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Feminist, publisher and writer Urvashi Butalia recounts her days in Ambala, Delhi University, a serendipitous flight to Hawaii, and little chances that led to ZubaanI grew up in Ambala and spent the first 10 years of my life there. My parents moved to Ambala when The Tribune moved from Lahore to Shimla, and finally to Ambala, if I remember correctly, because the owner was holidaying in Shimla. Ambala was an ideal place for children. It was a small town at that time and we knew everyone. My brothers, sister and I were known as the “Four Bs” (our nicknames began with B). As siblings we were close—emotionally and chronologically—with only a gap of six years between the eldest and the youngest. Apparently, my father wanted a dozen children, while my mother gave up after four. Even then, I wonder how she managed all four of us, taught in a school and ran a household consisting of four kids, a husband, a mother-in-law and a handful of brothers, sisters and cousins. She ran it on a tight purse, as my parents had modest incomes to boast of. However, I don’t remember being unhappy or wanting anything. Even at a young age, the four of us were already moving in directions we were meant to take in our later lives. My older brother was a table tennis fan, playing regularly, and sports was a passion in his later life as well. My younger brother was tinkering with cars (at that time he wanted to be a mechanic!). I was following my father to office and watching him work in the press. I had also started writing smaller pieces for school magazines and assignments. My sister dreamt of being an artist. She was presenting her artwork to anyone interested. As for my parents, they never pressurised us to be big or famous. My mother was an independent, working woman, who was used to living alone at a time when it was unthinkable. She came without any “dowry”—naturally, my father’s parents disapproved of the union. They got married despite the opposition. In their ways, my parents were ahead of their times. They were both fairly liberal and unconventional, though I believe if my father could help it, he could have been pretty conventional. But, he grew up around strong women. He was a different sort of a man—not particularly ambitious, not patriarchal at all, and quite laid-back. My mother had left Lahore for a teacher’s post in Punjab before the partition. During partition, she went back for her brothers, sister and mother. She managed to return with one of my uncles and aunt, as her eldest brother chose to stay back and kept my grandmother with him. It is no wonder then that I grew up with stories of the partition. They were like a leitmotif: I heard them, but never listened— not until I was old enough to understand their significance. My father would often talk of his last day in Lahore: how he and his team released the last edition of The Tribune, took the early morning delivery truck to cross the Wagah border to India on the August 14, 1947. It’s no wonder that the stories found a prominent place in my later life, especially when Kali For Women began. At that time, a group of friends were making a documentary on the partition and asked me to help, simply because I hailed from Punjab. My experience during the documentary made me rethink my family’s past. Then the riots of 1984 happened.And old wounds resurfaced and new narratives began—people who had made narrow escapes then started to talk of the partition again. It was then that I decided to revisit the themes of migration and displacement once more, with my family as the core. I travelled to Pakistan to meet my uncle, who had stayed back. His story impacted me strongly. I thought that if so many people were affected within the smaller confines of a single family, then the split must have been pronounced on a larger scale. I became obsessed with the theme. But it took me a long time to compile all that in a book. Back in blissful Ambala we were sent off to two schools—the first one was called Airport School, a co-ed institution adjacent to a bombed-out church. I can’t remember which war led to its state, but I distinctly remember it standing in all its inky blackness. There must have been some wonderful stories surrounding it, as we were instructed not to play around it. In the early 1960s, my father took up a job in the Times of India and moved to New Delhi. My mother packed up and joined a year later with the whole family in tow. Because our parents knew that eventually my father would be moving to the city, the four of us were shifted to a bigger school in Ambala—Jesus and Mary Convent. In Delhi, I joined Miranda House in 1968. My elder siblings were already in different colleges of Delhi University, so we all had a vast network of friends between the four of us. My friends were also my younger brother’s friends and vice-versa. Those were wonderful times to be a student in Delhi University—young people were getting into political discussions, looking closely at the Left movement thanks to the Naxalbari unrest happening in Bengal. The air was rife and alive with discussions and discourses: on whether women’s colleges should join the Delhi University Students’ Union (associated with dirty politicking and disputes and therefore with masculinity). Several of us were raising questions of women’s safety in buses and hostel conditions. One could say that there was also a parallel women’s movement that was growing. Students were reading more. In such a time it seemed right to form an umbrella group—Samta—which could do a range of things to bring together smaller initiatives. We approached Veena Mazumdar, the then Head of the Centre for Women’s Studies and working with ICCR, which had released the first post-independence report on the state of Indian women. She agreed to lend us the centre premises occasionally for meetings. Along with Mazumdar, Samta also received the support of Latika Sarkar and J.P. Nayyaik, among several others. Samta would meet to share ideas, plan campaigns; one of the outcomes was Manushi, the journal. There were 18 of us who were part of the founding editorial team, including Saiba Hussain, who currently works with the Janwadi Mahila Samiti. The group also branched off to form Stree Sangharsh, a theatre group that performed plays on dowry deaths, domestic violence, etc. Our signature play was Om Swaha, which we performed all over Delhi. The play was based on the lives of two women— Tajwinder Kaur and Hardeep. Those were simpler times, we would board a bus, get off and perform. It was out of these performances that Saheli, a women’s counselling and help centre, was formed. Often, after our performances we were approached by audience, especially women. They would share their stories with us. Such encounters eventually led to the question: what could be done? Thus, Saheli. By the time I finished post-graduation in English, I was impatient with literature. Though I was writing for college magazines it was not satisfying my soul nor was it reflecting the feminism I was getting more and more involved with or my campus or Jungpura home reality. Around this time I realised that friends, family and teachers expected me to gradually become a teacher. Though I had no issues with teaching, formal education was frankly beginning to bore me. I was really keen to do something that didn’t throw me back into what I was trying to escape—teaching literature. I came across a freelance assignment at the Oxford University Press. A friend who worked there asked me to apply. I got through and thus began a six-year-long affair. I started rather ingloriously, as a “paster upper”. My task was to change British names into Indian ones (Tom conveniently became Ram) in English textbooks adapted into Indian schools. I would also cut-off tops of double-decker buses to make them more “familiar”, and coloured blonde hair and blue eyes, black. I did that for six months, till Oxford offered me a post and a scope to train under them. I stayed on for six years, till I started to get a bit disillusioned (yes, again). I was not going anywhere, whereas my male colleagues were. More importantly there was a disparity between issues that were so alive in the real world and the books that I was editing. That is when the idea of an exclusive publishing house, dealing with issues relating to women, germinated. I guess I was not ready as yet to start. By 1978, I had started getting more and more involved in the women’s movement and simultaneously started teaching publishing in a college of vocational studies. In 1982, I was sanguine that I wanted to setup my own publishing house. At the same time I was given a Fulbright scholarship to study in Hawaii—in my 30s, there was no way I was going to say no. Interestingly, I never reached Hawaii. I made a small stopover in England to meet a few friends I had made during my Oxford days there while completing a part-time Master’s course and working for Oxford University Press. During that stay, I happened to interact with people in the publishing business. The lovely people gently pointed out that if I could neither swim nor surf—I could not do either at that time—I should probably head back and do what I really wanted to do. So, I dumped the scholarship and stayed on in England for two years working with Zed Press. Also, I used up the days to work out Kali For Women in my mind. At the end of 1983, I adopted a unique way of convincing myself— by letting every one else know of my plan. When they could take it no further, my friends were forced to ask me, “When are you going to start the damn project?” And what would I call it? I set a date and blurted “Kali”. Sitting at a bar in England, it seemed a dark and empowering name. I came back from England in April of 1984 and Kali started in July. Back home, Ritu Menon—who later became a partner in Kali—and I, had begun corresponding over the idea. When she showed interest, we both believed that it was wiser to work together. She was in the publishing business and I was involved in the women’s movement. Granted, both of us were slightly worried about how our differences would work out, but we did carry on working in tandem for 19 years. It was those years later, as it happens in relationships based on political and ideological premises, we found that there were differences in opinion. It seemed sensible to try something else: a separate structure. So, we gradually moved towards a split. In hindsight it as a wise move. After the split, both felt released to prioritise and do things that we had interests in. It also helped us realise that the market was big enough for both of us. Thus, Zubaan came into being: I knew I wanted a name or a label that did not have a religious connotation. India was a fairly religiously polarised place and I did not wish the endeavour to belong to a particular community.
If one could take both the publishing and writing bit out of my system, I guess I would basically be very bored. Jokes apart, I am an adaptable person: if I am disallowed both the pen and the paper, I would take to the press—my childhood dream of running a small press. I would print political pamphlets or Little Magazines for penniless publishers. I am publisher more than I am a writer. I do love to write of course, but what I do much more is publishing. Writing is not a struggle but it does not come easily. There are days on end when I struggle with an idea and till I let it pour on paper, there is no respite. I believe I wrote one fiction piece in my life for a children’s magazine— Target—with Rosalind Wilson as its editor. Though I was satisfied with the story, I never tried my hand in fiction again. I do not think I have the capacity to create a plot and characters. One of the things which I dislike about writing is that it is a lonely, and a deeply self-absorbed, task. There have been instances when I have shunned company to just write. I am by nature a social person. I have told myself that for me publishing and writing could not always go hand-in-hand—so off late, writing has taken a backseat. As a publisher, it is my obligation to publish people’s work if they approach me. If anything, I would put the feminist and publisher at a par and the writer would come just a little later. Publishing and writing are usually at loggerheads in my mind—I wish there was a way to breach this impasse. For the last two years Zubaan has been readying itself for me to move out and for the next person to come in place. Once that happens and I am free from publishing, then I will perhaps make space for writing.
Liberalism accompanied with a surge in conservatismIT is increasingly difficult to escape labels. One is either a liberal or not, and along with that description comes a whole set of ready made beliefs. The very act of being able to slot yourself in these neat categories, brings along with an ability to exude certainty from every pore about holding some pre-fabricated positions on some favourite subjects. When a question is framed in terms of these labels, the answers tend to be predictable. When we ask whether the liberal space is growing in India, the truth is that we already know what the answers are likely to be. The optimistic liberal will agree enthusiastically and hunt down data and anecdotal evidence that supports the case while the pessimist will bemoan all that is wrong with everybody else. Likewise, the conservative will launch into a well-rehearsed rant about pseudo-liberals and their pretensions. Any argument becomes less an exercise in meaningful debate and more about scoring points and using hoary gambits. A meaningful examination is possible only when we step away from the coded meaning of these labels and ask more fundamental questions. The experience of liberalism has gone beyond its limited meaning of holding a certain set of views on certain subjects—it involves the ability to lead one’s life with a greater sense of control over it, the desire to accept and be tolerant of other perspectives and the willingness to factor in larger human needs in the choices one makes as an individual. Viewed from this perspective, the question of liberalism and conservatism actually breaks down into questions of continuity and change, open-mindedness and reflexive thought and independence as against a desire to belong to a preformed school of thought. For the Indian urban middle-class, the sense of control over one’s life has by and large increased substantially. Traditional authority structures have diminished in power, leaving more room for the individual. The possibility of social and economic mobility is higher than ever before, leading to a sense of opportunity. In an everyday sense, we see a levelling out of some social differences as the emerging class enters the economic and social mainstream. The idea of having romantic relationships before marriage is becoming more acceptable and socially legitimate and the ability of women to lead their lives with a relatively higher degree of control is increasingly visible. We can see these changes find reflection in our popular culture which displays dramatically lower levels of repression and is open to fresh characterisations. So what of the rising tide of moral policing and chauvinism that we seem to see all around us? What about the regional chauvinism in Mumbai, ultra-nationalistic gestures that hold sports and cinema hostage, right-wing cultural conservatism that sees incidents like the attack on girls in pubs in Mangalore— the list is depressingly long. Add to that the return to a particularly pernicious form of intolerance shown by the Khap Panchayats and it seems likelier that we are returning to a more primitive form of conservatism. While it is undeniable that we have seen a spurt in such incidents in the recent past, two things need to be kept in mind. A lot of these extremely talked-about incidents were of a highly symbolic nature that altered very little on the ground. Women across India do not feel hesitant about going to the pubs nor is there a stream of North Indians in Mumbai who are packing up and going back home. The presence of an overbearing controversy-hungry media has created a huge market for symbolic unrest. The antipathy towards moral policing has ironically created a profitable market for staged stunts that ensure quick national notoriety at very little actual cost. Raj Thackeray has understood how to play this game masterfully. Also, even when these actions touch a genuine chord among people, chances are that these are marginal reactions to the larger mainstream change that is overtaking those who want to hang on to older ways. Threatened by the prospect of being deluged by forces of change, the sentinels of the past react with excessive aggression; in their anger lies not a sign of things to come but of things that are passing into the past. The Khap Panchayat is a classic case in point; the violence is a study in fear rather an exercise of power and needs to be read as such. Of course, there is a rise in conservative sentiment and ironically, this has nothing to do with the past. If in the earlier days, we held on to our way of life for it was the only thing we had which we could call our own, today the desire is to protect our new-found status as consumers. The tendency of living in a self-contained enclave with an exaggerated regard for oneself is visible in a significant section of empowered India. It is this consuming class that reacts with ultra-nationalistic anger and regards all those opposed to the things it holds dear with contempt. This new conservatism with its accompanying signs is an assertive form of revivalism, conflating a mythic sense of nostalgia with notions of patriotism thereby conferring a sense of righteousness and legitimacy on its words and actions. Greater affluence has only made this group more vocal. The internet is awash with this new religion, which operates as a dedicated group and carpet-bombs its view on all available forums. The Indian refusal to choose between things is in evidence here too. What we are seeing is the simultaneously rise of greater liberalism accompanied with a surge in conservatism. On the one hand, modern technology does not only create newer platforms of shared understanding but is enabling revivalism as well, and on the other the liberal shows an inability to move beyond labels that have become ossified with time. The middle class is as liberal with tradition as it is conservative with modernity. Or perhaps it is the liberal who hangs on to tradition while it is the conservative who is using modernity.
Goonj does not just give clothes to the needy. It gives them a bit of their dignity back“Drama or fake photography is not allowed”—the moment I enter Goonj’s cloth processing centre, the poster grabs my attention. That is a rather unusual message right at the entrance of an NGO, I say to myself. But then, that is how Goonj is— unconventional, unpretentious, and if the statistics are to be believed, ubiquitous. Goonj began rather unconventionally. Anshu Gupta, the founder, was working on a story on Habib—a professional collector of unclaimed bodies—during his journalism days. It was then that he came across the most obvious, yet blatantly ignored, reality—the human need for clothes. Once, while accompanying Habib to Khooni Darwaza (near Delhi Gate) to collect a body, Gupta saw that the insufficiently-clad man had died as he could not survive the cold. The scene haunted Gupta’s conscience. “During winters, it is not the cold that kills. I survive winter every year. What makes all the difference is the clothing. I survive the biting cold of this city because I have sufficient layers of clothing to protect me while some person does not,” says Gupta. This was the thought that later became “the peg” behind the cloth movement now called Goonj. Today, Goonj is not just providing clothes to those who don’t have them. The organisation is also giving people their right to a dignified life. While clothes do certainly fall under the category of the bare essentials—roti, kapda aur makan—they also symbolise a social standing and give a sense of confidence to the person wearing them. Gupta feels agitated when people call their ceremonial giving away of used clothes, an act of charity. His question is: how can you say that your are ‘donating’ clothes, when clearly clothes you are ‘discarding’ them? He believes that there has to be a shift from ‘donor’s pride’ to ‘receiver’s dignity’. And that, the so-called donors have to understand that the people using the clothes are in fact doing them a service, not vice-versa. In 1998, when Escorts, the corporate house where Gupta worked, closed down, he decided that “no tie or black shoe will be needed again”. In 1999, armed with nothing (not even a back-up plan, money or job), but with his life partner, Meenakshi, and a few friends in tow, Gupta started Goonj. However, he did not have a clear notion of how the NGO would function. Goonj happened because there was a kind of junoon (passion), he felt. He knew that he had to work in this field. Today, Goonj is leaving its clear mark—it has a presence in 21 states in the country, sends away 45,000 kilos of clothes per month across and is a respected name in the NGO sector. The impact has been so voluminous that people have started emulating the core idea; some are good replicas, others not so. This does not unnerve Gupta, who, right at the beginning, had decided to expand an idea and not an organisation. “We are giving the copyright to copy our ideas,” he says with a grin. However, things were not so successful right from the beginning. In the initial years, Goonj’s core team did all the physical labour such as collecting clothes, washing them, sorting them out and then fixing them, within themselves. Slowly, as the NGO’s reputation spread through word of mouth, people started joining them. And Goonj began to grow. One of the key reasons behind the growth was the organisational skill. Gupta believes that charity is scalable and that any NGO can stay afloat if they can get their act together. “What did Mother Teresa or Baba Amte do? Theirs was certainly a charitable act. I think what helps in scaling-up is not a business model, but the thought process and system,” explains Gupta. He certainly practices what he preaches. One sweeping look inside the rooms of the processing centre, and one knows their secret. Everything, from a small pin to a bedsheet, has a separate space where it is carefully placed. Every material is marked differently, packed differently, and distributed separately. A system has been put in place and is followed rigorously. Though Goonj began with clothes, it has now started distributing stationary items, utensils, medicines, footwear, and most importantly, sanitary napkins to those who need them, yet fail to understand its importance. Parallel to their distribution programme, Goonj runs awareness programmes educating women about menstrual cycles, personal hygiene and encouraging them to talk about taboo issues. No one has ever won a race without jumping off hurdles. The race for Goonj is still on. As Gupta says, “Some challenges have not changed and will not change.” He finds people’s attitude to be the biggest roadblock. People, who happily spend a pretty penny for fancy jackets and caps for awareness campaigns and walks, but are reluctant to spend even half of that amount on collecting clothes for the needy. Perhaps, because it is not a fashionable enough cause. His second-biggest hurdle: cynicism of people and authorities concerned. There is a huge trust deficit towards the NGO sector, which Gupta insists must go. Finally, he believes that funds and logistics will always remain an issue. As his organisation keeps growing, these problems too expand. All this does not stop him from surging forward. Diligently, the Goonj team is working towards the goal of giving people their right to life and dignity back. At the end of my tour, the lasting impression is the smiling faces of women at the processing centre. They wish me luck. As I walk away, their voices fade, but what stays behind is a memory of a lifetime.
Go behind the headlines of Baghdad, London and Washington, with a journalist at his criminal-writing bestTHERE ARE thriller writers, and then, there are those who take readers behind the enemy lines and then proceed to blur all such lines—leaving them confused. Michael Robotham’s The Wreckage doesn’t follow the usual goodguy, bad-guy logic. He treats all his characters, even the basest of them, with a humanity that makes readers pause and rethink. More than the plot or pace (which are both impeccable, by the way), it’s characters who make readers turn the pages. He creates an excellent bunch of them through Ruiz, Luca, Daniela and Holly, and makes the readers care enough to fear for their lives. Robotham’s background in journalism makes him an intelligent writer who keeps his prose crisp as news—this could very well be a non-fiction. The action begins in Baghdad, where the half- American and half-Iraqi, Luca Terracini, is trying to trace billions of dollars worth of missing funds from Iraqi banks. His skin colour and mastery over Arabic helps him infiltrate the darkest corners of the Iraq War. During his investigations, he meets UN representative and accountant, Daniela Garner, also trying to trace millions of missing funds. As they form a team, their investigations begin to unravel a web that spreads to London and Washington. In London, Richard North, an investment banker and perhaps the only man who has any clue to the missing money, gets robbed by Holly Knight and her boyfriend. Soon afterward, he vanishes and Holly finds herself being pursued. She then forms an unlikely alliance with Vincent Ruiz, an ex-policeman and a man she had robbed earlier. However, in this labyrinthine plot the main motivation is the money—and who has it, who wants it and who is ultimately going to pay, are factors that move the racy plot forward. Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960 and grew up in small country towns till he became a cadet journalist in an afternoon newspaper in Sydney. He remained a journalist for 14 years, writing for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Britain and America. In 1993, he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to write autobiographies. Twelve of these non-fiction titles were bestsellers with combined sales of more than two million copies.
Memoir, biography, social history and tribute, Zareer Masani’s book is a good read at many levelsMEMOIRS AND BIOGRAPHIES only touch a chord when they are unflinchingly honest in tone and full of revelations of people and the times they live in. Judged in this light, Zareer Masani’s And All is Said and Done ticks all the boxes. His background as a historian, coupled with his ability to turn an unclouded gaze upon himself and his parents, and his skill as an author, make for an engrossing piece of non-fiction. Drawing on the letters and diaries of his parents, politician Minoo Masani and wife Shakuntala, Masani gives us an intimate look at two different, but charismatic, people—his parents. Though both came from prominent families, there were more differences than similarities—the Masanis were Parsis from Bombay, while Shakuntala’s parents, the Srivastavas, were Kayasths from UP. The twice-divorced Minoo Masani was a Left-wing Congress activist, who eloped with a much younger Shakuntala. (Later, he became a founder of the pro-free-market Swatantra Party, Leader of the Opposition in Parliament and a campaigner against global communism). Shakuntala was brought up wanting for nothing, in a family that essentially thrived under the British Raj. With such high-profile and spirited protagonists, the book is as much a social history and political commentary, as it is a personal memoir. Political heavyweights loom large in the conversations and correspondence between the family and there is an account of Nehru at the breakfast table with Minoo Masani. Inevitably, the political also becomes personal— as Zareer and his mother join Indira Gandhi in the face of his father’s rigid opposition. It is the final straw that breaks the family apart. “Their political differences marked the end of my parents’ marriage; and I paid the price for encouraging the break when I had to cope with my mother’s loneliness and general decline in the decades that followed. Our disillusionment with Mrs Gandhi, especially when she imposed her state of Emergency, made the whole domestic rift seem even more futile,” Zareer writes. In the course of this journey, we get a real taste of post-colonial India and a family that had a prominent role to play at the time. The correspondence between Shakuntala and Masani gives fascinating insights into the entire Indira era. One example is the fact that the author and his mother used code language in their letters—calling Gandhi ‘Bhai’ and Jayaprakash Narayan ‘Russet’, the name of Zareer’s childhood pet, revealing the degree of censorship that existed during that period. There are anecdotes of Shakuntala introducing a young Zareer to her circle of friends in London, from author Arthur Koestler to publisher Hamish Hamilton. Purdah parties in Nainital, musical evenings in Mumbai and intrigues in Indira Gandhi’s Emergency-stricken Delhi; all form the backdrop for the troubles in the writer’s family. Ultimately, this book is a poignant portrayal of the author’s life. The reader is aware of his role as a troubled son going through bitter separations and a prolonged divorce. Their human frailties—and indeed, his own—are laid bare. You see the outcome of the inevitable choosing of sides when parents become combatants. You participate in Zareer’s struggle to accept his sexuality and then live with it in the India of the 1960s. You struggle right along with him as he attempts to find a balance between the rival influences of his parents. Perhaps most of all, you see the love with which a son portrays his mother, right up to the time he holds her ashes and grapples with the ultimate truth of mortality. “Would you capture heaven and earth with a single name? I say to you then, Shakuntala, and all is said.” These are words from the German poet Goethe, which were inspired by Kalidasa’s masterpiece Abhijnanashakuntala. They certainly provide a fitting title to Masani’s book, which has a strong flavour of being a tribute to his mother even when he is describing her faults. When all is said and done, this is one of the better books to have come out this year—whether you are interested in history, politics or simply, good writing.
Writer, anchor and now channel CEO; it’s all about gastronomical art for Sanjeev KapoorIn their journey through life people often make plans and then see them morph into something else altogether. Poet John Keats wished to become a doctor, Sachin Tendulkar wanted to be a tennis player while Masterchef Sanjeev Kapoor saw himself as an architect. Obviously life had different plans for all of them. Perhaps these twists in tales make their stories so much more fascinating and worth-telling. One of the best-known chefs in India today, Sanjeev Kapoor had applied for a catering course at the behest of a friend—as a “back-up plan”—in case he did not make it to the architecture school. As luck would have it, Kapoor ended up joining the cooking course. It was only after he began to have “such a good time” at the Institute of Hotel Management Catering and Nutrition (IHM) in Pusa, New Delhi, that Kapoor thought that he could perhaps do this forever. From then on, there was no stopping him. Today, food is Kapoor’s middle name. And why not? Sanjeev Kapoor is not just a chef—he is an artist. He has single-handedly revolutionised the food scene in the country, changing the way an average Indian dined. For a man this big, he started off small; as an understudy at the ITDC Hotel in 1984. But within two years he had become the Chef at Hotel Ashok in Varanasi. In the early 1990s, while he was busy creating state-of-the-art dishes for food lovers at Centaur Hotel, Mumbai (where he was Executive Chef ), a unique opportunity came knocking at his door. He was offered a one-of-its-kind cookery show by a popular channel—Zee TV. The show was called Shriman Bawarchi. Never heard of it? That is probably because Kapoor suggested that the show be rechristened Khana Khazana. Cookery shows had always been an integral part of television. But for India, this new one was nothing short of a novelty. It went on to become a pioneering show and the longest-running one, carrying on for 18 years. With the help of the show Kapoor brought his own kitchen—moments spent in complete bliss before the oven— into the audience’s drawing rooms. He taught India how to cook in style; not just mix the right ingredients but also present them in harmony. A look at the dishes excited the tastebuds and left one hungry for more. Throughout the 1990s and 2000, lazy or busy women of Indian households remained glued to their television sets with pens and notepads, frantically jotting down recipes of exotic and everyday dishes (served with a twist, of course) then recreating them in kitchens as Sunday special meals. Guiding them through it all was the dimpled, humble and soft-spoken star Chef. Kapoor was clear on his agenda: he was not just running a cooking show. He was sharing with everyone a recipe to a happy hearth at home. After all, the masterchef grew up in one himself. Brought up in a middle-class family, Kapoor was used to seeing his dad help out his mom in the kitchen. Later, his elder brother, too, joined forces with their father to rustle up meals. In his own words, it was all right “to see men cook!” Kapoor also jumped on the bandwagon and at the age of eight was “rolling out perfectly round chapattis”. Such was his eye for perfection that even then he wanted to shape them flawlessly round. So he just “stamped them out of a plate”. These simple ways shaped Kapoor’s “cooking philosophy”—and made Indian food accessible, so that, even a novice could recreate anything “from a maharaja’s feast to an everyday dish”. His mantra; keep it simple, systematic and stylish. After the massive success of the show, he could have sat at home, cooked an occasional meal for his two daughters, and enjoyed a life of retirement. Instead he started opening his own chain of restaurants—Yellow Chilli—doing exceedingly well today. He also wrote some 36 books which sold close to 10 million copies. His website gets 25 million hits a month and if all this was not enough, in 2011 he started a new food channel called, what else, FoodFood. When asked how this idea of a dedicated food channel came about, Kapoor shoots back, “Food channels are a big part of the developed world, so why not here?” A valid question. After all we are a nation of food fanatics. As he puts it “Food has been, is and will always be of prime importance to our existence.” The channel airs 40 shows in total, mostly Indian shows with a smattering of international ones. It has been around for only a year and already the channel has been rated as the 10th most-trusted brand among all TV channels in India. What could be the reason behind its immediate success? Kapoor smiles and says, “Food knows no age, caste, creed or religion. So this channel has the widest possible audience; anybody genuinely interested in cooking enjoys watching it.” From a distance, Kapoor’s life is enviable, especially since his challenges are always met head on and with a smile. Asked about his biggest challenge, the answer comes out quickly, it is scepticism. The kind that made him rethink his decision when he was about to launch the channel. Nearly everyone in the media thought the idea was nothing short of a disaster; after all, who has the time to watch a food channel in this day and age of saas-bahu soaps? Yet, Kapoor had faith. And the rest as they say is history. His stupendous journey is far from its end. Chef, TV presenter, author and now the CEO of a food and lifestyle channel. We were curious to know what’s next for the unstoppable food artist. It is then that he gives his famous smile and informs us that his “infant” channel needs more care than ever. And, as far as his next endeavour is concerned, it is a “let’s wait and watch” period in his head. We can rest assured that whatever it is that is cooking inside Kapoor’s mind, is going on to the table soon. And when Chef Kapoor is at work, we know that the result is going to be one appetising, spicy and generous one.
The land of Bedouins, Jordan seems familiar yet fascinating and worthy of revisitsAll roads may not lead to Jordan—but they should. Admittedly an unlikely choice for a road trip, Jordan fulfills all the criteria one seeks for in a road trip. For instance, highways. There are three main ones in Jordan that crisscross the beautiful countryside in an organised fashion. The second must-have is dependable route maps. Jordan provides plenty of those; then throws in a handful of friendly folks and fnger-licking food as a bonus. And the fact that Arabic and spoken Hindi have so much in common, makes travelling that much simpler. I was in Jordan to attend a wedding with my husband and took the bride’s advice to make a road trip out of it. Totally worth it. Our first stop: Amman, a bustling city where historic and modern mingle with older, more organic neighborhoods in the east rubbing shoulders with the swankier new ones in west, much like an old couple. All neighbourhoods bear the mandated finish of white limestone and even the most iconicretail chains are not easy to spot; for example, the only way to distinguish between a McDonalds, Citibank or an Apple showroom was to spot their signage on the facade. An overall structure of ‘circles’ gives the city a modicum of organisation, but an average visitor may find it all a bit too disorienting, especially since several circles turn out to be something else altogether. But with a little help from street signs, maps and friendly directions in Urdu, broken English and sign language, we were all right in a day or two. Our next stop was Wadi Rum: the incredible mountainous desert landscape. Massive striated rocks dot and define the desert landscape, best navigated on a camel. Millions of years of being buffeted by underwater tides gave the sandstone rocks their unique appearance like ancient stony corals. The colours change drastically— from vermilion to terra-cotta to purple and yellow—in the light of the rising or the setting sun. A leisurely three-hour ride on a camel yields a closer view at the scenic jebels or desert mountains, glimpses of the life of TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and a few Bedouin tents where you can pause for a sip of shai (black tea with a handful of fresh mint and sugar, delicious and refreshing), a puff of nargileh or a picture with the locals. We stayed in camel hair tents, sampled an authentic meal of whole goat, chickens and vegetables cooked in a hole in the earth, danced with the troupe of local musicians in attendance and fell asleep under a blanket of stars. A short 45 minute drive from Wadi Rum, at the end of the Desert Highway lies the southern-most tip of Jordan. Lush with vegetation, cooled by sea breezes and frequented by beach bums, Aqaba is the national beach escape. For a small sea town, Aqaba receives visitors in the hundreds of thousands every year. The main attractions are Roman ruins, a beautiful white mosque, the spice market, fresh seafood (rare in Jordan) and an underwater treasure trove for snorkeling and scuba diving among brilliant coral reefs. The next day we reached Petra as the sun was setting. We strolled down the main street to Petra Kitchen, a restaurant by day and traditional Jordanian fare cooking class by night. Discovered in the 19th century but established in the 6th century as a trade center by the Nabateans, (people of Jordan) Petra has an impressive number of rock-cut monuments and water systems to utilise and harvest a resource precious in a desert country. Past the Djinn blocks— burial chambers in massive stones—lies a tunnel to the underground reservoir and the entrance to the city via the Siq, a natural gorge used as the city’s first line of defense. Walking the gorge lit by the occasional candle below and stars above, we reached Petra by night. Musicians played local melodies on ancient instruments against the background of a Khazneh lit by a thousand candles. A fitting end to the day.
BEING A career woman keeps me on my toes most days, but just occasionally, I manage to take out the time for my close group of friends. In these sessions, we revert to our teenage selves as we begin the goodold arguments about politics, society and inevitably, the role and status of women. With March being the month of International Women’s Day, the majority of us were vocal about the fact that keeping aside just one day or even a month dedicated to women didn’t really mean much. After all, women make up approximately 44.3 per cent of the world’s population. After debating the issue, we finally agreed that most women were simply too busy to care. They were working too hard in the homes, offices, fields and factories to quibble about which day in the year and how many days should be dedicated to them. However, we at DW do care—especially about women who have stood up to be counted and served as role models for others to follow. One such person is Mrinal Pande. Her first story was published when she was only 21 and today she is the author of several books and translations. But being a writer is just part of what she does. She was the first woman editor of Hindustan and later was anchor and editor with NDTV and Doordarshan. Today, she is the chairperson of Prasar Bharati. She also graces the cover of our magazine this month because of the ideals she stands for. A truly democratic person, her writing resonates with sensitivity to women, concern about the divide between small-town and big-town India and her sorrow at the slow erosion of vernacular languages. Once we managed to coax the exceedingly busy author onto our cover, we reached out to more women to send us their stories. Intrepid traveller Sudha Mahalingam shares her trip to Borneo and her wonderful images with us. Former editor of Femina, Sathya Saran, agreed to come on as a guest columnist, with a thought-provoking piece on motherhood. Sweta Srivastava Vikram is a US-based upcoming writer who shares her quest for identity and definition in the ‘Foreign Despatches’ section. A chance encounter with Kolkata-based Sunandini Banerjee brought us face-to-face with her stunning prints and collages. Before we knew it, we had very diverse and interesting voices speaking in our pages. Even this small list of women doing such interesting work is very heartening. It made me realise that it isn't a matter of dedicating a day or even a month to their achievements; the way I see it, history is being made every day.
TERROR ATTACK\\ In a suspected coordinated attack, an Israeli embassy car exploded in front of the embassy in New Delhi. This incident took place right after a bomb was defused in an Israeli embassy vehicle in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. An Israeli diplomat, who was inside the car at the time of the blast, suffered splinter injuries and was admitted to a private hospital. According to initial investigation reports, two motorcycle-borne youths, tailing the vehicle in the high security zone, placed ‘something’ in the rear of the car, when it stopped at a traffic signal. Minutes later, there was an explosion and the vehicle burst into flames. The bomb used was of an unusual type—without a timer or detonator. Investigators are awaiting a detailed report by the Central Forensic Lab, and the use of RDX or a nitrate base hasn’t been ruled out. Home Minister P. Chidambaram said that the terror attack was carried out by well trained persons and that the intended target was the Israeli diplomat’s wife. Israel has blamed Iran for this attack, while Iran has denied the allegation.
LITERATURE \\ The Jaipur Literature Festival 2012 began on a low note this year due to raging protests within the country by Islamic fundamentalists. They were agitating against celebrated author Salman Rushdie in a bid to stop his arrival in the country. Despite this, Rushdie was committed to attending the festival after a gap of five years. However, just days before he was due to show-up, he decided against his visit, citing security concerns as the main reason for not attending the festival. He said he had received concrete threats and stated, “I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to ‘eliminate’ me.” He claimed that he was cancelling his visit in the interests of his family as well as the safety of other visitors to the festival. However, the Maharashtra police later declined the sharing of any such information with Rushdie, saying that they had no information that gangsters or paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld had planned to eliminate Rushdie. But they also said that they were not aware if Rajasthan police had any such inputs and shared the information with Rushdie. Reports published in The Hindu later claimed that it was a plot invented by local intelligence officials in Rajasthan to keep Rushdie from attending the festival. According to the same report, the festival administration sources informed the paper that the threat to Rushdie came from two hit men indentified as “Altaf Batli” and “Aslam Kongo”. However, the Mumbai police denied the existence of the assassins after scanning through their database. Adding fuel to fire, four renowned authors—Hari Kunzru, Ruchir Joshi, Amitava Kumar and Jeet Thayil—read excerpts from Rushdie’s banned book Satanic Verses in an unscheduled session, risking arrest. As word got out, protests began within Jaipur, compelling them to leave the city the next day. On the last day of the festival, a video conference was organised at the venue, in which Rushdie was to address the people. But due to protests by the Jaipur-based Milli Council, the video conference was scrapped on the very afternoon it was to take place. Several activists of the Milli Council gathered at the venue claiming the conference was an insult to Muslims. Rushdie, in an interview with the television news channel NDTV 24x7, blamed politics for this. Calling the decision “awful”, he said that it was somehow linked to the elections in UP. Freedom of expression has become the hot topic in the country post the festival, with many quarters condemning the organisers and the government for their weak stand. The government’s failure to act on the matter is also being seen as the politics of minority appeasement.