is duty-bound in its role as media to provide that information. So when it comes to the wedding of the son of a star personality that the press went crazy chasing, that frenzy starts up all over again.
The hype over the wedding of Prince William and his lady love is not without parallels in less royal circles. In India, the hype-bug struck very recently when paparazzi tried to storm the venue for the big day that Bollywood star Lara Dutta and tennis biggie Mahesh Bhupati were celebrating with a circle of close friends and family. A few years ago, the wedding of former Miss World Aishwarya Rai and Bollywood scion Abhishek Bachchan had the press photographers camped outside various places that the different ceremonies were scheduled to be held, with someone actually sneaking very private images of the actual nuptials out to the waiting newshounds for instant ‘scoop’ publication. And of course, on an international level, there is the ever-hungry public waiting to know more about when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to make their relationship legal. Gossip websites the world over focus on these issues, never mind that they do not really impact the state of the world apropos peace, global warming, nuclear winter or the price of…well…eggs!
What really amuses me is the so-called ‘educated speculation’ that people indulge in. While there is some justification for the royal PR people to divulge ‘insider’ information – that bit about how the royal couple wanted to be sure they would stay happily married before actually committing to a date comes from them – to have the man (or woman) on the street professing to know all sorts of confidential tidbits about how Kate and William will live their lives as husband and wife, from the colour of their bedsheets to the flavour of their toothpaste to the swimwear they will use during their honeymoon seems a bit too much to digest. However public a figure, whatever their profile, wherever in the world they may be, no one has a right to poke their snoopy noses into a private and personal existence; the outside world needs to learn how to stop at the bedroom door, for one!
Oddly enough, it is the new princess’ fashion sense that is attracting the most comment. From her figure – now even slimmer than before, perhaps because of the stress of becoming a wife so publicly – to her wedding gown, everyone has something to say. Along the way, comparisons are being made, naturally of course, to her late mother-in-law, Diana, with editorial opinions and photo-features by the dozen talking about how Diana wore this so what will Kate wear on a similar occasion? The burning question editors of websites, newspapers and magazines have right now is what will Kate wear for her wedding? Should it be sexy and a la mode, as befits a young woman with a decidedly modern personal style, or should it be modest and reflective of a future queen who will lead by example? Should she buy British or opt for a more global design statement? And should it be white, which seems out of sync since the pair has been together for so long, or include a touch of colour, which would make it more edgy, contemporary and young? Everything that is the bride’s prerogative has become a matter of open debate.
Is this fair? Doesn’t a young woman, especially one newly married, deserve some privacy? She has a life, she has so many changes to adjust to, she needs time and space to be a princess, a wife, a part of a very large and even more illustrious family, she needs to feel like she is still who she essentially is, a young woman with a mind and a psyche that has the freedom to be what it is. And it is up to us, as the general public, to give her that respect.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
The great buying bazaar
(bdnews24.com, April 22, 2011)
I was at the mall yesterday and found that almost every store had a huge crowd bogging up the aisles, milling around the checkout counters and trolling through the shelves. It was sale time, a special event that had been announced in every newspaper, magazine, brochure and flyer for many days before the melee actually started. Privileged clients, mainly those with special credit cards from selected stores, had received news of the discounts and deals via text messages on their mobile phones, emails and the occasional pesky phone call.
As all these potential customers, along with arbitrary visitors wander through the mall, they are wooed by touts from various stores, inviting them into their establishments, to ‘just look, madam’, to hopefully spend a few more shekels than actually budgeted for. And the money flows out of wallets and into cash registers, good fly off the shelves, big bags are carried out and cars, autorickshaws, trains and buses head to different parts of the city with loads of passengers, happy and spent, literally and metaphorically. Welcome to the great Indian bazaar!
It is much easier to be truly capitalist and indulge in gratuitous expenditure today than it was a few years ago. Thanks to the unprecedented burgeoning of malls all over the subcontinent, making the good old ‘department store’ defunct, there has been a sudden and drastic increase in not just availability, but also awareness of what is available where, when and for how much. And along the way, there has also been a growing demand for quality, for international brands and for a degree of convenience that was once available only in stores in the more developed and commercially elitist nations. In other words, the power of money has become reality, with everyone asking for more every day, in every way.
Once upon a time, the mall was an elitist concept, a place that people with money went to buy everything from kitchen gadgets to lingerie to toys for the children. Today, just a couple of years after the mall made its debut in India, for instance, there is a distinct divide in the customer base and the kinds of stores in a particular hub. Some are indeed more upmarket than others, showcasing high-street brands and one-of-a-kind products. Designer clothes, couture accessories, fine jewellery, big-name cookware, even mobile phones and sound systems that could cost the same as a small car will be available to a clientele that lives in million dollar homes and considers spending thousands on a simple meal an everyday way of living.
In other shopping malls, bargains will be a way of rolling the cart through the aisles, a huge discount attracting the most customers and pulling in the profits for the suppliers, never mind that the goods may not last too long – as long as they are affordable, look decent, get the job done…for now…it is fine and will be bought.
Malls today are a fact of everyday life. In my own neighbourhood, fairly elitist and suburban, there are three enormous ones within a ten minute walking radius of my home. One has high-end stores, with designer labels and wares that are generally found more in shops abroad, selling dreams and aspirations more than goods. The other is more middle-market, with more local products, some expensive, some not, selling utilitarian products of fairly high quality but not exceptional brand. And the third is a more accessible set of shops that provide service to the huge lower-middle class, the kind who would consider a car a luxury and food more important than interior decor. All these people need to be catered to, their needs fulfilled, but at a price that makes sense to them and delineates a certain consciousness of necessity versus luxury.
It is perhaps the story of a global virus called commercialism. There is a need for more than our parents and grandparents had, an awareness that there is more to everyday living standards than perhaps a few years ago. People want more, rather than merely need more, to be comfortable, to feel that they have a decent standard of living, to live up to their own heightened expectations. Along the way, it becomes a generational aspiration, a desire to satisfy a hunger that the elders did not feel as strongly, to become more than what the parents were, to have more than the grandparents did.
Jobs and salaries reflect that evolution – not necessarily good or bad – and so do credit card company profits, which over the past couple of decades have soared, even through the recession and any bad times that the economy went through. The attitude change, too, is revealing of a changing time, where people are willing and able to spend plenty of money and demand plenty of bang for their spent buck.
And if they can get their satisfaction, everyone goes home happy!
I was at the mall yesterday and found that almost every store had a huge crowd bogging up the aisles, milling around the checkout counters and trolling through the shelves. It was sale time, a special event that had been announced in every newspaper, magazine, brochure and flyer for many days before the melee actually started. Privileged clients, mainly those with special credit cards from selected stores, had received news of the discounts and deals via text messages on their mobile phones, emails and the occasional pesky phone call.
As all these potential customers, along with arbitrary visitors wander through the mall, they are wooed by touts from various stores, inviting them into their establishments, to ‘just look, madam’, to hopefully spend a few more shekels than actually budgeted for. And the money flows out of wallets and into cash registers, good fly off the shelves, big bags are carried out and cars, autorickshaws, trains and buses head to different parts of the city with loads of passengers, happy and spent, literally and metaphorically. Welcome to the great Indian bazaar!
It is much easier to be truly capitalist and indulge in gratuitous expenditure today than it was a few years ago. Thanks to the unprecedented burgeoning of malls all over the subcontinent, making the good old ‘department store’ defunct, there has been a sudden and drastic increase in not just availability, but also awareness of what is available where, when and for how much. And along the way, there has also been a growing demand for quality, for international brands and for a degree of convenience that was once available only in stores in the more developed and commercially elitist nations. In other words, the power of money has become reality, with everyone asking for more every day, in every way.
Once upon a time, the mall was an elitist concept, a place that people with money went to buy everything from kitchen gadgets to lingerie to toys for the children. Today, just a couple of years after the mall made its debut in India, for instance, there is a distinct divide in the customer base and the kinds of stores in a particular hub. Some are indeed more upmarket than others, showcasing high-street brands and one-of-a-kind products. Designer clothes, couture accessories, fine jewellery, big-name cookware, even mobile phones and sound systems that could cost the same as a small car will be available to a clientele that lives in million dollar homes and considers spending thousands on a simple meal an everyday way of living.
In other shopping malls, bargains will be a way of rolling the cart through the aisles, a huge discount attracting the most customers and pulling in the profits for the suppliers, never mind that the goods may not last too long – as long as they are affordable, look decent, get the job done…for now…it is fine and will be bought.
Malls today are a fact of everyday life. In my own neighbourhood, fairly elitist and suburban, there are three enormous ones within a ten minute walking radius of my home. One has high-end stores, with designer labels and wares that are generally found more in shops abroad, selling dreams and aspirations more than goods. The other is more middle-market, with more local products, some expensive, some not, selling utilitarian products of fairly high quality but not exceptional brand. And the third is a more accessible set of shops that provide service to the huge lower-middle class, the kind who would consider a car a luxury and food more important than interior decor. All these people need to be catered to, their needs fulfilled, but at a price that makes sense to them and delineates a certain consciousness of necessity versus luxury.
It is perhaps the story of a global virus called commercialism. There is a need for more than our parents and grandparents had, an awareness that there is more to everyday living standards than perhaps a few years ago. People want more, rather than merely need more, to be comfortable, to feel that they have a decent standard of living, to live up to their own heightened expectations. Along the way, it becomes a generational aspiration, a desire to satisfy a hunger that the elders did not feel as strongly, to become more than what the parents were, to have more than the grandparents did.
Jobs and salaries reflect that evolution – not necessarily good or bad – and so do credit card company profits, which over the past couple of decades have soared, even through the recession and any bad times that the economy went through. The attitude change, too, is revealing of a changing time, where people are willing and able to spend plenty of money and demand plenty of bang for their spent buck.
And if they can get their satisfaction, everyone goes home happy!
Monday, April 18, 2011
The art of craft
(bdnews24, April 15, 2011)
A couple of weeks ago the gentleman who supplies us with printing paper and cartridges for the printer called to say that he had received a new shipment of stuff. His wife was really the dealer, he explained, and she was ready to show us some of the latest lot. Good quality, he promised, good prices too. For a few seconds, I wondered, but then I realised I already knew. It was nothing in the least bit nefarious that he was speaking of, but something quite innocuous albeit desirable.
The gentleman has a wife who came from Bangladesh. She has a little home business of embellished fabrics that she sources from her home country. And every time she brings in some, the shipment is gone in a matter of a few hours. This time, we were getting a preview, just because we had been asking to see the materials ever since we had heard about them.
So we trotted over, took a good look, a second look and a third, and picked out what seemed to be the best of the lot, overall a good lot. It was not especially traditional, unlike some of the other samples in the bundle, but it was pretty and had the kind of subtle impact I tend to favour in my clothes. There were some pretty examples of nakshi kantha, the craft I had read so much about, all adapted nicely to suit a modern urban lifestyle, used on cool cotton saris, stylish kurtis and elaborately worked salwar-kameez suits. The work was very similar to what is produced in Bengal, the traditional and age-old kantha work, simple stitches elaborately set into intricate designs that make art out of what is essentially a village craft, used in garments that have acquired high-fashion tags the world over.
That is what fascinates me about culture and tradition. There is a growing newfound respect for that which we have taken for granted for generations, elevated from something that was used to make everyday utilitarian items, often for household use, prettier. It could make a chore a little more pleasant and time spent in the house more aesthetic. Once upon a time it could have been done with the intention of giving a housewife or ageing member of the family something to do; painting could have been a matter of decoration, or for ritualistic purposes, to ward off evil or send a message or even just camouflage the home from possibly-hostile visitors to the area. Inside, too, there would have been some kind of ornamentation, a sense of house-proud-ness, an attempt to make the surroundings more appealing and interesting.
However, history and the human mind being what they are, much indigenous culture has got lost over time, due primarily to the whimsical nature of man and his snob values. There have been many times in India, for instance, when local culture and tradition has given way to the western music-video ethos, be it in films, in fashion and, inevitably, in craft. Fortunately, every time, there has been a valiant group of individuals who battle to make that erosion stop, to even reverse it in certain cases, making sure that what is irreplaceable and valuable as a reflection of the history of a human evolution is not lost forever.
Many years ago, I met an elderly lady who told me about a fascinating method of tie-dyeing textile, native to a region in western India. The bandhini, a tie-dye technique that caught tiny pinches of fabric in string, protecting them from being coloured when the piece is dipped into a vat of dye, told stories in the designs that were created by the intricate pattern of dots and circles that resulted. There were myths retold, the lady explained, and see here, this is how the new bride tried to entice her husband to stay with her and not go on a business trip; and this is what the woman said to her daughter when the girl said she wanted a new skirt that had gold paisleys on a scarlet background; and this one is about the man who won the battle that he fought against 17 men who tried to take over his field…
Fabric is one almost-universal way of capturing legends and passing them on to a new generation. It is useful in so many ways, a sari converting to a quilt that is usable as a tent that can be made into baby clothes that may end up as a bag for carrying new saris. Each may be embellished, with simple stitches like in kantha or more intricate ones as in the fine tilla work of Kashmir, and each tells of a world, a people, a life.
As these pieces are passed down from elder to child, from community to clan, from one village to another, the stories spread, the myths get tweaked, a new history is created. In that, even the salwar kameez piece I bought, sent via various people from your country, Bangladesh, to mine, India, will become a part of my personal culture, one that bonds us with a sense of beauty.
A couple of weeks ago the gentleman who supplies us with printing paper and cartridges for the printer called to say that he had received a new shipment of stuff. His wife was really the dealer, he explained, and she was ready to show us some of the latest lot. Good quality, he promised, good prices too. For a few seconds, I wondered, but then I realised I already knew. It was nothing in the least bit nefarious that he was speaking of, but something quite innocuous albeit desirable.
The gentleman has a wife who came from Bangladesh. She has a little home business of embellished fabrics that she sources from her home country. And every time she brings in some, the shipment is gone in a matter of a few hours. This time, we were getting a preview, just because we had been asking to see the materials ever since we had heard about them.
So we trotted over, took a good look, a second look and a third, and picked out what seemed to be the best of the lot, overall a good lot. It was not especially traditional, unlike some of the other samples in the bundle, but it was pretty and had the kind of subtle impact I tend to favour in my clothes. There were some pretty examples of nakshi kantha, the craft I had read so much about, all adapted nicely to suit a modern urban lifestyle, used on cool cotton saris, stylish kurtis and elaborately worked salwar-kameez suits. The work was very similar to what is produced in Bengal, the traditional and age-old kantha work, simple stitches elaborately set into intricate designs that make art out of what is essentially a village craft, used in garments that have acquired high-fashion tags the world over.
That is what fascinates me about culture and tradition. There is a growing newfound respect for that which we have taken for granted for generations, elevated from something that was used to make everyday utilitarian items, often for household use, prettier. It could make a chore a little more pleasant and time spent in the house more aesthetic. Once upon a time it could have been done with the intention of giving a housewife or ageing member of the family something to do; painting could have been a matter of decoration, or for ritualistic purposes, to ward off evil or send a message or even just camouflage the home from possibly-hostile visitors to the area. Inside, too, there would have been some kind of ornamentation, a sense of house-proud-ness, an attempt to make the surroundings more appealing and interesting.
However, history and the human mind being what they are, much indigenous culture has got lost over time, due primarily to the whimsical nature of man and his snob values. There have been many times in India, for instance, when local culture and tradition has given way to the western music-video ethos, be it in films, in fashion and, inevitably, in craft. Fortunately, every time, there has been a valiant group of individuals who battle to make that erosion stop, to even reverse it in certain cases, making sure that what is irreplaceable and valuable as a reflection of the history of a human evolution is not lost forever.
Many years ago, I met an elderly lady who told me about a fascinating method of tie-dyeing textile, native to a region in western India. The bandhini, a tie-dye technique that caught tiny pinches of fabric in string, protecting them from being coloured when the piece is dipped into a vat of dye, told stories in the designs that were created by the intricate pattern of dots and circles that resulted. There were myths retold, the lady explained, and see here, this is how the new bride tried to entice her husband to stay with her and not go on a business trip; and this is what the woman said to her daughter when the girl said she wanted a new skirt that had gold paisleys on a scarlet background; and this one is about the man who won the battle that he fought against 17 men who tried to take over his field…
Fabric is one almost-universal way of capturing legends and passing them on to a new generation. It is useful in so many ways, a sari converting to a quilt that is usable as a tent that can be made into baby clothes that may end up as a bag for carrying new saris. Each may be embellished, with simple stitches like in kantha or more intricate ones as in the fine tilla work of Kashmir, and each tells of a world, a people, a life.
As these pieces are passed down from elder to child, from community to clan, from one village to another, the stories spread, the myths get tweaked, a new history is created. In that, even the salwar kameez piece I bought, sent via various people from your country, Bangladesh, to mine, India, will become a part of my personal culture, one that bonds us with a sense of beauty.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Ratheesh T
(The Times of India Crest Edition, April 9, 2011)
Sometimes you look at a work of art and wonder whether you haven’t wandered off into your own nightmares. Sometimes you see strange apparitions that could only have come off a medieval woodcut that spoke of demonic rituals and unholy desires. Sometimes you can wonder if you are really on the same plane, physical of psychical, as you explore visually, strangely disturbed by the images, but unable to move away from them. Such it is with the work of Ratheesh T, often described as magic realism, the genre so evocatively and expertly channelled by literary greats like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony) and in art by Paul Cadmus and George Tooker. In India, OV Vijayan’s Malayalam prose captures the essence of fantasy in the highest quality of language, presenting a stunning series of word-pictures that seem, in a strange way, to find reflection in what Ratheesh creates. His works are, on the surface, highly detailed and astonishingly intricate; as you look closer, the spooky element comes to the fore, leaping off the large oil-daubed canvases to smack you in the eye, metaphorically speaking, of course, with a certain unnerving sense of horror, of weirdness, of a realm where fantasy and horror collide in a parallel universe that does nothing to soothe rattled senses.
Ratheesh T was born in Kilimanoor in Kerala in 1980 and lives and works in Tiruvananthapuram, from where he earned a BFA at the College of Fine Arts. He started exhibiting early, with works at the Kerala Lalithkala Academy in Kochi in 2003, and has shown in prestigious galleries and fora in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. His involvement and empathy with his art shows in his responses to questions, thoughtful, passionate, occasionally incoherent, but loquacious, his eyes gleaming with a strangely otherworldly excitement though his spectacles as he speaks in a heavy Malayali accent. His recent show at the Galerie Mirchandani-Steinrucke in Mumbai, a preview to an exhibition including his works in Berlin, is called Green Pond and is indicative of the predominant colour in his works. As he explains with characteristic enthusiasm, “it comes naturally...it just comes”
There is a lot of green used, something that has been commented on before. Does this stem from your background in Kerala, or the channeling of nature as the main focus of your thought processes?
That is a good question. My paintings have a lot of green, my studio space is surrounded by green so it comes naturally, I do not think about it. One painting I made in Scotland is very brown...it comes to one, it just comes.
‘Magic realism’ is a phrase oft-used to describe your work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a master of the art in writing. How would you, the artist, explain this concept of magic realism in the context of your work?
People think about it as magic realism, but my ideas come from real life, from the heart. How do we create a total feel? That is very important. As an artist, I will do anything, go in any direction to achieve my purpose of getting this total ‘feel’. In my self portrait there are snakes inside my brain - now that is not only a snake; somebody may think ‘only snakes’, but for me it is showing the complexities of its body and powerfulness of its head. Also, it tells the story of the history of the snake in India - Krishna sleeping on a snake, Shiva wearing a snake...it all relates to power, the power of God, or in my case, the power of the brain. Magic realism is other people's issue, it is not my issue.
At first look, the work is full of life, of energy, vibrant, positive. As you look deeper, there is a certain sense of darkness, an underlying evil almost, that comes through. Is that a reflection of life today or a comment on it?
Peripherally, we can say that there are so many images of that kind. But deeply, underneath the peripheral, if you go into any detail, you will find abstraction of the universal - in life and looking at it, everything appears peripheral when one sees what I am doing on the canvas. But that is not the right way of looking...
First, when we are looking at the canvas, we get the total feel, the first impression. Only after that do we notice details, we walk to and then into the details. That is going towards another way to discover the truth.
How do you do your work – the paintings are so complex, so detailed, so intricate – where do the ideas come from? Is there any method with which they are executed? And is this complexity the reason you do not show that much in Mumbai?
Much of it comes from my love and admiration for my mother. My birth into my family is a great gift. This birth - where I was born, when I was born - each and every idea comes from this, it is my gift. An artist is born. Some paintings take less time and are less complicated, like Memory and Mother Goddess; others take very, very long.
What are you, the artist, attempting to communicate to your audience?
What I try to make is total energy of real spirituality, that which is inside me. This has nothing to do with religion's God, but everything to do with energy.
It has been said by critics and essayists that you are making trenchant comments on the issues that matter today – could you explain that?
Everything is positioned on the landscape and the landscape sometimes answers back when you ask questions. I am also on the landscape all the time, so I am too close to it, I cannot say much about it. Instead, I paint.
Sometimes you look at a work of art and wonder whether you haven’t wandered off into your own nightmares. Sometimes you see strange apparitions that could only have come off a medieval woodcut that spoke of demonic rituals and unholy desires. Sometimes you can wonder if you are really on the same plane, physical of psychical, as you explore visually, strangely disturbed by the images, but unable to move away from them. Such it is with the work of Ratheesh T, often described as magic realism, the genre so evocatively and expertly channelled by literary greats like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony) and in art by Paul Cadmus and George Tooker. In India, OV Vijayan’s Malayalam prose captures the essence of fantasy in the highest quality of language, presenting a stunning series of word-pictures that seem, in a strange way, to find reflection in what Ratheesh creates. His works are, on the surface, highly detailed and astonishingly intricate; as you look closer, the spooky element comes to the fore, leaping off the large oil-daubed canvases to smack you in the eye, metaphorically speaking, of course, with a certain unnerving sense of horror, of weirdness, of a realm where fantasy and horror collide in a parallel universe that does nothing to soothe rattled senses.
Ratheesh T was born in Kilimanoor in Kerala in 1980 and lives and works in Tiruvananthapuram, from where he earned a BFA at the College of Fine Arts. He started exhibiting early, with works at the Kerala Lalithkala Academy in Kochi in 2003, and has shown in prestigious galleries and fora in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. His involvement and empathy with his art shows in his responses to questions, thoughtful, passionate, occasionally incoherent, but loquacious, his eyes gleaming with a strangely otherworldly excitement though his spectacles as he speaks in a heavy Malayali accent. His recent show at the Galerie Mirchandani-Steinrucke in Mumbai, a preview to an exhibition including his works in Berlin, is called Green Pond and is indicative of the predominant colour in his works. As he explains with characteristic enthusiasm, “it comes naturally...it just comes”
There is a lot of green used, something that has been commented on before. Does this stem from your background in Kerala, or the channeling of nature as the main focus of your thought processes?
That is a good question. My paintings have a lot of green, my studio space is surrounded by green so it comes naturally, I do not think about it. One painting I made in Scotland is very brown...it comes to one, it just comes.
‘Magic realism’ is a phrase oft-used to describe your work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a master of the art in writing. How would you, the artist, explain this concept of magic realism in the context of your work?
People think about it as magic realism, but my ideas come from real life, from the heart. How do we create a total feel? That is very important. As an artist, I will do anything, go in any direction to achieve my purpose of getting this total ‘feel’. In my self portrait there are snakes inside my brain - now that is not only a snake; somebody may think ‘only snakes’, but for me it is showing the complexities of its body and powerfulness of its head. Also, it tells the story of the history of the snake in India - Krishna sleeping on a snake, Shiva wearing a snake...it all relates to power, the power of God, or in my case, the power of the brain. Magic realism is other people's issue, it is not my issue.
At first look, the work is full of life, of energy, vibrant, positive. As you look deeper, there is a certain sense of darkness, an underlying evil almost, that comes through. Is that a reflection of life today or a comment on it?
Peripherally, we can say that there are so many images of that kind. But deeply, underneath the peripheral, if you go into any detail, you will find abstraction of the universal - in life and looking at it, everything appears peripheral when one sees what I am doing on the canvas. But that is not the right way of looking...
First, when we are looking at the canvas, we get the total feel, the first impression. Only after that do we notice details, we walk to and then into the details. That is going towards another way to discover the truth.
How do you do your work – the paintings are so complex, so detailed, so intricate – where do the ideas come from? Is there any method with which they are executed? And is this complexity the reason you do not show that much in Mumbai?
Much of it comes from my love and admiration for my mother. My birth into my family is a great gift. This birth - where I was born, when I was born - each and every idea comes from this, it is my gift. An artist is born. Some paintings take less time and are less complicated, like Memory and Mother Goddess; others take very, very long.
What are you, the artist, attempting to communicate to your audience?
What I try to make is total energy of real spirituality, that which is inside me. This has nothing to do with religion's God, but everything to do with energy.
It has been said by critics and essayists that you are making trenchant comments on the issues that matter today – could you explain that?
Everything is positioned on the landscape and the landscape sometimes answers back when you ask questions. I am also on the landscape all the time, so I am too close to it, I cannot say much about it. Instead, I paint.
Gingger Shankar
(The Times of India Crest Edition, April 9, 2011)
She is all Indian, genetically speaking, but truly global in sound. Her father, with whom she is not the closest of friends, is the well-known violinist, L Subramanium, and her mother Viji was a classical singer who passed away in early 1995. Gingger Shankar is all about music, about art, about performance, about the beauty of Indian culture in its purest and most communicative form. Raised in India and the United States, Los Angeles in particular, Gingger studied vocal music, violin, piano, dance and opera, starting her performing career at 14. Touring with her as-famous uncle L Shankar, table maestro Zakir Hussain and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram, took her to festivals and events all over the world. Adding to this already distinguished resume has been work she has done with musicians of the ilk of Smashing Pumpkins, Talvin Singh, Steve Vai, Sussan Deyhim, James Newton Howard, Rabbit in the Moon, Tony Levin and Steve Lukather. Her 2004 triumph rings the high note in her collaboration with composers John Debney and L Shankar for the musical score of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, in which her voice and her instrument, the double violin, are clearly audible right through. Films, concerts, albums...she has them all to her credit, from Charlie Wilson’s War and The Forbidden Kingdom to live venues like the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the San Diego Indie Music Festival and the Sundance Institute Composer’s Lab.
The list of performances, awards, honours and fan clubs can go on and on. But from the point of view of her unique talent, Gingger is perhaps the only woman in the world who has mastered the ten-string double violin, which covers a whole orchestra worth of double bass, cello, viola and violin in tonality and range. Add to that her astonishingly facile voice, covering five octaves, and her extremely glamorous appearance, it is not surprising that the world of modelling, films and high-voltage celebrityhood occasionally invites her to make a special appearance. In an email interview, she tells Ramya Sarma a little of what she is all about...
Tell us something about growing up with music - you come from a family well known for its artistry, is that where your talent was nurtured and honed? How did it all happen to bring you to where you are in your journey?
I was around music from the time I was born (probably earlier!). I was very lucky to have a mother who exposed me to so many different types of music. We'd go to classical concerts and listen to rock music on the way back home. She was a very open minded person and because of that I was able to soak up so much music by the time I knew I wanted to perform. My mother taught me singing, my grandfather taught me violin. I also studied piano, opera and western music. All those influences definitely make me the artist I am today.
This is what i have read about you "dedicated to stretching her boundaries and spreading her wings, always experimenting with elegant and exciting mixtures of sounds. She weaves an intricate tapestry of musical styles" - how much of the Indian musical tradition is reflected in the music you make? And what other culture is most significant?
It entirely depends on the project. When I toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, I added Indian influences to what I was performing. In the movie world, some projects want eastern sounding scores, others want very traditional western scores. My record has hints of Indian influence. I think my music reflects me- modern, traditional, Indian, western, electronic..I am definitely a hybrid!
The Indian (especially the Carnatic) raga explores a different and more intricate scale than the western musical repertoire. Does understanding one system make the other easier to play with? Does one influence the other?
I think having both influences definitely gives me a larger palette to work with. I love crossing the boundaries of both and creating new soundscapes. Especially in the land of film scoring, taking a western traditional score and putting an indian twist to it is so much fun.
You have such a fabulous resume where your film work is concerned - have you considered a stint in Bollywood, especially today, when so much new stuff is being explored and experimented with? Acting, music. vocals, there is such a lot someone with your background and talent could be part of!
I would love to. I have just never been approached to do it!
The double violin is your speciality. How does vary in potential and sound quality from the more conventional one? And, of course, in the kind of music it can produce?
It definitely has a unique tone that no other instrument can produce. It is fantastic for movie soundtracks as well as live performances. It covers the whole orchestra, so it has quite the range as well as dynamics.
You have worked with so many well known musicians in various styles - what or who have the significant influences on your own work been?
That is a very difficult question to answer. I think when you collaborate with an amazing musician, you both influence each other a bit. I have had the luck to work with and listen to so many talented artists along the way, that I feel my inspirations and influences have come from many different places and people.
What kind of music makes you really happy, brings you joy, makes you smile? And what makes you cry?
I listen to loads of music, and it all depends on where I am in my life. Right now I love Kanye West's new record. That is my driving music. My mom's music always makes me cry.
Banal question: What does music mean to you? How would you describe it and its role in your everyday life?
Music is weaved into every part of my life. I am very blessed to do what I love for a living. Besides that, I listen to so much music as well. My friends constantly give me tracks to listen to. And, like everyone else, I have my workout songs, my angry songs, my break up songs, my memory songs, etc.
You have been part of various charitable, awareness-raising movements, mainly through concerts you have been part of. Are you focused on any particular cause?
I have been lucky to work with some incredible charities. Everything from juvenile diabetes and cancer research to promoting music in schools. I don't think there is any cause that is better than another. As long as I can help in some small way to bring awareness to these wonderful organizations and support them, I am thrilled to do so.
What are you working on currently?
I recently finished scoring the feature film Circumstance, which just won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. It is being released in the summer. I also completed another feature film Homecoming which is by a very talented new director Sean Hackett. Now I'm working on my album as well as a theatre play in Los Angeles.
She is all Indian, genetically speaking, but truly global in sound. Her father, with whom she is not the closest of friends, is the well-known violinist, L Subramanium, and her mother Viji was a classical singer who passed away in early 1995. Gingger Shankar is all about music, about art, about performance, about the beauty of Indian culture in its purest and most communicative form. Raised in India and the United States, Los Angeles in particular, Gingger studied vocal music, violin, piano, dance and opera, starting her performing career at 14. Touring with her as-famous uncle L Shankar, table maestro Zakir Hussain and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram, took her to festivals and events all over the world. Adding to this already distinguished resume has been work she has done with musicians of the ilk of Smashing Pumpkins, Talvin Singh, Steve Vai, Sussan Deyhim, James Newton Howard, Rabbit in the Moon, Tony Levin and Steve Lukather. Her 2004 triumph rings the high note in her collaboration with composers John Debney and L Shankar for the musical score of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, in which her voice and her instrument, the double violin, are clearly audible right through. Films, concerts, albums...she has them all to her credit, from Charlie Wilson’s War and The Forbidden Kingdom to live venues like the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the San Diego Indie Music Festival and the Sundance Institute Composer’s Lab.
The list of performances, awards, honours and fan clubs can go on and on. But from the point of view of her unique talent, Gingger is perhaps the only woman in the world who has mastered the ten-string double violin, which covers a whole orchestra worth of double bass, cello, viola and violin in tonality and range. Add to that her astonishingly facile voice, covering five octaves, and her extremely glamorous appearance, it is not surprising that the world of modelling, films and high-voltage celebrityhood occasionally invites her to make a special appearance. In an email interview, she tells Ramya Sarma a little of what she is all about...
Tell us something about growing up with music - you come from a family well known for its artistry, is that where your talent was nurtured and honed? How did it all happen to bring you to where you are in your journey?
I was around music from the time I was born (probably earlier!). I was very lucky to have a mother who exposed me to so many different types of music. We'd go to classical concerts and listen to rock music on the way back home. She was a very open minded person and because of that I was able to soak up so much music by the time I knew I wanted to perform. My mother taught me singing, my grandfather taught me violin. I also studied piano, opera and western music. All those influences definitely make me the artist I am today.
This is what i have read about you "dedicated to stretching her boundaries and spreading her wings, always experimenting with elegant and exciting mixtures of sounds. She weaves an intricate tapestry of musical styles" - how much of the Indian musical tradition is reflected in the music you make? And what other culture is most significant?
It entirely depends on the project. When I toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, I added Indian influences to what I was performing. In the movie world, some projects want eastern sounding scores, others want very traditional western scores. My record has hints of Indian influence. I think my music reflects me- modern, traditional, Indian, western, electronic..I am definitely a hybrid!
The Indian (especially the Carnatic) raga explores a different and more intricate scale than the western musical repertoire. Does understanding one system make the other easier to play with? Does one influence the other?
I think having both influences definitely gives me a larger palette to work with. I love crossing the boundaries of both and creating new soundscapes. Especially in the land of film scoring, taking a western traditional score and putting an indian twist to it is so much fun.
You have such a fabulous resume where your film work is concerned - have you considered a stint in Bollywood, especially today, when so much new stuff is being explored and experimented with? Acting, music. vocals, there is such a lot someone with your background and talent could be part of!
I would love to. I have just never been approached to do it!
The double violin is your speciality. How does vary in potential and sound quality from the more conventional one? And, of course, in the kind of music it can produce?
It definitely has a unique tone that no other instrument can produce. It is fantastic for movie soundtracks as well as live performances. It covers the whole orchestra, so it has quite the range as well as dynamics.
You have worked with so many well known musicians in various styles - what or who have the significant influences on your own work been?
That is a very difficult question to answer. I think when you collaborate with an amazing musician, you both influence each other a bit. I have had the luck to work with and listen to so many talented artists along the way, that I feel my inspirations and influences have come from many different places and people.
What kind of music makes you really happy, brings you joy, makes you smile? And what makes you cry?
I listen to loads of music, and it all depends on where I am in my life. Right now I love Kanye West's new record. That is my driving music. My mom's music always makes me cry.
Banal question: What does music mean to you? How would you describe it and its role in your everyday life?
Music is weaved into every part of my life. I am very blessed to do what I love for a living. Besides that, I listen to so much music as well. My friends constantly give me tracks to listen to. And, like everyone else, I have my workout songs, my angry songs, my break up songs, my memory songs, etc.
You have been part of various charitable, awareness-raising movements, mainly through concerts you have been part of. Are you focused on any particular cause?
I have been lucky to work with some incredible charities. Everything from juvenile diabetes and cancer research to promoting music in schools. I don't think there is any cause that is better than another. As long as I can help in some small way to bring awareness to these wonderful organizations and support them, I am thrilled to do so.
What are you working on currently?
I recently finished scoring the feature film Circumstance, which just won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. It is being released in the summer. I also completed another feature film Homecoming which is by a very talented new director Sean Hackett. Now I'm working on my album as well as a theatre play in Los Angeles.
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