Mr. Khandekar, you got a new place for yourself now? I did indeed.
Sweet. So, what is Candid Lounge? It is a blog.
That I see. Why the name? Dunno. Sounded fancy, I guess.
Why does it exist? It exists because yours truly couldn't contain his expression to fiction.
How is it different from other blogs? Or is it at all? In some ways, yes. Like there will be no emo posts and everything will be typed out by a Gestypo.
Where do I find Candid Lounge? :|
Oh, my bad. Moving on, when was it launched? Today. Congratulations, you might just be in the moment to witness history in making.
'History'. Really? Nah.
Ignoring that, what is this place about? Stuff.
Stuff? Y'know, reviews, opinions, articles...
Sounds boring. Hey, I tried to mask it up when I said 'stuff'.
Yeah. Okay, you were saying... Yes, basically Candid Lounge is everything that http://creativelyfertile.blogspot.com/ couldn't contain because of the format.
Ooo, that place looks nice! Doesn't it? It's mine!
Today we study the art of letter writing when you need to say, "I heart you, m'lady" but you don't have the cojones to say it and want to compensate that with ink.
So, love letter writing, what is it? Basically, it is an art- an art form of which the ultimate aim is to knock their socks off, and then proceed upwards, but we'll get into that when we study "How to achieve new lows". So, for now, we start by studying the needlessness of learning to write a love letter.
A love letter is about love, if you haven't figured that out yet. Now, love is corny, cheesy, irrational and if you ask me, lame in almost all the cases except when it is with me. Then it's intense, passionate and sacred. Horny comes in too but let's not get into that. So when one is to write a letter, why the pressure? The reason is because everyone wants to sound like a Mirza Ghalib or, closer home, a Javed Akhtar. Trust me when I say this, interstellar analogies does not always get you laid. Ask me- Sometimes I have had the most creative analogies and yet, almost every alternate day, I have a date with my right hand.
So, write from your heart, don't make grammatical errors and you'll have your girl peeing all over in excitement (an expression). If you're a classicist, write with your pen (I’d recommend an ink one but maybe that’s just the stilted old me) - it adds a more personalized feel. Be earnest, be honest and even if you think you sound repetitive, don’t sweat coz it’s the gesture that counts.
Having said that, only because you insisted, here are a few guidelines:
1. Pique your chick: First paragraph should have something intriguing, something immediately attention grabbing.
e.g. Write something with a double meaning; irrelevance that can later be traced to the rest of the letter; an incomplete last line.
2. Corny’s the new cool: For the record, it isn’t. But in love letters, whatever you write is always interpreted as romantic. Even the shittiest of poems are first responded with ‘Aww’ and the effect manifests itself with ‘Aaaah’. So unless you’re a n00b who will do grammatical errors and have absolutely ridiculous lines-
Specimen 1:
My lady’s so cute,
Her fart comes out toot toot
OR
Specimen 2:
Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
Dil hai mera mujhe tujh ko hi dena
Consider your job done. Go cheesy couplets!
3. A case study: No, seriously. Try to mention one anecdote involving you and her that comes straight from your heart, preferably the one which you’ve never told her about that how great you felt/she made you feel. One of the experiences that you think you’ll cherish for your entire life. This is the most important part of the letter. So get your ass straight and drill yourself till you get that right.
4. Promises promises 1, 2, 3, the king will never remember me: Don’t mind the caption, it was just one of the poems my brother had in which a mouse says the aforementioned shit to a king. But what you should take away from it is, end with how privileged you are to have her in your life, how you strive to make her happy and a promise of you two living happily ever after or something on those lines. Basically, this paragraph is all about her. Make her sound superhumanly nice. It’s very regular, yes, but there’s a reason to it- it works.
5. Do NOT copy: No, no, and some more of a cockadoodie no. Probably they won’t instantly get that it’s from the Spring 2008 Collection of Archies but they do know your smartness level. Now don’t you give me that eye, lad, if you were so smart, you won’t be taking this goddamn class with me.
Two years later, Nariman House still in convalescent period
Mumbai, 27th November
Abhishek sits on a rickety iron stool with a stack of cellphone covers neatly arranged by his side on a competitively rickety table.
“How much is this for?” you ask.
“You are not here to buy anything, are you?” he says with a dash of mischief in his voice.
“How did you know?” “I saw you talking to the Chabad House (the renamed Nariman House) watchman, taking notes. Nobody talks to the watchman and takes notes, except for…”
“Press reporters,” you complete his allusion. “How many have you encountered with?”
“Loads,” he exclaims proudly. The tragedy has lent him a quasi-celebrity status. You’ve found an anchor in him, you realize. He can always be a back-up source for your report. So you look for more, the watchman not helping much with his forced mum air about him.
The moderately busy street might belie the possibility of a dastardly attack a couple of years ago. You see the beady lights being put up and a sound system being set and are disoriented at the ‘celebration’ till someone tells you it’s for the Sai Baba temple in the vicinity. A relieved observation ensues.
The Nariman House street, or the Paanch Payari street as it is officially known, is just another street you would normally shrug off. A narrow lane filled with small-time shops, a cosy little temple, a pigeon-hole of a bakery and cluttered five or six storey buildings don’t make for much source of intrigue; had it not been a 12*10 inch High Court notice affixed on a wall with two red circled holes on the opposite one. The media throngs to see it, shoot it and voice it over and over again as per the agenda-setters’ whims. This five storey structure now lies deserted with a green blanket symbolizing renovation that began only two months ago, before the High Court put it to an abrupt halt over the controversy of Chabad Trust of India collecting millions of dollars in the name of baby Moshe, the only Nariman House Moshe family survivor, and then nicking it while simultaneously trying to grab the property.
The memories of baby Moshe bring flickers of a smile. “He was a sweet little kid who came to our shop to buy chocolates,” says a reminiscing Abhishek, who also runs a general store in the same lane with his father.
“Even his parents were polite and well-spoken.”
“What have you seen this place become post the incident?”
“It has become a picnic spot,” he replies instantly, probably a much rehearsed answer. “People come, see the bullet; the media comes, interviews us all…”
“What about the building?”
“What about it? It has been lying vacant ever since.” The answer comes from the watchman who you never realized had sneaked his way near you and is now peering over the notes. “I have been here since that very day the police wrapped up the operations. Nothing ever happens other than the media routine, except for the ghosts.”
This might actually turn out to be interesting after all, you pep up.
“Yes. Two years on, only four of us have remained constant. The rest have run away saying that the ghosts chase them at night.”
“Do the government officials come often to inspect?”
“Courtesy visits, yes. But till date hardly any substantial work has begun. Even the insurance has not been given.” The attempts at verification attempts fall flat before the might of the eased-out Colaba police who conveniently maintain that nearly all of the responsible authorities have been transferred and currently the Nariman House area falls under no one.
“You might want to check out with Mrs. Lobo,” suggests Abhishek. “She was trapped in the house right opposite, above the bakery.” The four windows of the house are all open. Maybe you can indeed obtain some bytes.
The thin brown painted iron door has dense mesh of vertical bars to the upper half, with a tiny slit just about three fingers thick near the doorbell. A thin boy, probably in his early twenties, emerges cautiously. A servant since five years, his face has a wrinkled aura to it and his smile betrays tired resignation as he politely tries to wave you off asking you not to disturb a sleeping 85 year old Mrs. Lobo. Persuasion doesn’t work and is only met with even more polite requests of denial of providing information. You try the other method.
“So you say she’s scared of giving interviews?”
“Yes.”
“But surely, a lot of reporters might have come to ask. Didn’t she answer any one of them?”
“No, honestly speaking, you are the first I’m even talking to. We ignored everyone else.” The warnings by the neighbours while inquiring about Mrs. Lobo’s place now coincide.
“But surely, you were there, right? Were you scared too?”
You have managed to prod a sensitive nerve. And that nerve speaks up almost indignantly, “Of course not, I was ready to sacrifice my life for the nation.”
“Wow,” you egg him on. “So how did you fare?”
“Three days, it continued for. Three unending days. At first I thought it was the firecrackers that were bursting but when the noise got louder and almost disturbing and a pandemonium followed, I realized something was seriously wrong. I closed all the doors and windows but it just wouldn’t end. Finally I carried Sir (Mr. Lobo, a 91 year old man who passed away this March) and Ma’am to this place,” he shows the place he is standing, a dingy 50 square feet place with a staircase leading up to the Lobo’s. “I opened the door a little bit and asked the police to evacuate us and you know what he said? He said, ‘Bus kar c*****, andar hi reh (Stay inside, you fool)". Both of them slept inside this very place for hours, me not sleeping a wink before the Commandos came and slowly helped us move out. I could have sneaked out, leaving both of them, but how can I betray my masters?” His eyes are now moist, and his voice is cracking. You decide to give him a few moments.
“Anyway,” he speaks up after a pause. “I wish I could help. I’m sorry but I can’t say anything about the incident.”
You then wonder if he knows he has already related his tragic anecdote. Then three shivering fingers emerge out of the small crack in the bars, and you shake them gratefully.
Time is supposed to heal. You hope some more will. Scars are bearable, wounds are not.
There was a time in the recent past when I saw Chicago. It was straightaway the best musical after Sweeny Todd. The biting satire especially the puppet dance part, damn, it’s all real trippy shit. No wonder Literature guys study that.
And I forgot about Chicago. I forgot about Sweeny Todd and every other movie I had seen. To say that my life changed would be just wrong. In the two hour of journey, and I shit you not, I was reborn. And now I proudly say I am a citizen of the land of Gundaraj.
Location:
The mind of Kanti Shah of the cult Duplicate Sholay and Shaadi Basanti Ki Honeymoon Gabbar Ka fame.
Dear fellow menials, I want to invite you to the land of 240p where murders are pastimes and rapes are recreational measures, where every sentence rhymes and every dialogue reeks of earthiest metaphors (Tu wo jhaad ki patti hai, jise koi bhi tod kar ja sake; Main crane nahi, jahaz hoon jahaz). This universe consists exclusively of airstrips and dockyards where only railway coolies (aspirational, did you say?) exist. This pink sweet world is the utopia for monkeys playing catch with new born babies (when I say ‘with’, I mean babies are the catch-balls), where a dockyard can miraculously transform into a mining hub as smoothly as you would gurgle ‘Ogaga’, and where taxis work on autopilot and pimps have hanging gardens in their brothels.
As I got more acquainted with Gundaraj, I realized what a cute little place that is. And the people make it so. The fellow citizens of my new world are the friendliest lot with the most endearingly eclectic names. Why don’t I let them introduce themselves?
The mob-boss Bulla – “Mera naam hai Bulla. Main rakhta hoon hamesha khulla.” With a blow-job face with every ‘A’ at the end of sentence.
Bulla’s gay brother Chuthiya – “Mera naam hai Chuthiya. Achche achchon ki khadi karta hoon main khatiyan. Bulla bhai, ab hoga halla gulla. Police karegi hai Bulla hai Bulla. Sab bolenge hai Chuthiya hai Bulla. Arre dhoondho dhoondho kaha hai Chuthiya, pakdo pakdo kaha hai Bulla.”
Bulla’s left hand Ibu Hatela: “Mera naam hai Ibu Hatela. Ma meri chudail ki beti, baap mera shaitan ka chela. Khayega kela?”
Bulla’s right hand Pote – “Mera naam hai Pote, jo apne baap ke bhi nahi hote.”
Aw, ain’t that sweet? Moving ahead, you see, my land has something for everyone.
For animal lovers, we have leopards for pets.
For the ardent devotees, we have a constant Mahabharata music playing in the background.
For physics lovers, we the most flexible gravitational force – that allows for 10 feet jumps and rebounds.
For geology diggers, we have the most permeable soil – Now you don’t need to dig graves. Just two hard whacks on the head and voila, a standing person is now neck deep in soil.
For K soap dabbers and those with amnesia, we have extended action-replays – 6 of them, just so that you won’t miss out a single detail.
For anatomy fans, we choose chicks by their cup size. Minimum eligibility - D.
For sociology enthusiasts, we have crowd who turn mannequins at every act of violence and come alive only to accommodate Mithunda.
For sci-fi fans, we have a wonderful case study of how Mithunda manages to do an apparition at every turn, nook, corner and crevice wherever the running villain chooses to go after turning his back at him.
For cartographers, a chance to analyse how every turn, nook, corner and crevice inevitably leads to an airstrip or a dockyard.
For aspiring fashion designers, guys, you just have to see how well the slick red turtleneck adorns a tight pair of whites.
For aspiring artists, a chance to witness what none of you can ever possibly hope to accomplish.
And for cinema aficionados, this is a wonderful opportunity of knowing how a movie that defies every possible convention, definition, notion of realism and replace it with the most creative inanities manages to secure a 7.6 on IMDB when Chicago scraped a 7.2.
Gunda, the land of viewer joy, the land of commoner justice, the land of engagingly boiling revenge and a happy punched out end. Twilight will go inside cans, the likes of Rebecca Black will gag themselves. And Khoon Bhari Maang will just be ho-hum-ed.
This was an article I wrote as a part of a sting for The Times of India. Sadly, due to some reasons, the complete operation never worked out and neither did the article get published. However, this was the highlight of my month long internship.
The Mumbai police special squad’s raid in an Andheri based friendship club and the subsequent arrest of the owner led to uncovering of a prostitution racket. But this is a solitary incident in a long time that was triggered only after the customers complained of the club duping them after money was deposited in their accounts. TOI decided to investigate the modus operandi first and was met with fascinating results. Here’s a firsthand account:
The number is always a few page-turns away with the advertisements conveniently listed under ‘Party Entertainers’ section. Impersonating a customer, I called up a number one afternoon as many of these clubs operate as per bank hours. After a couple of phone-rings, a female picked up the phone. Alternating between Hindi and broken English, she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone but was sinister under pressure.
“Hello?”
“Hello. I read your friendship club advertisement in the paper.”
“You want to do friendship too?”
“Yes.” “Okay. We have three packages – ‘Only Enjoyment’ friendship, ‘Fully Satisfaction’ friendship and ‘Money back’ friendship. Which one do you want?”
I asked for details. Turns out, the ‘Only Enjoyment’ friendship is the platonic type wherein both the “parties” meet, hang around in public or private places in exchange for money. The ‘Fully Satisfaction’ is the conventional pay-for-pleasure offer with the customer coughing up money as per the duration of sessions. The ‘Money Back’ offer, however, is the gigolo service catering to the housewives already a part of the club.
“These are rich housewives who like to enjoy life,” she explained. “You have to go to their homes because they can’t go out in public due to their high status.”
Interestingly, there is a cap on the number of ‘meetings’ per month in all the services ranging from 6-8. The people provided include models, college goers, air hostesses and housewives.
“I want to do it.”
“You will have to deposit the money in the bank after which we will call you and give you the details.”
“What details?”
“We will take your name, your occupation and then provide you the profiles of the members.”
“But I can’t give you my name. It will be risky if police raid your place.” “You can give your fake name too. It is only for us to put your name on our top secret website which we will give you. You can choose a boy or a girl and enjoy.”
“What’s the guarantee you will call me?”
“Full guarantee, sir. You can go through old newspapers. I am working here since past three years and our club is operating since 8 years. Our advertisements have been coming and the number is always the same.”
So far, so good. It was time to try jumping onto an edgier track of conversation.
“It’s too risky and your price is too high. Can’t I meet first and then pay on the spot?”
“No, we don’t do that. First membership, then enjoyment.”
“But I don’t know if you will keep your promise.”
This one brought out the streets in her.
“Aye bhai, what’s the guarantee you are not a media person? Why should I trust you? And if I want to mess with you, I can still do that. I already have your number.”
Pacifying her took some time. At the end, she was back to her ‘professional’ tone.
“I don’t like arguing with customers. The only reason I am listening to you so long is I know you are a man in need. Chal, I will give you instalment offer.”
After promising to call back, I disconnected the call. But the media person accusation lingered.
For years together, Pi (π) revelled in its own glory. From being revered as one of the most important numbers in mathematics to having an unexpectedly significant impact on the culture world-wide, the fame only bloated. Enchanted by its enigma, people paid tribute in books, music and movies. Many a software were created to calculate its accurate value. The crowning moment came when the devotees came together and dedicated a day to it: 14th of March came to be known as Pi day.
Pi’s world first rumbled when a certain anti-pi propagandist rose in 2001. Robert Palais, they called him. “I know it will be called blasphemy by some, but I believe pi is wrong,” he dared to quote in his article titled ‘Pi is wrong’. A research professor of mathematics in the University of Utah, Palais’s conspired to overthrow norms and give way to pi with three legs.
Pi may have dismissed the attempt as a solitary insurgency but Palais gradually gained disciples. The intricate web of internet poured concrete into the movement and it was 2010 when pi was faced by its strongest competitor yet – Tau (τ). Born of the same Greek parents, tau had always alleged preferential treatment meted out to pi. As pi went on to conquer one peak after the other, tau had to content being only a niche favourite. But since 2010, it had its own day too: 28th June was now Tau day.
Tau was finally in the limelight and it did not wish to let it away so easily. It decided to provoke rebels into ardent campaigning. Entered into the scene a certain physicistMichael Hartl, who proposed to use taurefer to the constant2π. He went further to frame ‘The Tau Manifesto’, a website listing advantages of tau, in a bid to overthrow the autocracy of pi. He was joined by another non-believer Kevin Houston, a mathematician from the University of Leeds.
“If you want to associate a number to the circle, the most natural definition is circumference to radius, which is tau and not circumference to diameter which is pi. This is natural as the circle is defined as a collection of points which are a common distance from the centre. Diameter need not be the same as there exist shapes which have a constant diameter but aren’t circles. Except the area of circle, almost all the formulae have 2 π. Thus, it also helps in simplifying various mathematical formulae.” Houston’s words were immortalized by his video campaign.
Will tau replace pi? Improbable. It would involve a lot of textbook rewriting. Besides, it’s hard to heartlessly take away a constant from life. However, a discontent brews and might just whirl itself into a larger scale war because as of now, tau seems to be in no mood to back down.
It is not every day that your mother slips in the notification of a leader of an international organization staying over at your place. Your surprise is multifold when you live with a politically idle family whose affiliations rarely extend out of the living room. Add it up and you can’t be blamed for being perplexed at the heads up of President of VHP Praveen Togadia staying over at your place for the night. What’s more, at the time you type this, he lies in one of our bedrooms doing a pooja.
As he enters your home dressed in the appropriate lush white attire with a dual colour bordered pancha around his neck, he wafts confidence and self-assurance. His party volunteers double check the place making necessary enquiries. Your family runs around arranging for snacks and sweetmeats appropriate for 10.30 pm. The ever ready teapot soon finds itself on the stove.
Togadia sits snug on the divan with his legs folded. He spots you strategically seated on the sofa on the side and extends courtesy – “What do you do?”
“Bachelor of Mass Media,” you reply. “Currently specializing in journalism.”
You wait for it to strike a chord of mutual interests. It does. “Very nice,” pat comes the reply.
“He was not around yesterday,” a volunteer asks your father pointing at you.
“He was out of town. He just came back from Gadchiroli today,” your father replies. You can’t help but detect a tone of anxiety.
“Lucky fellow,” Togadia smirks. You laugh, he laughs, your father joins in. Not very politically correct but then that was never his forte.
Finally, as he settles down, the volunteers promise to be around the building along with police officials.
Introductory conversation follows with other members and a civil vibe is built. You tell him about your Gadchiroli experience, he parts with some of his worldly wisdom and round of polite nods take place. Then you get to the point.
“Sir, it is a great privilege to have you here. As I had mentioned earlier, I study journalism. If you don’t mind, may I interview you?”
“Yes, of course.” The smug grin (open to interpretations) is intact.
A montage of a laptop opening, cords connecting and a few clicks follow.
“Before I get on with the questions, may I know something about your practice of gracing us commoners with your presence?” you ask.
“I have been staying with the volunteers since 1998. It has been 14 long years.”
“Aren’t you concerned about the security?”
“See, I am a Hindu. For me, my time of birth was decided and so is my time of death. Why should I be afraid?” He looks around for appreciative nods. He gets them. You join them.
“I have been reading about you since several years now,” you begin. “Your stand on Hinduism is very well established and you mince no words during expression. What is the foundation behind such staunch beliefs? What made you grow beyond a practicing Hindu to someone who spreads the message of Hinduism?”
“Let me tell you something about Muslims,” he says. “For Muslims, the brotherhood is only restricted to Muslims. If one says Salaam Valekum, the Valekum Salaam is returned only if the greeter is a Muslim. Hinduism is the only religion that talks about welfare of the universe. Originally, India was the centre of education, commerce and politics. But ever since 14th century, we have been the victims of Jihadi terrorism. Over the time, challenge became stronger. Even today, if a Hindu from Mauritius or America cries out against injustice, who is with him? Hence the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.”
“The VHP was set up in 1964 with the aim of social service, anti-conversions and other issues relevant to the Hindus. But over the time, it developed political affiliations, mainly with BJP. Do you think reformation is not possible without politics getting involved?”
“Reformation has nothing to do with politics. But several problems lie in the politics. Take refusal to ban cow slaughter or the Ayodhya temple issue. Even in Mumbai, our donations to the Siddhivinayak are redirected by the government to Christian missionaries to convert the Hindus.”
You take a second to digest the strong accusations.
“You don’t have a particularly positive image in the media in spite of all the social work you claim of your shakhas doing. Several are of the opinion that VHP is a terrorist organization and it should be banned. Your take.”
“A person or an organization with a mission does not care for the public image and impression. All they care for is the goal and the advancement of their goal. If someone is a soldier, his mission is to defend the country. For that, he needs to wear dirty clothes. So should he be looked down upon?”
Just when the others are reduced to mere spectators watching a tennis rally, the tea is served with some sweetmeats. A few family friends whom your father has given a wind of the VIP’s arrival enter. Preliminary introductions follow before the interview is resumed.
“The reason I asked you the question was the media is growing stronger and more influential by the day. Can you really afford to ignore it?”
“We have agreed that the media opposes me, right?” He takes a sip.
“Right.”
“Then why do you think I still draw such huge crowds? Media has strength but the word of mouth is much stronger. 10 people attending my address tell 10 each, these 100 tell 100 each, and hence even today VHP and the support for VHP is only growing. A large chunk of it is youth. We run 35000 service projects in the country. What can the media do? True, we can’t afford to ignore them. We are awake. We try to dilute their opposition but not stop it. It is not possible. But in spite of this presumed animosity, how do you think we draw a crowd of 1 crore in Kumbh?”
With numbers as large as these hurled at you, you can do little more than switch over to the next question.
“An extremely basic question – why do you think the political parties are all busy wooing Muslims? A majority of the population is Hindu, so we should be the target of political affection. Why is it not happening? Are we so brittle a community?”
“In Hindus, the political behavior is such that we don’t vote as Hindus. That’s when we become Brahmins or SC’s or Dalits. But Muslims behave as Muslims. They are 12% of the population but their impact is strong. To change the affection, we have to change the political behavior of Hindus.”
“You have talked about your strong grudges against the Muslim community. What action do you propose?”
“No Muslims, no terror. Where there are Muslims, there is terror. The reason is every Muslim accepts Quran. Quran teaches Jihad. It teaches that every non-Muslim is a Kaafir and should be killed. I was once asked, ‘Do you support Kalam?’ I said, ‘No. In his eyes, I am still a Kaafir. And that I should be killed.’”
One of the ‘spectators’ chips in – “Say a Hindu marries a Muslim, who should we support?”
Togadia pauses for half a moment. “If Muslim girls convert, then we should support them. You’ll ask why. The answer is not because of the religion but because of the teaching. Once Mohammad Paigambar was asked, ‘You said every Muslim will go to the heaven and non-Muslims will go to the hell. But when your father was born, he wasn’t a Muslim because you weren’t born till then. So is he in hell?’ Paigambar said, ‘Yes. He is and so is your father.’”
“Going back to what you said about no terrorism if there are no Muslims and taking into account your statement about 12% of the population that of Muslims, elimination is not an option. How would you say you deal with them?”
“We Hindus are the most tolerant of the religions. Quran reads that if one Muslim loots or commits adultery with another Muslim, it is a crime. If they do the same with non-Muslims, it isn’t. If they are such a community, why should we not take action? All the religions should come together and take action.”
“But there are several Muslims who might have such teachings in their religion but don’t practice it. Why should they bear the brunt?”
“Today they are not practicing jihad, what’s the guarantee they won’t tomorrow?”
The beliefs are too well rooted, you realize. You prepare the curtains to descend.
“Till when will you be touring the country?”
“I will tour India till India becomes a constitutional state wherein Muslims don’t have voting rights.”
Out of politeness, you thank him profusely for making a budding journalist’s day. He beams back at you.
“Pooja ka waqt ho chala hai.” He turns to your folks. “Ek glass doodh milega?”
A resident of Belapur in Navi Mumbai, forty five year old Clementine was an ultra-modern woman. She lived with her fifty year old husband Francis D’Souza. Of youthful disposition, Clementine loved to lead a life of women half her age and often surrounded herself with such youngsters. She shared an active sex life with her husband thinking of it as an important ingredient for maintaining herself. However, it all changed the day Francis suffered a heart-attack.
After a lengthy treatment of six months punctuated by Clementine’s frequent quashing of inner desires, the doctors declared Francis medically fit. That night Clementine took special efforts to look good and slipping herself into a nightie, got snug with Francis in their marital bed. But Francis snubbed her advances citing loss of stamina.
Clementine couldn’t bear the rejection and confided into her best friend Devyani, a twenty six year old carefree soul.
“Consider your problem solved,” said Devyani. “My boyfriend has a friend called Sagar. Must be around 22-23. He’s a bit poor but full of youth and charm. And here’s the best part – he is still fresh!”
The set-up was at the beach of Mumbai’s neighbouring district Raigad. As the calm waves started kissing their feet, Clementine took Sagar’s hand into hers.
“Chase me,” she told him playfully and burst into a sprint. Sagar started running after her. Clementine wanted just that. She deliberately slowed down and allowed Sagar to catch her, fall with her on the sand and touch her as much as he could. She had worn a thin dress so that it could get wet, cling on to the skin and treat the eye. Now her bra and panty were clearly visible.
“You look like you want to eat me raw,” Clementine teased as she caught Sagar staring admiring her lissome body.
“Madam, if something is worth eyeing, people will eye,” Sagar smiled.
“You haven’t seen the real thing yet,” Clementine winked. “Once you do, you’ll become mad.”
“When I do get a chance, I will. Till then, I shall eye whatever is available.”
“Stop eyeing already! Come closer, I need some warmth.”
“We don’t have any bonfire around. How will you get any?”
“What about the fire in your loins?” Clementine made her voice sexy. “It is only for you and your youth that I have taken so much care of myself. Come warm me with your hands.”
Here’s introducing the world of Hindi soft-vein erotica labeled ‘Crime and True-Stories’, a low GSM world filled with throbbing desires, lust-ridden criminals and victims of both sexes, inevitable murders and a police-force that always saves the day. Truth overthrows deception and justice necessarily prevails. Quite paradoxically, in spite of the kinks, the stories always have a happy ending. I speak for the larger picture.
Every regular at public transport hubs like bus depots and railway stations is familiar with the ‘Wheeler’ and the eclectic collection of magazines it offers. More often than not, right between a notable strategist’s latest political exploits and a cinematic Barbie’s clarification of her relationship status lays a scantily clad voluptuous body with kohl-lined come-hither look on her face and lips that ooze red. The title screams promiscuity and its gruesome repercussions along with several other stories that are supposedly, if one is to be faithful to the magazine name, ‘sweet’ or ‘romantic’ or ‘wonderful’. Consumers of such magazines like ‘Manohar Kahaniyaan’, ‘Madhur Kathayein’, ‘Anokhi Romantic Adaayeen’ amongst others are “not looking for literature,” according to the magazine proprietors, “but for something that will pass their journey time as well as entertain.” And before you misconceive its intentions, allow me to familiarize you with the jargon: these magazines don’t sell sex and violence but “glamour” and “reality”.
When I picked up the monthly editions of major crime magazines, one of the similarities that they shared was their head-offices were all based in Delhi. Most of them are based on the city’s fringe areas like Badarpur, Mukherjee Nagar, New Rohtak Road amongst others. Success of one magazine inspires imitations and plagiarism. You have a ‘Madhur Gathayeen’ for every ‘Madhur Kathayein’; ‘SatyaKathayein Prahari’ for every ‘SatyaKathayein’ and the like. A number of such imitations blatantly copy stories from the frontrunners while their models are sourced from Google Images.
Contacting the magazine proprietors is a major problem as they act elusive. Persistence helped and one mellow afternoon after a long ride in the Delhi metro I stood outside Mohan Estate station, asking for directions to the office to two gentlemen dressed in the standard corporate attire sharing a cigarette.
I read out the address from my notepad.
“I can’t be sure,” the taller one says. “Which office do you want to go to?”
“Manohar Kahaniyaan,” I reply.
“What?” It might have stemmed from disbelief but I choose to think of it as an accidental incoherence in my speech.
“Manohar Kahaniyaan. A magazine,” I repeat.
The man sniggers. “No idea.”
A rickshaw is more helpful and after a bumpy ride along a kachcha road, I am staring at a 4 storied IT office without any signboard on the exterior. A few men in their early twenties are playing cricket right in the middle of the street. The watchman inquires about my purpose of visit and leads me into an otherwise deserted ground floor except for the foundation beams. The office is a transparent enclosure that looks more like a trailer park.
Manohar Kahaniyaan is to crime magazines what Mayapuri is to cinema gossip. Prominent in the Hindi-speaking belt in India, both have seen pinnacles in their growth chart before succumbing to increasing competition. Manohar Kahaniyaan started out in 1944 in the district of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh as a content-specific crime monthly without any attempts at sensation or glamour. Due to an internal conflict between the managing committee, the magazine abruptly stopped publication in 2000 and was defunct till 2003 until Delhi Press, a media house, bailed it out. While it has lost out on a significant chunk of readers today, a loyal base continues. Unlike the magazines that fall in its genre, the editorial policy dictates the focus to be less on dramatization and sleaze and more on the events. Illustrations are few and so is the skin-show. When it makes its appearance though, it does provoke. The magazine has a sister publication ‘Mahanagar Kahaniyaan’, another crime monthly without dollops of saleable glamour.
The editor of the magazine, Ashok Mitra is out of the country. The work continues to flourish in the wake of the monthly deadline, the staff busy on their call-centre like work stations. The dustbin brims with crushed tea-cups. I am introduced to the staff members by Jiten Tiwari, a balding man with a deep, authoritative voice. He works as a legal advisor for the magazine and had earlier promised to “help with whatever you want. Don’t worry, theek hai?” I greet Virendar Singh and Pushkar Pushp, both assistant sub-editors; Kapoor Chand, a new recruit but already the chief sub-editor. The duo of designers are youngest of the lot amongst the all-male staff.
Pushkar Pushp is the oldest of the staff, working since the magazine shifted its base from Allahabad to Delhi in 1983. In his fifties and with an age-wise waist, he strikes you as a man who of words is bare minimum though not averse to your questions. I ask him what the basis of a story selection is.
“People should be able to identify with the story,” he tells me. “It should convince them that it can happen even in their vicinity.”
It is the standard mantra followed by every magazine; Manohar Kahaniyaan markedly displaying the city name right on the first page of every story. For Manohar Kahaniyaan, it is a new development formulated by the editor along with a lot of other changes introduced since 2-3 years like the sleazy illustrations and modelling.
“Manohar Kahaniyaan was a family magazine earlier. Now even we can’t carry it home,” says Virendar Singh, another veteran. “In fact, we have observed that introducing the imagery has seen a dip in circulation.”
“So why do it?”
“These are the orders from the editor. Market surveys are done to gauge what readers want. We can’t do anything about it,” he says.
The areas where circulation hasn’t dwindled for these magazines are police stations and military areas. The reports are sourced from freelancers across country, the ones who send their stories along with the charge-sheet of criminals. The information, pictures and version of how events transpire are obtained from the police thus making the magazines effectively their mouthpiece. While flicking through it, one can’t help but notice several khaki mugshots or those posing with the criminals from across the country.
“We get our stories from them and they love seeing themselves in print. So they too send their pictures along with those of victims and criminals,” says chief sub-editor Kapoor speaking of their symbiotic relationship. It’s the same with the writers. They send the stories not out of journalistic fervour but because of the fascination of seeing their name in print. The remuneration is `1000- `1500 per story.
As is with every one of these crime magazines, the pictures of the victims are published without approval from the family. Even the story is verified, as Singh puts it, “through experience”. While there are times when defamation suits are filed against the magazines, the magazine maintains that the responsibility of the story lies solely on the author.
“On a different note, what’s the job satisfaction like?” I ask.
It is at this time that the otherwise genial and fluidly articulate Kapoor Chand lets out a discomfited smile. I suspect I have touched a sensitive nerve. Moments tick by and his sheepish smile widens. I wait for him to answer.
“Samjha karo (Try to understand),” he says eventually.
It’s almost their closing time and I take everyone’s leave as they head back to their families. Tiwari asks me to stay back for a cup of tea. I tell him about the sniggers earlier in the day.
He laughs. “Chori jab hoti hai, sabse jyada shor chor hi machata hai (When there is a burglary, it’s the thief who makes the maximum noise).”
Madhur Kathayein is what the stereotypes of these magazines are adhere to. Since its launch in 1983, it has gone ahead to be the biggest magazine of the genre, a claim contested by Manohar Kahaniyaan. The cover page is where skin dominates and insides are filled with provocative, “dramatic” prose with a generous amount of glamour. One of the prominent features is ‘Photo-fiction’ – the magazine’s proud USP. The section involves telling a story through images and speech bubbles. More often than not, there is a love-making scene, making it one of the most sought after magazines in the genre.
In a bustling commercial complex in Mukherjee Nagar, amongst stationary shops and coaching classes, lies the office of Nai Sadi Prakashan, the publishers of Madhur Kathayein. The walls of the staircase are tiled in square-shaped tiles with portraits of various deities – from Hindu Lord Shiva to Mother Mary between them. I walk to their office on the third floor and ask the receptionist, a man in his mid-twenties, for the editor or the manager. The manager isn’t available and I am directed to Shailabh Rawat, the editor of all the three crime magazines, including the English version of Madhur Kathayein titled ‘Crime and Weekly’. The office of Madhur Kathayein, unlike Manohar Kahaniyaan, also has a few female staff members including reporters. Entering through swinging saloon doors, I find his cubicle to be a clutter of loose sheets peeping out of multiple folders stacked unevenly, previous editions of magazines and a desk of drawers.
Rawat is a fifty six year old man dressed in a cream coloured jacket over his black shirt. His own portrait looks at me from a side of the cardboard cubicle where it pinned on. If it is anything to go by, the man has a penchant for flaunting metal-strap watches. There isn’t much age-difference between the two. Having worked with the magazine since 1986, he has been one of the integral reasons that the magazine has seen the current subscription glory, I am told by the man himself.
Rawat is the second oldest amongst three brothers and two sisters in his family. He hails from Almorah district of Uttarakhand and post-graduated in Hindi and History. After getting over his dream of being a Hindi professor, he came to Delhi in 1984 to pursue Indian Administrative Services. But it was the day he saw the advertisement of Sarita, a Delhi-based Hindi magazine, needing a sub-editor that he realized his calling.
In 1992, Rawat decided to embark on a nationwide tour to research on the major prostitution dens. He covered various cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Agra and Varanasi and published a slew of articles in the magazine in addition to a book, ‘Bharat ke Pramukh Deh Bazaar aur Dastoor’.
“It was a very risky job. I had to pose as a customer and get information without sounding suspicious. However, it was then that we saw a spike in subscription and I realized that it was worth it,” he says.
In the course of his travels, he stumbled on to many facts that were at once memorable and disturbing.
“The sex-workers are mostly bought off their families for a price. They are to it pay off if at all they want to be free,” he says. “However, when a sex-worker is nearing the complete payment of the debt, the gharwali, the owner, gets the police to raid her den. The workers are jailed and it is then that the same gharwalisteps up, paying the bail, plunging the workers in a fresh debt. It’s a common practice.”
Rawat rues the fact that there was little recognition from the mainstream media for his journalism. “People underestimate such magazines. If I was working in a newspaper instead, I would have been famous.”
The magazine subscription stands at a little more than a lakh today. The readership, though, is a lot more. In hamlets of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, copies of the magazine are often rented out at Rs 5 and find about 20-25 readers per issue. One of the prime attractions that the readers look for is Rawat’s pet section of photo-fiction. He asks me for the copies of other magazines I have which “copied our style seeing how popular it is,” and proceeds to point out flaws in their stories.
“These are five pictures on the same page with a little change in camera angles. There isn’t enough light, the models are expressionless,” he launches his tirade before settling on to the merits of Madhur Kathayein. “We spend over `25000 per shoot just to ensure the quality. And this is why our photo-fiction has been recognized even by the foreign press.”
Excerpts from photo-fiction selected for Photoquai 2011, the annual photography exhibition of Musee Du Quai Branly, a museum in France
Rawat digs through the archives and emerges with a copy of the journal of a Paris-based museum Musée Du Quai Branly. He flips through pages and we are in the ‘Pulp’ section of the journal. I exclaim as I recognize the Hindi photo-fiction with French and English subtitles. Then he slips at me a November 2011 copy of the magazine where there is a 10 page spread on Rawat’s trip to Paris for the photo-exhibition. The article, almost as an answer to my awe, read: “The main reason behind this disbelief is that we Indians never appreciate and evaluate the depth of our art, and capabilities etc.”
The journal of the exhibition ‘Photoquai 2011’ had a celebratory take on the section. “Taking inspiration from news items, Rawat uses stories to illustrate social issues: sex, alcohol and money predominate, with regular doses of adultery, lies, blackmail, revenge, humiliation, prostitution and murder. Taking care not to overstep the mark, Photo-fictions has never had the slightest problem with the censors. The only episode to ever have caused any controversy was one dealing with a male homosexual relationship, in 1994.”
Madhur Kahaniyaan follows the similar pattern of simmering conflict to physical intimacy to resolution by elimination to police heroics. It is the explicit nature of the description and the content that lends it the sensation it exudes. In addition, there are often pictures of mutilated corpses published related to the stories.
“Do you think exposure to so much violence with innovative ways to commit it feeds the tendency?” I ask.
“Every story ends with the criminals being nabbed or killed. That’s a deterrent,” he replies.
“But the photo-fiction is quite gruesome,” I insist. “There are ones with criminals conning and successfully getting away, even getting some action while at it.”
“Such stories promote awareness as to what are the ways crime can be committed. This helps people secure themselves,” he replies, pokerfaced. As I exit the cabin, I am carrying with me Rawat’s book, scanned copies of Photoquai 2011 journal and a few copies of crime magazines, all given to me without charging a single penny. “Rakh lo,” is all I am told. Stiff manner notwithstanding, it is the amiability that leaves an impression.
(Top) An image from a 'Sex Sarvekshan (survey) 2010' conducted by India Today in 2010; (above) the editions of Outlook and India Today magazines that the owner of Madhur Kahaniyaan points out while lashing out against English magazines and their prudish take on selling sex.
The managing director-owner of ‘Madhur Kathayein’, sister publication ‘Mahanagar Kahaniyaan’ and ‘Crime and Detective’ is Satish Verma, a short, stubby man with a French beard and a tobacco-stained voice. It is with a warm smile that he welcomes me into his air-conditioned cabin. In his background lies a shelf with mementos from several book-fairs across India.
Publishing runs in Verma’s blood. He started as an in-charge of the film-magazine Chitralekha in 1984 before launching Madhur Kathayein in 1986. “Earlier, Madhur wasn’t so glamorous,” he tells me. “But when we launched our second crime magazine Mahanagar, it instantly became a bestseller. Madhur and Mahanagar started competing amongst themselves. So we decided to spruce up Madhur, give it a unique identity.”
It is the same unique identity that fetched it subscription spikes though not without its share of eyebrows and frowns. Verma lashes out at such prudence, especially that by the English magazines. “Sex sells. English magazines want to sell sex too and they do so in the name of surveys. You might pass it off as academic but why do you need to have explicit imagery with it? Some of it is even more explosive than our magazines.” He slips towards me the copies of Outlook and India Today with their surveys. With the imagery that accompanied them, he did make a persuasive case.
Compared to others, Verma is far more open as far as the chief selling proposition of his magazine is concerned. Carefully worded, he attributes his sales to the lack of permeation of internet to grassroots. “We know our limits,” he says. “If we would have endorsed pornography, we would have made such magazines and sold like hot cakes.”
One of the most alluring prospects I had in mind over the course of interviews was getting a dekko at the modelling industry, an integral and a thriving aspect of the crime magazines. Convention is that the photographers are responsible for selection of models. One has to wade through a lot of suspicion and hesitance from the editorial team in order to get to the photographers themselves, let alone the models. I had to repeatedly assure him about my academic intentions before Junaid Khan, sub-editor in Manohar Kahaniyaan, caved in.
The man of the moment is Omar Sharif, a photographer working for Manohar Kahaniyaan and other magazines under the patronage of Delhi Press. Accompanying him is Sachin Kadam, a make-up artist, who started out four years ago, around the same time as Sharif did. It is early in the evening when I go to the Delhi Press office in Jhandewalan. The photography department is right opposite the studio, wherein work was at the nascent stage for a magazine photo-shoot. I am showed the interiors of the studio where I recognize some props and backgrounds used in the illustrations.
“A shoot for a story takes almost an entire day,” Sharif tells me as we go back to his office, desks lining the walls of the small room with a computer adjoining the door. “We are told what the story is about, given some specifications about the setting and models required. Then we click according to our own sensibilities,” he tells me. There is a certain element of cautiousness and political correctness I notice in his straight-faced manner. Kadam, on the other hand, is on a freer rein. He shows me a few of the photo-shoots wherein an entire story is captured scene by scene. I ask about the profile of models.
“Most of the models we get are from small towns of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam. They come to Delhi without anyone to support or guide them and end up thinking working for such magazines is all modelling is about,” says Sharif.
The assignments are given by ‘model coordinators’. Anyone can fall into the category – from working professionals to ex-models with a strong network. The standard remuneration for models is around `3000. However, budding models are often exploited by the coordinators who cheat them of their money, hoarding more than their usual 35%.
There aren’t many restrictions to the models needed though the photographers frequently are in search for fresh faces. “Short, dusky, small-eyed… anything can be fixed with make-up and the right costumes,” Kadam tells me. “We don’t have a fixed type.” That the female models have to be voluptuous goes unsaid.
Having worked for over a year, Kadam and Sharif accustomed to the routine, though yet to be comfortable with it. “In a middle class family like mine, the first thing that we are told is to protect a woman’s izzat,” says Sharif. “These shoots conflict with our own set of ideals. But kya karein, it is that time in the industry when nothing sells without glamour.”
A woman, presumably an assistant of a model, comes in the office and Sharif excuses himself to make arrangements for the shoot. I go through some other albums that Kadam shows me. “I recognize him,” I exclaim looking at one of the male models, a slim youth with a long face and greasy hair. “Isn’t he the one who has worked for Madhur Kathayein?”
“Yes,” Kadam grins. “He is a friend. It was through me that he started modelling for crime magazines.”
And this is how I find myself at twenty six year old Arun Sharma’s Kudos Dance Academy (pronounced as “Kidos”). His visiting card reads ‘Arun Kashyap’, which he explains, “…because Kashyap sounds attractive.” The academy is in the basement of a row of closely stacked houses in a narrow, dingy lane opposite Shastri Nagar metro station. A young man with a wheatish complexion, his long, sharp nose stands out as much as his flashy stripes-print tee inside his navy-blue jacket. Arun is an affable motormouth, who in spite of knowing about the scope of my assignment, can’t seem to stop raving about his academy to the point that he seems reluctant to talk about modelling in crime magazines. He tells me about his elder brother Guru Sharma who has appeared on the reality show ‘Dance India Dance’ and now “tours every place in foreign”.
Arun Sharma, a model for crime magazines, poses with his trophies at his dance academy
We enter his office, a small space consisting of a desk propped on which sits his modelling portfolio. Narrow seats line the blue wall, a drawing of sun and mountains taped on one of them. “This was made by a student,” he tells me, spotting me smiling at it. “She came up to me and said she made it for me. I found it very sweet and stuck it on the wall.”
The second of his four brothers, Arun has been modelling for print publications more than eight years. He started out working for features of the newspaper Amar Ujala. He flips through his folder showing me the neatly kept cut-outs of his and his brother’s exploits. It wasn’t a difficult journey for him working for local publications with offers streaming in on a regular basis. It was getting into the big league that was an arduous task, he says, recalling his days when he worked as an extra in the Hindi movie Bewafaa.
“Har ek ke andar ek hero ghusa hota hai(every person has a hero in him),” he confesses earnestly. It is probably his time of reckoning now that the kids in his colony have started calling him a ‘hero’ every time they spot him. After having worked for several years in the newspapers, Arun happened to meet Sachin Kadam at a party. Kadam offered him a chance at modelling for a crime magazine. Not very keen at the onset, Arun shared his contact number anyway.
It was the time when his close female friend got a chance to model for a crime magazine that it happened to him. “She said to me, ‘Arun, I am not comfortable getting intimate with anyone else for a shoot.’ It is common knowledge that male models exploit female ones. I had to go along.” He has been featured in a number of stories in both Madhur Kathayein and Manohar Kahaniyaan’s ever since.
Was the first time awkward? “For me, a girl looks the best when she isn’t exposing herself. Friend or not, whenever I go for such shoots, I talk to the girls, I joke and make every effort to make them feel comfortable,” he says.
Getting into modelling has not been without its share of dark times. “In this industry, it is all about networking, using others to climb to the top. Sex and networking is synonymous,” he says. “I have had my heart broken by the same friend because I didn’t know this earlier. She said to me, ‘Arun, you are a very simple guy. How could you not figure out I used you?’”
Once they work for crime magazines, the female models become a ‘type’. Several have to take off to other cities like Mumbai where models are in demand, to start afresh. “If you study the magazines closely, you will notice that there are hardly young male models like me. They all think working for such corrupted magazines will ruin your career. But when they age, they grab whatever they get and end up working here.” The coordinators themselves are not without their preconceived mindset about models. “They think that the male models are in only for enjoyment. I have been to shoots where I have been paid only Rs 700 and the female model was paid Rs 5000.”
I express my interest in clicking Arun in his element. “I don’t photograph well,” sheepishly grins the model with an experience of eight years in his kitty.
In spite of having dabbled in the crime modelling world for a number of months, Arun hasn’t dared to reveal it to his parents. “Maar khaani hai kya (Do you want me to get beaten up?)” he laughs. His brother and his set of friends know about his activities and they don’t mind. They know what Arun is trying to emulate – the pattern of models becoming actors. On the road to fame, if one is to work for such magazines, so be it. It’s always the experience that matters.
“Like take today for example,” he says as he comes to escort you back to the metro station. “Most of the models would have said no to you asking them about their profession. Not me. For me, it was an experience.”
“Was this your first interview?” I smile.
“Yes. Achcha ab batao, of all the interviews you have taken, which one did you like the best?”
Vanity is the foundation of the modelling world. Indulgence is the medium through which pleasant vibes and professional relationships are built. I scratch his back like he wants me to. The modest smile is priceless.
Fresh out of the media bakery, I am told that I will have to make a portfolio and indulge in frills like a cover letter to go with it. These, I understand, will help me land a job. A CV is reasonable but why the prospective employer would be taken with gratuitous words like ‘ambitious’, ‘dedicated’ and ‘team player’ on a piece of word document pompously called ‘Cover Letter’ when any average brain can mint these at the breakneck speeds you get when the carrot of a pay-cheque is dangled in front of his eyes, that sincere query is left unaddressed.
Sir, I do not wantthis job. I am not the most stable employee if that is what you are looking at. I have plenty of weaknesses and nosir, ‘working too hard’ isn’t one of them. ‘Freelance’ as my choice would have indicated the same. What I want is to study further – literature, if you must know. I am passionate about the language and, if you excuse my vocabulary, anal about perfecting the same. Sadly, capitalism and the inflation of the day doesn’t intend to let me do so. If the job description floated on naukri.com is to be believed, this is just the right kind I am looking for so that I can save up money while juggling my career interests.
Before giving in to the grind of money-lust, I had my résumé tediously put together. After the impulsive test I gave (before which you had never warned about the necessity of a cover letter, let me point out), I was told I’d need the cover letter as well. So I looked up the concept of one and found it atrociously passé, conventional yet self-righteous. Hence, this. You may skip the ‘Cover’ part.
I don’t aim at shock value; I only seek money without bending to the plastic norms demanded by Job-Hunter’s Diplomacy. Frankly, personal merits notwithstanding, I can’t sell myself on that basis. But if I am rejected on the basis of the audacity of this cover letter, I guess I will have to write a new one, complete with flowers and fragrance. O Deity, I call upon thee to save me from the horror.
Header, Introduction, Content and Closing done, the templates now tell me to sign off with ‘Yours very truly’. I guess I might as well.
And finally yours truly got a job, without any contribution of the Cover Letter. Being a reporter is fun, especially when you have more people than one believe that you are worth a 5 digit pay-cheque. The writing is seldom fulfilling, what with the inverted pyramid and Gonzo meted out the step-motherly treatment. However, every journalist has bursts of self-indulgence. That is how columns that look from the reporters' rather than the report's lens are born. You might be familiar with weekly 'City Lights' feature from The Times of India. Likewise, my newspaper The Free Press Journal has a section called 'Bayside Banters'.
Here are some of my contributions to the same.
Digital Devotion
Plaster of Paris and clay based idols are passé, the ultimate form of eco friendly Ganapati is Flash based. With several websites floating the computer software generated online worship convenience, your theism is now just a mouse-click way. You have an assortment of choices- from flowers to incense to the diya, all 2D offerings now come synced with the divine melody of cymbals and the temple gongs. You can also sing along to the aarti recordings and offer the e-prasad. Some websites have gone overdrive with their enthusiasm. Now you can offer a coconut to Balaji, Ayyapan, Rama and Shiva among others, à la carte. If this trend catches on, think of all the roads without traffic snarls, of all the lakes without post-visarjan muck, of all the areas without the din of brass bands and shrill police whistles. Think of all the peace and harmony. After all, isn't that what religion is all about achieving?
Bad Spell
Any food snob or Masterchef aspirant would rather dunk their heads in a bland bowl of Gazpacho soup than have a go at local culinary delights as 'Gobi Manchurian' or 'American Chopsey', that have nothing to do with authentic platters. In a similar vein, so would Anglophiles from a range of indigenous usages and terms. Top on their list would figure 'prepone'. The second spot will be jointly shared by Facebook inventions: 'unfriend' and 'invite'. So bothersome is the usage of the latter that a domain has been invested into by the URL isinviteanoun.com. The entire website has only ware on display: 'Nope'.
Some of the other notorious usages include 'I'm making a viral video', which is like saying 'I'm making a blockbuster movie'. What takes the cake, however, is, 'flash mob'. After the delirious response to the one held at CST, everyone wants to have their own. There have been a slew of news articles, fed by PR machines, of course, that talk about flash mob being organized at several la-la-lands. If the irony didn't sink in yet, perhaps it's time you gift yourself a dictionary while we dial a Grammar Nazi for you.
Rent a Cause*
Come the month of September and you see a sudden spurt of social campaigns by enterprising media students seeking to "make a change". With sincerity dripping from their faces, they appear absolutely committed to their cause and confidently speak into the cameras, giving interviews to the news-hungry media. With initiatives pertaining to clean-up drives, discrimination towards the under-privileged, fighting stigma and creating awareness, these college-going youngsters go out on the field, hold sessions at various public places and rope in celebrities.
Somehow, inadvertently, these campaigns fizzle out in a month or two. Where have these students gone? What have they achieved in barely a month or two? The answer - these campaigns are launched as a part of a college assignment and once the marks are received, the classroom-presentations are done, the 15 minutes of fame achieved, the insignificant questions like 'What next?' cease to be relevant for them. Students get busy in another assignment. Media moves on to some other similar campaign by a fresh group of youngsters. The consumer has fresh noise to look forward. Everybody wins, except, perhaps, the cause of the campaign. But then, with the decreasing attention span, does anybody notice that?
LoveCats
As Smart Alec once said, 'If internet was a nation, cat would be its national animal'. From its meme being introduced on the internet imageboard website 4chan, the cats sure have come a long way. Cat images and videos have been making users go LOL since 2006. With this overwhelming praise in place, it was but obvious that a fur-specific celebration be in the offing. And they got its long awaited due as feline-fanatics in Minnesota in the US of A finally decided to hold an Internet Cat Video Festival. A first in the potentially long line of many film festivals was held on August 30th. Quite unsurprisingly, about 7000 of entries were submitted of which 78 were shortlisted and screened.
With lakhs of internet users and cat-owners in the city, all that remains to be seen is when the Indian version of the Puss in Shoot takes place. On a related note, celebrity cat Crookshanks, responding to the festivities said, "Now I too can haz film festival." . * I have been guilty of the same. The rant is a form of self-flagellation.
A collection of short stories from writers belonging to Mumbai Short Story Writers Group.
M.R.P. Rs. 140.
In one of his interviews, the bestselling Indian author Chetan Bhagat was grilled about the quality of his works. He had one self-satisfied argument he clung on to, ‘I have made people read.’ His point – if a person who is not well-educated picks up a Bhagat book and finishes it, he develops confidence that unarguably accompanies reading.
Cut to present: In hand we have 18 stories by 10 authors, most of them debutants, most of them from Mumbai, engaged in a variety of professions – medicine to advertising to engineering. One passion binds them together – expression through fiction. One community they are all a part of – Mumbai Short Story Writers Group.
An indie publication, The Labyrinth has a lot riding on it, both in terms of the authors’ tryst with their audience and assessing the emerging writing from the metropolis, if one is allowed the said license.
By and large, The Labyrinth is an eclectic anthology of stories from genres psychological thrillers, horror, drama, historical fiction et al. We have young adults attempting jump-cuts, switching dizzily between perspectives, trying to bring out tragedy, insecurities and goosebumps. The aspiration is as laudable as the effort. Having said that, let’s sift through the woods.
Irony is a vile seductress that hath lured many a mortal. Tricky to be tamed and even more difficult to be harnessed, it fools with its innocuousness and ends up backstabbing if execution has as much as one hiccup. The victims of this much-dreaded literary device include The Martyr, Farming on Facebook and Candies. One deals with the child-soldiers in American occupation of Afghanistan, the next speaks of Farmville addicts realizing the plight of actual farmers and the third is an account of a naïve youth deceived by two damsels. In essence, these tales are tragic-ironic. What fails them is the pale writing that makes them superficial, unappetizing encounters.
It’s the same problem that plagues most of the stories. Though largely urbane and topical, which is just a way of saying one detects a prominent baritone of slang sourced from the US of A in several stories, they couldn’t have me engrossed, anticipate or empathize. Falling under this category are Crushing Impacts, and three of Rishabh Chaturvedi’s works – the most prolific one of the lot – Bagheera Log Huts, Travel through the Night and The Night of the Wokambee. In here, the conversations are bathed in monochrome and while Chaturvedi attempts at ambience, the bunch of overriding clichés backfire. There are only so much of haunted fields, monkey-men and jungle tribe stereotypes that one can take.
The cover story, Chaturvedi’s The Labyrinth, and The Day of Battle are fictionalized accounts of the slaying of the Minotaur and the Arjun-Karna battle. The latter seems to be an overwhelmed writer offering obeisance complete with the pompous, translated from Sanskrit “O Krishna, the wisest of all!” and “O Arjuna, the most accomplished!”exchanges, surrendering to the merit of the epic to work for it. The cover story, on the other hand, is a heartening rendition marred by the climax, recited with enthusiasm of a Doordarshan newsreader. These works seem to be narrative encyclopedia entries bereft of texture and cinematography, the scope for which is immense in both the cases.
The saving grace of this novel is Aditi Chincholi’s Puppet Show and Sym – World. Though overlapping in the concept of the authenticity of reality, they deftly arouse the plight of the protagonists. ‘Mortified’ triumphs with its refreshing writing before being dismayed by an all-too-insipid anti-climax. Its exact contrast is Mists of Time, which, in spite of the dull take about a spinster mistress and a wronged son, comforts in the climax out of a motif and a cliché that brings a smile.
The Labyrinth is a book that will last you for the length of the journey. It is a collection of stories that one hears while huddled around a campfire, roasting s’mores, in the midst of crickets out to make their presence felt. I craved a distinct voice in the entire collection that might have me hunting for it on bookshelves in the future. But the glimpses were so fleeting, I wondered if it was a mirage.
Watching Ramsey brothers’ works won’t give you a claim at the horror genre. Similarly, Mr Bhagat, you might have made people read but it isn’t literature. But why intellectualize ‘timepass’, you say? Perhaps because aspirations and output are directly proportional to quality you are exposed to. (Also published in The Free Press Journal on October 21, 2012)
They appear as objects of titillation, if not the mother of sacrifices. When the director wants to be adventurous, they are also able to stride deep in muck and together push an ambulance out of mud while the males just gaze at them gratefully. But no, it’s not women’s physical strength and the innate social responsibility of helping which is being projected. It’s that pristine washing powder which Rekha, Jaya and Sushma turn to, once they are done releasing the ambulance from the dirty, dirty muck.
The role of women in advertising is a no-brainer. Oomph and sex sells as does the mother, sister and daughter image that reeks of goodness and sacrifice in the Indian advertising. Now, the Indian advertising fraternity has decided that this needs to change. And yet, change is not going to be easy. Barring the most blatant, each advertisement can be interpreted differently. Good mother or meek mother? Understanding wife or victimised wife? Perceptions differ. What may be sauce for goose need not be sauce for gander in Indian advertisements.
But then, advertisers are no activists. It’s the entertainment quotient that makes one race the water that has just been unleashed down the dam only to recover a soda bottle. And if deodorants were all love potions one needed, who would go to all the quacks promising Romeos the girl of their dreams in every local train poster?
“Say I decide to stick to all the sensibilities. Then I’ll have feminists asking for ‘better representation’, anti-nicotine lobby asking for no cigarettes, traffic police for helmets, no stunts due to ‘impressionable minds’, no use of children due to child labour regulations, I won’t be able to show animals on grounds of cruelty, environmentalists trying to push their cause… There will be so many can’t-dos that you will end up stifling all imagination,” says K V Sridhar, creative director from the agency Leo Burnett. “Clients don’t set out with an agenda of making an ad offensive. It is people who sometimes view things with a magnifying glass,” he adds.
Therefore, there are many takes on each advertisement made. Take this advertisement for example.
A regular urban family – a working husband, a loving wife who makes it a point to keep him company for dinner every night, and a small kid in the background. That day, the couple is at the dining table when the wife confesses that earlier in the day, she accidentally broke his trophy.
The husband freezes. “What do you mean you broke it?” he asks in disbelief. It was one of the trophies from his school-days. Clearly, he attaches a lot of nostalgic value to it. “Do I ever touch your stuff?” he demands. He can’t stand the sight of his wife any more, one whose pulao he was singing praises of only moments ago, and storms out.
We are in the middle of an advertisement of a packaged milk brand. Called ‘Mother Dairy’, the accused, the mother, walks over to the real culprit – her son. He has been witnessing the altercation from his hiding spot. She quietly instructs him not to play cricket in the house any more. “Our mothers go to such lengths for us,” says the voiceover as the santoor trills in the background, “let’s drink milk and stay healthy, so that we too can take care of them one day.”
What appeared innocent at the first sight raised a hue and cry at a recent gender sensitisation seminar held in Mumbai by the India chapter of the International Advertising Association. Criticisms were hurled back and forth and suddenly, the reliable mother-son equation was also a potential case of domestic violence. “Subordination of women,” said one, “reinforcing stereotypes,” said another. A few minutes later, the advertisement was sexist, promoted patriarchy and had a takeaway that women need looking after, that you can do your bit one glass at a time.
One of the well-known anecdotes by advertising graduates talks about a professor who walked into class on the first day of the semester and announced, “Today on, we are going to teach you how to lie with confidence.” The account might be taking it a bit too far but doesn’t discount the fact that advertisers morph reality by liberal use of the creative license. But when they take recourse to being cute or glamorising sociopaths, they raise hackles.
Take the deodorant advertisements and their singular message – the way to a woman’s heart is through your armpit. While women have always been shown turning into nymphomaniacs at a mere whiff, a recent advertisement by the deodorant brand ‘Zatak’ pushed it too far, thinks Sangeetha N, executive creative director in the advertising agency R K Swamy. “The bride waiting for her husband in her bedroom starts undressing herself in front of the guy next door when she smells his scent. It sends a clear message that women are available,” she says.
For some, exaggeration isn’t as much as a problem as showing regressive hierarchy of sexes. Charged guilty under this section is a recent campaign ‘Soldiers for Women’ by the men’s grooming brand Gillette. The copy reads ‘When you respect women, you respect your nation’, and the first step to it is probably is giving up your stubble, since none of the models seem to have any.
“The advertisement is all about patriarchy. Safety is my basic right. Why do I need protectors and defenders and ‘soldiers’, who come with the connotation of violence?” asks Geeta Rao, creative director of Geeta’s List agency.
At the end of the day, we are a nation with a popular perception that the only way to make oneself count is by getting at least one media product banned every year, be it a novel, film, cartoon, website, public intellectual or a CPI(M) sympathizer. So what is the way out when my portrayal of a homemaker is your version of a housewife?
“What needs to be done is going beyond the conventional wisdom. In fairness cream ads, a fair guy gets all the girls but a fair girl only gets a husband. It’s the nuances that make the difference. How about we have a morning cereal pack being opened by a man, for a change? Let’s have less stereotypes and more entertainment,” says Rao.
Why I did not put this up sooner? Possibly because in these days, good ol' Facebook is the only place you run to show off.
I had long since ceased to be a blogger, one you would normally expect to update regularly, go on to networking sprees, share symbiotic 'Follower' relationships and the like. These days, I only post the discourse that comes out as a part of my quest to earn a living. But I have had my share of those activities.
So it only feels appropriate to acknowledge - and bemoan the loss of - the leisure time I had back in the days of yore; the days that would go on to contribute to being an integral part of what I am today - a published writer. A twice published writer. Doesn't sound half-bad, does it? It ain't.
The story begins in the year when Blackberry was about to be the most annoying gadget to flaunt. I lay in college studying mass media. One day, the notice board saw a poster that read that an NGO working for the sex workers' cause had floated a contest for three prominent colleges, including mine. You go to their office, it went on to say, and they will arrange a meeting with a sex worker. Based on her life (or not, as long as it has the same theme), you write a fictional story (or not. The good people were quite lax). The best few will be rolled out to the bookstores by the publishing house Jaico.
The sex worker I interacted with had quite a tale to tell. However, it wasn't anything that wouldn't be a caricature. It was then that 'Riya' - one of the stories I had earlier abandoned - came back to me. I took an excerpt from the same and tweaked it. 'Voila!' happened and a few months later, I found myself in newspapers, quoted as one of the authors in the book.
Quite an experience, it was. From the unveiling at a five star, launch at a Crossword bookstore by Boman Irani et al. Also, they say the book was quite a seller. Not that anybody came to me asking if the movie rights were still available, but I had the happies.
If you feel particularly loaded in the pockets, you might just want to give it a shot. A couple of stories are worth a read. Buy it here.
The next year, while dawdling through the bylanes of innernet, I came across a contest floated by a leading publisher Penguin. You write a love story, said it, and we publish it. Simple enough, nay? But who's to be the decider? Sir Ravinder Singh, the author of two mushies on the lines of Segal's Love Story duology, though nowhere as good.
I always have and still scoff at Indian chick-lit or 'urban reads', as they call it. But just out of curiousity, I decided to enter with a story that is one of my guiltiest pleasures. Turns out, it was good enough to be read by those who come to a literary fest to gush about how cute Chetan Bhagat looks in person.
How was the experience, you ask? Meh. The book was bound to be a hit because of the, let's face it, brand name of Singh and its out-and-out mass appeal. To Penguin's credit, perhaps, it seemed like they had decided it was only fitting that they keep its coffers in the back-alley running so that they could fund one more Shobha De (who, incidentally, was one of the judges of the previous book). The authors got nothing but for their name engraved in the pulp-gallery. Grapevine is that the book launch was tepid and only one of the 20+ authors showed up. But I may be wrong.
The stories aren't half bad, considering how the judge's works read. If you must, since it's cheap, buy it here.
TAILPIECE:
Mistake me not, I do not wish to come across as an ungrateful prat. I have seen De at the launch of one of her ventures and she is not a bad speaker. Singh, I am sure, has his own reasons.
I am a non-achiever considering the weight of both these voices today. I guess one of the reasons why the delay in this post is because being judged by such personalities doesn't do much to your self-worth. So while some of my co-authors went ballistic, I never felt the need to boast myself hoarse. But I had to have my catharsis. Besides, what if my other works turn out to be a train wreck and these be the only two achievements I ever have? I had to let out the boggarts and braggarts, no?
Hey, on the brighter side, at least my LinkedIn profile looks good.
The day Balasaheb Thackeray died, you could reach out and touch the electric tension in the newsroom. There were rumours as to how the man had died a few days earlier than Saturday. The death, they said, was hushed up in order to prevent the town from coming to a standstill.
What was the situation like? It wasn't a mass-grief that would have engulfed the city, mind you. Opera House didn't down shutters at 4 pm because Ambaniben's shopping spree had already helped sell their quota of diamonds for the weekend. It was terror that gripped all, that sent exodus to their living rooms cowering under the light of their TV screen, to us in the newsroom sharing a single pack of bhelpuri procured from that only hawker at Churchgate station brave enough to go about his daily business, in spite of the possibility of being at the receiving ends of the Sainiks' fists. "Grieve, motherfucker, grieve."
It was ridiculous. Being an English daily, our coverage was supposed to capture the collective hysteria than make a martyr out of the man. At the same time, one wasn't supposed to be largely critical. Fortunately though, after publishing the stock report of his funeral, my editor asked me to do an analytic piece on the Marathi press coverage:
Day 1:
For Old Times' Sake, Shiv Sainiks Throng Shiv-Tirtha
As published in The Free Press Journal on November 19, 2012. At 6.10 pm, Shivaji Park witnessed pin-drop silence just as the sound of bugles rung into the air. A piercing voice of a commander followed and gunshots tore in, saluting the Maratha whose pyre lay in front of them. The somberness was palpable throughout the duration of the three gunshots. A passionate cry reverberated in the next moment - 'Parat ya, parat ya, Balasaheb parat ya' (Come back Balasaheb). Came 6.15 and Balasaheb Thackeray's body made headway into the skies.
The cremation of Balasaheb Thackeray was sound in its poetic flavour. With the arrangements made on a dais in front of the Shivaji statue to the Jagjit Singh's prayer ‘Hey Ram’ being played on loop since afternoon, there was a conscious symbolic imprint. As the flames clouded Balasaheb's pyre, Padmashree singer Padmaja Joglekar rendered Samartha Ramdas' poem 'Nischayacha Mahameru', written to commemorate the exploits of Shivaji.
People had already started assembling at the ground where Shiv Sena had launched itself in 1966 from as early as 5 am. There were hundreds of policemen in and around the venue. Barricades were erected at several spots to regulate the crowd that poured in the tune of thousands. With public transport conspicuous by its absence, the people took to streets as human largesse from every road gushed towards Shivaji Park. Mobile toilets and water tankers punctuated the junctions en route.
As people drove in hordes, several volunteer groups contrived to ensure a steady supply of food and water.
"We have been distributing tea, vada pav and water to the people since 11.30 am," said Vishal Shingade, a resident of Popatlal chawl at Dadar. Vishal, along with several locals, was involved in distributing the snacks free of cost.
The venue saw a shamiana built at the centre, in front of which was Balasaheb's pyre. There were several screens set up along the perimeter that showed the live feed from the stage. The high-profile guests started trickling in with Nitin Gadkari arriving at the venue at 4.30 pm. He was followed by BJP stalwarts like L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitely. Over time, several personalities from the Marathi television and cinema industry joined in.
The crowd thickened and people took to trees and neighbouring building terraces to get a dekko. There were life-size figures of Thackeray and bursts of saffron punctuating the air. As the ceremony drew to a close, even the policemen allowed the crowd's emotions to take over and several could be seen standing on the barricades.
"While there was a deluge of humanity all over the place, the crowd didn't get unruly. It was a peaceful and well-organized affair," said Isha Bopardikar, a resident of Shivaji Park. Day 2:
That the Marathi press would unanimously lavish praise on Balasaheb was a given. However, most of the newspapers, chose to go a step further and canonize the politician. Equating him to a divine entity, the Shiv Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamna’ projected the demise of the party-founder by hailing it as an event of worldwide significance.
With a front-page headline reading, ‘The entire world witnessed Sena leader’s power and the Sainiks’ devotion’, it dedicated the entire issue with reportage related only to Thackeray’s death and the resultant grief.
“God had sent the Shiv Sena leader for the welfare of the world… Perhaps, the Gods found themselves in a crisis that he (Thackeray) was recalled to the heavens. Perhaps, Kansa and Raavana (demons in Hindu mythology) detained the Gods, making them cry out ‘Save us!’” read the paper on its third page.
While most of the newspapers had less than substantial coverage about the civic chaos, Saamna completely ignored highlighting the negative aspects. Among reports by other publications of people roaming on the streets in search of basic commodities, crowding around shops and waiting for it to open, Saamna reported people crowding near newspaper stands. “As the rest of the city was deserted, people were seen scouting for Saamna.”
Another daily ‘Lokmat’ had a philosophical take on the Sena chief. ‘In the end, it is fate that triumphs. Whether or not one was aligned to his views or openly acknowledged it, Balasaheb was respected throughout the state. The security that people felt has now permanently disappeared into the clutches of history,” read the editorial.
Maharashtra Times, the office of which was ransacked in January for carrying a story that portrayed the party in a bad light, played safe and dedicated their entire coverage to offer obeisance to the Sena chief. The front page carried a full-length aerial view of the hearse surrounded by the crowd with the caption ‘May he be immortal!’ The editorial, however, steered clear of much adulation and focused on the overview of the funeral and profiling the leader. It called Thackeray a “brilliant orator and politician” who had an “unpredictable style of politics”.
It was only the leading daily Loksatta that carried a critical piece of the entire ceremony and the arrangements. While devoting a significant coverage to the pervading melancholy, the editorial took a discerning view on the irresponsible comments made by the Sainiks.
“As unfortunate the death of Balasaheb is, even more is the Sena leaders’ behavior. In the days leading up to Saturday, every time a leader exited Matoshree, he spoke as per his fancy. As a result, the byte-hungry broadcast media had a field day,” it said.
The editorial went on further to criticise the lack of coordination at such a sensitive time. “The same happened when Uddhav Thackeray was admitted for angioplasty. Visiting Sena leaders were seen quoting that the angioplasty was successful, thus revealing their ignorance. Saying that an angioplasty was successful is as stupid as saying an X ray was successful.”
As any newspaper will tell you, the Kala Ghoda festival is a melting pot of culture, concepts and glitterati. The usual action involves visiting the venue for about an hour, moaning about the crowd, posing against the art-installations and for those who can't afford the overpriced menu of Bombay Blue, eating that fantastic chaat you get in the sidelines. How else can you explain the strictly average response you got at some of the most memorable workshops I was fortunate to attend in the 2013 edition of the festival? Below I reproduce the two articles that came out of them. One was a crash-course on the latest innovation in theatre called Intimate Theatre. The second was the delightful three hour session on being a clown.
'INTIMATE THEATRE' AT KALA GHODA Photo Courtesy: The Guardian
Mumbai: The entire action takes place in a caravan. You open the door to find yourself in a warm, cosily lit ambiance. You walk in, your eyes land on a woman sitting on a bed at the centre of the 'stage'. Smiling benignly at you, she invites you to join her in there.
“I’m going to read you a bedtime story,” she says, tucking you between the sheets. You take your pick from the stack of books kept next to her and in the next few minutes, soar through the world of Pinocchios and evil witches and the magic beans, as you please. If you haven't been swept away to the dreamland already, she quietly slips off your side, reassuring you that she will be back in a couple of minutes. When she emerges again, she has a steaming cuppa of your favourite flavour.
This isn't an excerpt from the life of a loving mother-son duo staying in a mobile van. It is a form of theatre that made its debut in England in 2006 and has found increasing popularity ever since. 'Intimate Theatre', as it is called, is what happens when you take the concept of 'breaking the fourth wall' several notches higher, when the actor and the audience symbiotically create a performance in a visceral atmosphere.
Introducing a motley group of 20 youngsters who had gathered at the workshop in Horniman circle to this art-form was Adam Ledger, a theatre professor from Birmingham in UK. A part of the ongoing Kalaghoda festival, the workshop will involve training the bunch to the nitty-gritty of this kind of theatre. On the concluding day, they will be performing to the visitors of Kala Ghoda festival this Sunday.
The performers-participant spectators were introduced wherein everyone was to come out with a signature gesture accompanying their name. It instantly acted as a necessary ice-breaker in the first few minutes. What followed were numerous trust building exercises that culminated into groups of two performing a short skit that was part improv, part devised. At the end of the first two hours came out some quite entertaining pieces about gym instructors masquerading as barbers and 'The Conflict of the Shoe-Polishwallahs'.
"Intimate theatre is in no way economically viable. There are hardly five to six groups in UK specialising in this form. What makes this form so special is the connection you establish with the audience you perform for. There is something very pure about it," said Ledger.
The participants can be seen in their act at Artists’ Gallery on Sunday, February 10.
A participant at the clown workshop at Kala Ghoda festival 2013
Omkar Khandekar
Mumbai: "When we encounter anything that is not logical, we call it an act of God. But when things stop being logical, that is when humour comes out. It is all the doing of the divinest entity of all - The Clown God. Each one of us have his gifts."
When an instructor preaches the gospel from such a radical religion, all inhibitions are sacrificed at the alter of spontaneity. Then begin the howling dogs and the zombie faces and the wild rioters who can do no wrong since every such turn leads to the laughter street. The Max Mueller Bhavan played host to 25 such revellers bent on having fun the most primal way in the clown workshop organised on Saturday as a part of the ongoing Kala Ghoda festival.
The workshop was an instant hit among all the participants - from college students to professionals in their late forties. The instructor, Mumbai-born Sweden-based Rupesh Tillu, emphasized on the body language of the participants. Putting the participants through various exercises, he dared them to share and shed all insecurities.
The workshop began with participants taking off their socks and substituting them as tails. The instructions were as simple as they were canine - "Chase them tails!" Those who lose them, lose out. There were squeals and mirth from the word go as everyone groped at the others' rear end, the scene resembling something straight out of a David Dhavan no-brainer.
"When people laugh at your antics, you tend to get self conscious. But that's where you go wrong. The slightest chuckle means what you are doing is working," Tillu drove the point home. He cajoled and bullied the participants in turn, eliciting roars from the onlookers. For those still hesitant, there was a liberal dose of 'You are a stupid person' and 'We don't want to see you' as the participants went on stage, bringing out all their vulnerability and innocence.
The entire workshop rested on one adage from the school of clowning - 'If you make a mistake, underline it. It becomes a genius.' Even the bullying proved cathartic, since it facilitated foray of reactions that were as genuine as they were amusing.
"For a clown, only 70% is the script. The rest of it is what feels right at spur of the moment. When you push people to their brink, even amateurs, you get to witness magic," said Tillu. And one couldn't blame him. After all, how many times can one see an impromptu skit where a flagpole is hounded by two wolves?
Inder Kumar, from Albert Photo Studio, takes a picture of a deceased woman during her funeral at the Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi.
For a city that retreats into its shell much before 10 pm, the photo studios at Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi have unusually busy schedules. Services are offered round the clock at each of the five, stationed on the narrow lanes leading to the crematorium at the ghat. Other than the seemingly unlikely location, none of their shops rouse any curiosity unless you happen to notice the photo-collages on their display rack.
Take ‘Baba Shmashan Nath Photo Studio’. Named after the lesser known God of cremation, its showcase consists of pictures of corpses clad in the brightest of colours – a middle aged woman decorated with marigold and a bald man staring vacantly with an expression of ultimate surrender. Family and relatives of the deceased pose pokerfaced by the limp head, and your eyes temporarily de-prioritise negotiating the way around the omnipresent cow-dumps.
What one sees isn’t the kind of still photography one is used to. But this business finds roots in the same reasons as every other – there is a market for it.
*
“You want to see fire people?” one of the numerous touts asked me when I walked towards one of the countless ghats along the banks of the Ganges. The boatmen peg their number at 365 (“one for each day of the year”), each contributing to the identity the city loves to project – a gateway to heaven. While most offer salvation to the living, Manikarnika ghat and Harishchandra ghat offer similar facilities for the departed. At the former, the bigger of the two, locals estimate that the number of cremations goes well beyond 300 every day and make every use of the opportunity to lure those interested in more macabre facts and figures. This tout was one such self-appointed text-book.
“They have fire people?” I asked. Having seen snake charmers at the adjoining ghat, I shouldn’t have been as surprised at the prospect of fire-eaters at the next.
“People. On fire. There,” he points out the cremation spot not too far off. I detect the rancid smell in the air. Wisps of ash float about deliriously and settle on the bodies of the bereaved, the undertakers and spectators. Chants of ‘Om namah Shivay’, hailing the Hindu God Shiva, blast from the speakers. Walk further and opens up the stairway to the death industry in Manikarnika ghat – dabblers in funeral paraphernalia, refreshment stalls and of course, the photo studios. In one of lanes, I spot ‘Shmashan Nath Photo Studio’, managed by the 22-year-old Kaushal Jha.
“It’s a fashion,” he says. Dark and lean, he is wearing a Nike cap, one of those that have nothing to do with the better known sports-wear manufacturers. “Then there’s the fact that they want something to remember them by. These pictures are kept in their pooja-ghar and worshipped.”
By now, the locals have gathered around the two of us. Kaushal shows me the portraits he has clicked. They are more-or-less the same composition: either the corpse on the pyre before it is lit or tied to the bamboo-bed in the foreground. The body is flanked by the son or a bunch of relatives. As is the tradition, women are not allowed on the ghat. The general consensus is that they won’t be able to keep their emotions in check.
A photographer outside his shop on the lanes leading up to the crematorium
“These photographs also work as a proof,” chips in 38-year-old Pandit Ganesh Pandey, one of the onlookers, who declares himself as one of the conductors of last rites. “You don’t get death certificates at this crematorium. Those coming from far off take pictures of the dead bodies and use them to establish the death of a person. Many aren’t even related to the deceased but with the date and time printed on the photograph, they use it to claim their share in the deceased’s property.”
Despite 7-8 years in the business (he often branches out to clicking convicts’ profiles for the
Varanasi police), Jha isn’t the oldest in the area. That entrepreneurial crown would go to Albert Photo Studio with boasting rights of 13 years. Unlike other shops, which are mostly just oil-paints with a contact number, Albert’s manages some breathing space in the walls.
The manager, 68-year-old Bilaal Nishad, is a picture of composure. He sits still on the steps, waiting and watching out for the next funeral procession almost meditatively. While his peers idly ask every next tourist the country of their origin, he is the last person to be bothered unless approached.
“Funerals take place 24 hours a day. It is but obvious that our services be tailor made,” he says. Earlier a tourist photographer at Assi ghat in the vicinity, he started his business in the year 2000 after a landlord friend proposed the idea and offered one of his shops.
“The first time I made money from photographing the dead, I could not bring myself to use it for my family. Then I thought, this is what I do for a living. I can’t shirk my responsibilities,” he says. It’s been a while since Nishad has been on the field. His 16-year-old grandson Inder Kumar has taken over since two years. I turn to him. Does he plan to make a career out of it?
“I don’t know,” Kumar smiles weakly.
One hears the chants of ‘Ram naam satya hai’ becoming louder. Nishad stops talking mid-conversation and looks up.
“Photu khichai, bhaiyya?” his voice booms. The carriers ignore him.
He isn’t done yet.
“Want to click a picture?” he roars, once again in Bhojpuri. There is still no response. Nishad gestures at his grandson, who scurries after them. He turns back to me.
“They seem like they would be interested,” he says.
The hunch doesn’t hold up. But I see that Jha has managed to crack a deal. I follow him down the steps leading to the burning spot on the banks. The heat radiating from the surrounding pyres make every descending step more oppressive. We are standing between two nearly-ashen pyres. Jha is issuing instructions to the relatives on how to position themselves around the body.
The convener of the group unties the coir rope tethering the deceased to the bed. Six layers of white sheet are peeled off the face. The deceased is an old man, easily in his sixties, eyes shut, stubble on his leathery face. Jha asks the relative to adjust the head so that it looks skywards and pose. Almost theatrically, the chants in the background increase in tempo. Gusts of hot winds lash against our backs. The cows continue grazing on the offerings. A tourist out to see Incredible India looks on curiously and sips her Sprite. An undertaker pushes a log deeper into a pyre raging some distance away.
Click.
*
Back in Jha’s uncle’s shop, a bunch of photographers from the same trade have joined us. Somehow, everybody plays shy for my lens. “Would any of you like yourself to be clicked after you are dead?” I ask.
“Of course not,” the answer is unanimous. One of them is quick to add, “Who would?”
His maroon-grey striped shirt hangs limply on his bony shoulders. He has lost a lot of weight in the last two weeks, he confesses, as he rummages through his black leather handbag for a photograph of his mother. He takes out her passport-size picture.
I notice the curve of her nose and the cleft chin. “You take after her,” I tell him. Bhupendra Chavan smiles through his sunken cheeks. It comes as a relief. This is my first breakthrough in an hour.
Before she went on the Chardham Yatra, like several pilgrims, 58-year-old Manda Chavan decided that she had had a long and happy life. Her 33-year-old son Bhupendra had a stable practice as a lawyer and his wife had even blessed her with a grandchild. With a nothing-to-lose air, she could now go on the journey to the four holy shrines in Uttarakhand, believed by many-a-Hindu as a rite of passage, situated in the foreboding terrain of Himalayas. On the night of June 15, she called her son Bhupendra: “I will be leaving for Gaurikund tomorrow. All is well.”
Manda Chavan went missing since June 15 after the cloudburst in Uttarakhand
That was the last they heard of her. The rest, as they say, was a cloudburst. The news anchors clamoured from the tube about the disaster wreaking havoc in Uttarakhand, killing locals and pilgrims indiscriminately. From their living room, the Chavans struggled to get a stock of the situation from the hyperbole expected from the news channels. As the videos of the Ganges in all its fury played on loop in the background, Bhupendra logged on to Google Maps.
“Right in the heart of Gaurikund, there were houses stripped off their roofs. I could read the names of what used to be roads but all I could see was water and debris,” said Chavan. Repeated attempts to contact his mother, her sister Sharada Lokre who had accompanied her, and their fellow travellers had by now proven unsuccessful. He knew he could not stay rooted in their Latur house any longer and boarded a flight to Dehradun.
It was a similar case to Ashok Khetan, an iron and steel trader from Nagpur. Earlier in the month, his elder brother Mahesh had taken his wife, three kids to the yatra. They were accompanied by several of their friends and relatives. As the images on the TV kept getting murkier, so did his temper.
“I could see that the government was doing next to nothing. There were no relief operations in sight,” says Khetan. The life of 15 of his closest people was at stake. “I thought, I will take one of the private helicopters they rent to tourists and do something myself.” Along with 7 relatives, all of them men, he made way to the Nagpur airport.
Khetan and Chavan reached Dehradun airport around June 18. Over the next few days, the two combed all the hospitals in the town from dawn to dusk and then some more. They went through the relief camps, transit points, airports, watched news for hours on end, put up posters of the missing persons, begged the army to let search in the forests, got stonewalled by the authorities, even got in touch with the chief minister.
“I managed to get his number from a local politician from Nagpur. The CM assured me that they were doing their best. But it’s their job to give assurances,” says Khetan wearily. “Does it ever mean anything?”
There were no silver linings for Chavan either. “All my relatives kept saying, ‘He is a lawyer. He knows his way around the government people.’ But once you reach there, everyone is the same – victim, survivor or an army uniform.”
By now, they were a group of about 40 people, mostly Marathi like themselves, similarly in search for their loved ones. It was here that the two crossed paths, and met another son from Latur who had lost both his parents, one from Nagpur who had lost both of his parents; an inconsolable youngster from Agra who had had a love-marriage only 20 days ago and had now lost his wife and family to the floods. Then they heard of 400 villages that were completely off the radar.
“Numbers helped,” says Chavan. The hunt was still on but he managed to regain some of his flagging composure. They weren’t the only one suffering. “Once at the government of Maharashtra camp, we saw a family of five who had just been rescued from the affected region struggling to convince the officials that they were from Maharashtra. The standard practice is that each of those rescued gets Rs. 2,000 to reach home. But nobody had filed a missing complaint for them, nor did they have any IDs.” Struck by the obtuseness of the authorities, he and his group pitched in Rs. 300 each to help out the family. Already disillusioned by The Divine, they had one more entity to add to the list.
The military rescue operations were halted by July 28 due to rough weather. None of the 40 of his group managed to make any headway and returned to their respective towns one by one. Khetan went back to his job with a bad taste in his mouth from the experience and the government’s lackadaisical approach. “If not for the army, I doubt if even half the people would have been rescued,” he says.
I met Chavan on July 3 when aboard the Dehradun Express on its way to Mumbai. Latur doesn’t fall en route but he had just caught the first train out. He has bigger problems to tackle than travel convenience.
“I still haven’t told my father about this. For him, I am in Nagpur, working on some case for the High Court,” he says. He doesn’t want to bring himself to choose what is more important – the truth or the life of his 60-year-old father, a heart patient.
THE OFFICIAL VOICEBOX:
Even after four weeks, the details about the aftermath the tragedy continue to remain foggy. The army claims to have evacuated about 42,542 people while Director General of Uttarakhand Police Satyavrat Bansal has put the rescue figure at 1,50,000 from all across the region. Similar is the case in deaths – the Uttakhand government has put the toll at around 4,000 whereas an UN agency estimates that it is 11,000.
It is a general consensus among the authorities that the people missing are dead. “At this stage, the chances of finding more survivors are very less. We will keep our efforts on till July 15 (when the tragedy completes a month) after which the government will give out compensation,” said Satyavrat Bansal, DGP of Uttakahand.
Officials at the disaster management cell state that the operations in most areas were rounded off by July 1-2 and the one at Kedarnath ended on July 7. Bansal added that bodies are still being found buried under debris and will be so for next few months.
“We are still in the process of compiling the list of those missing. There has been a lot of duplication since people have filed FIRs at multiple places. In the next 2-3 days, we expect to release a definite figure of the number of people missing,” said Bansal.
Not too far from their house, there were two ponds set beside each other. Behind the ponds was a lowland, which never had much significance to the siblings Udayan and Subhash. It was just something you cross on your way to Tolly Club. It was in the floodwater of this lowland, submerged among the hyacinths, that Udayan now lay crouched, hiding from the policemen on the prowl.
The doctor had said that even if you didn’t breathe, you would still survive for about six minutes. Udayan could feel the breath he was holding going solid. But he was prepared to slug it out. There was only one small issue. His wife and his parents were held at gunpoint by a horde of policemen. Those khaki-clad symbols of institutional brutality. And they were training their guns at his father.
At this height of this nail-biting mise-en-scéne you see breathlessly building up, you hear a conch shell blowing. The sounds are carried in from another neighbourhood. Someone, somewhere, oblivious of the tumult barely a stone’s throw away, is making an offering at a temple. Within moments, you are whisked back to Udayan. The police take their aim. The clean shots fired are followed by the sound of crows, coarsely calling, scattering.
It is such contrasts that run naked throughout Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel ‘The Lowland’, when the dignity of a conch-shell is juxtaposed against the raw call of crows’ feast. Their presence make the events jump through the pages so that you see and hear the silence, now suffocating, so vivid.
Her previous works have concentrated on themes of nostalgia, the constant feeling of being ‘Nixon’s guests’ no matter how many years you live in the country; themes that often overlap. The American writer of Indian descent is comfortable with her middle-class characters and creating their solitude. You will find them everywhere – in the supermarket aisle comparing the price labels, on the beach ready to freeze the moment in their Kodak film rolls, laying out mats in the garden and throwing a Frisbee. They are not loud. They don’t believe in excesses. You won’t find them chilling at old Gatsby’s parties. They are a type – rooted in their culture, probably feeling more at ease striking up a conversation with the brown taxi driver than their white work colleagues.
Except for the rare moments like the one above, it is the mind is where the action lies.
So we have the Mitras- Subhash and Udayan, residents of Tollygunge in Calcutta. Born 15 months apart, they share a bond that extends all the way to America when Subhash decides to go there for higher studies. By then, Udayan has been deeply influenced by the Maoist movement. He takes up a teaching job at the university. When in shadows, he is one of the foot soldiers of the movement, attending Sanyal’s fiery speeches and going down to that little shop on the corner to buy banned literature. He has found love and a wife in Gauri, a philosophy student at the university.
As the air thickens with the red of the flags, a darker hue carpets the streets. Blood flows, revolutionaries and law-makers alike. With time, among them is Udayan’s. Subhash is appalled by the white-saree Gauri has been reduced to, ‘...so that she resembled other widows in her family. Women three times her age’. Even though she is now pregnant, Subhash unable to stifle a forbidden affection that rises in him. He offers to take her to America to start life anew.
Once in Rhode Island, one might think that Lahiri enters the familiar terrain. I expected another Ashima in Gauri, intimidated by everything around her before slowly building a cosy life as in The Namesake. But Gauri is a firebrand. She doesn’t flinch while raising her hand in the class nor is there any stutter in her speech. Her only weakness is her past. Udayan’s ghost looms large over the novel. And with that undercurrent, Lahiri creates a vast, deeply intimate drama spanning from the time of Nehru’s midnight speech to Obama bumper stickers.
‘The Lowland’ unfurls like a reel with Lahiri creating imagery that is as visible as it is audible. Sample her rains: the ‘avalanche of gravel on the thin, membrane like roof,’ the drops falling from the leaves ‘like a scattered applause’ while the rains recede, deliciously plugged in moments after Subhash makes love. Her novels were hardly political but Lahiri deftly manages the broader canvas with elegance, never sterilizing it. In one sentence, she captures all her characters’ conflicts: ‘The future haunted, but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator.’
That Lahiri’s book would create waves all the way from the Pacific was a given. Ever since her Pulitzer-marked debut, Lahiri’s reputation preceded her work. Thus whether or not it had made it to the Booker Prize shortlist, The Lowland took birth in a world where it would go on to be the new book to read and be snooty about. So don’t be surprised to hear about Fox Studios coughing up a bomb to buy the movie rights of The Lowland. If made with as much love as The Namesake, there are lots of olive branches to be seen on the poster.
The first bite reminds you ofsambar. In the second, the sliced coconuts hit a home run. It is the usual potato stuffing, but with a distinct South Indian touch. By the time you finish, it’s hard to believe you just ate a vada pav.
Thevada pavhas come a long way over the last four decades. Today, it is as synonymous with the city of Mumbai as the sea. A typicalvada pav consists of a potato patty dunked in gram flour, deep fried and served piping hot, nestled in a bun with some chutney. With time and a growing breed of entrepreneurs, a new pedigree of the snack has emerged over the years.
The South Indian vada pav in question is the brainchild of Nilesh Gupta, kitchen manager of a recently-shut shop in Ghatkopar. “Before I came up with such dishes,” he says, “I went on a tasting spree. Eventually, I realised that not a lot of innovation has gone into making avada pav.” While he was in business, Gupta also sold a Jain vada pav made to suit that community’s dietary restrictions. Its patty was made of raw bananas, using a completely different palette of spices.
Though these flavours are quite unheard of, the concept isn’t. Chains like Jumbo King Vada Pav and Goli Vada Pav No.1 have been doing it for years. Thevada pavsold at these chains range from the interesting to the bizarre, with Chinese, Punjabi and Western influences. There’s Goli Mix Veg Vada Pav with a patty made of green peas, carrots and beans and coated with crumbs. Corn Palak Jumbo King has a corn and spinach patty and is served with mayonnaise. The double decker Tandoori Paneer Jumbo King is served with Thousand Island sauce. The chains offer a mish-mash of other flavours, even a customised patty. But these innovations come at a price: as opposed to a roadside vendor who sells a conventionalvada pavfor no more than Rs 10, Jumbo King’s Tandoori Paneervadapavcosts Rs 80.
Thankfully, the experiments are unlikely to drive the classic into retirement. Says Dheeraj Gupta, founder of Jumbo King: “60 per cent of our business still comes from selling regularvada pav. High-end ones like the Tandoori Paneer barely account for 1 per cent.”
Participant Anisha Sharma narrates her story 'The Insomniac' at the Tall Tales event held on September 28 at Studio X, Fort
Do you have a story to tell? Not the one when a man walked into a bar with a Democrat, Republican and a polar bear. Not even the time you got high at a cocktail party and went around telling whoever would listen why ‘bubbles’ is a funny word. Stories that are more than snippets or a series of events where you lived the highest highs to the lowest lows; stories now seem like they were born to be told, ones that will pop out a chuckle or a plop out a tear at a moment you least expect it to.
“I have seven such stories,” says Michael Burns, a documentary filmmaker. At 36 years of age, you might wonder if Burns has led a particularly uneventful life. But on Friday, October 25, at a storytelling event ‘Tall Tales’ held at Studio X in Fort area, as a motley audience of hundred odd people heard Burns narrate the time he had was staring down the barrel of a revolver pointed at him, struggling to stifle his laughter because of the ridiculous engraving of a tree, a wild stallion, a hill and native-Americans on the handle of the gun, all doubts were laid to rest.
“There are stories that are just a list of things that happened,” Burns had told me a few days before he was to go on stage. “And then there are great stories.” At Tall Tales, a live storytelling initiative that Burns started in the month of June this year, the endeavour is to share such “great” stories that might come from just about anyone who is willing – be it your high school physics teacher or your regular dhobiwallah who fights crime by night. “You would be surprised at the range of unique experiences people have had and want to share,” said Burns.
Storytelling in itself is not a particularly new form of entertainment. However, most of what one encounters is cloaked and layered in various other art-forms: novels, poetry, dance et al. Tall Tales takes it back to the basics where all you have on you is a spotlight, a script if you need one, a little pre-performance grooming and a rapt audience, hanging on your every word. In such an ambiance, complete with wine and nibbles, stories spring from every strata and genre.
Last Saturday, for example, in his story titled ‘Tea and Me’ the bespectacled investment banker Anurag Byas narrated the time of his first rendezvous with a cuppa: “In my adolescence, I never drank tea. I had a belief that God grants your wishes if you give up stuff.” Over the next ten minutes, Byas went on to narrate how he finally managed to break the shackles of his “tea celibacy” and lead a life that involved downing more than 15,300 cups over the years.
“Back home, I used to listen to this public radio broadcast called ‘This American Life’,” said Burns, who hails from Connecticut region of United States. “In every show, they had stories based on the theme-of-the-week. That was the primary influence for Tall Tales.”
Other than the radio show, live storytelling – whether in the austere form or spoken word poetry – is quite a norm in various parts of the US. When he moved to Mumbai in 2011 with his partner, Burns found it striking that there were hardly such platforms in the city. When he had settled down in the city, his second job as a lecturer in English at YMCA going steady, he decided to collaborate with two of his friends Kaneez Surka, an improv actress, and Vishal Jadhani and launched Tall Tales. Contributors were invited from across the city. Burns curated and edited stories they submitted, drew from his own experience from the days he was an improv actor to train them before finally holding the first edition earlier this year.
Conceived as an occasional event, Tall Tales has snowballed into a bi-monthly. Stories, says Burns, are now received every other day. Each session features 4-5 storytellers, their narration ranging between 10-20 minutes. It has even caught the eye of the organisers of Mumbai Literature Festival that will be hosting some of them in their upcoming edition in December.
“When it comes to live storytelling, there is a direct relationship waiting for you in the audience. All you have to do is embrace it,” said Burns. The team has decided to take it up a notch and launch ‘Small Tales’ in the coming summer, aimed at children below 15 years of age.
Other than a distinct addition to the city’s culturescape, the initiative has gone a long way in enriching some of the participants’ lives. Take Rohit Nair who had never had any prior public speaking experience. Since June, he has already featured in three of the sessions, one of which was an encore. “I never knew I had this capacity of impromptu shenanigans,” he says, half-embarrassed. It’s no wonder that when Burns took to the stage on Saturday, Nair’s cheer rang the loudest – “Michael for President!”
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