kkkkkkkkkkYet the law and the judiciary has been inactive in dealing with the issues—there has been no radical overhaul of laws relating to rape or sexual assault. In fact, there has been a rather steady decline in the conviction rates of rapists with ever-fewer victims getting justice. The issue has become so serious that even the more reticent politicians of the country have started to comment on the phenomenon. During the recent Parliamentary session, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde remarked, “Serious crimes against women have continuously increased during the period 2009-11. We need to adopt appropriate measures for swift and salutary punishment to the persons found guilty of violence against women.” The Home Minister also added that police chiefs have to increase the number of women personnel in their respective organisations. “The overall representation of women in police forces should be increased through affirmative action. There are only 83,829 women police in our country as on January 2012,” he said. And Shinde stated several reasons for the rising graph of crimes against women. Relaxing of social norms, relaxing of family control, adverse sex ratio and proximity of colonies of the affluent with the underprivileged. Surprisingly, he found no fault with the Police in tackling crimes. However, most single women have some interface with police. Recent trespasses on women’s modesty have been more incriminating and often the perpetrators have been police personnel. There is an euphemism in India regarding harassment of women. It is sugar coated and shrouded in a sweet word called eve teasing. It is about women becoming recipients of hate attacks. It is about men turning into monsters. It is about women damned because she chooses to or has to work late. Because she dresses “wrong”. What is this twisted link that exists between what a woman wears and does and between her safety? What makes an institute such as Vivekananda Vidyavardhaka Sangha issue a mandate asking every female student and staff to wear bindis and bangles to ensure the safety of the people on campus. In India the answers are not clear. To understand the issue, DW spoke to two women— Urvashi Butalia, who runs India’s first feministic publication and to Brinda Bose, Associate Professor at Department of English, University of Delhi, for their take in the matter in our Issue of the month.
URVASHI BUTALIA// I am not sure that the recent spate of attacks that we have been witnessing currently are different from what we have seen in the past. The question is why we are seeing more of it. I believe that there are many reasons behind the rise. One of them is the increasingly sharp difference between the rich and the poor in the semi-urban and urban areas of the cities. Gated communities that are a part of the entire NCR and in several cities across India, create strong levels of distance and difference. They also exacerbate a lot of tensions which are already there, and just get sanctioned by the presence of such islands of prosperity. The fact of new kinds is that the jobs which have opened up as a result of globalisation have led to a lot of women joining the workforce, stepping out to do jobs that they did not do before. Although these (jobs) are not large in number, both the jobs and the women are becoming more and more visible. Women are also accessing spaces and going out more. There is a kind of anger in the society that is already suffering with such a lot of unemployment when they see half of the population successfully landing jobs. It is also a case of women being “those who are not supposed to get out to the field”, they are now taking a share of the limited pie. That and the fact that women perform quite well in the workplace, sometimes better than their male colleagues, and then return home to manage to take care of the household, creates jealousy, tension, anger and resentment of sorts among a lot of men. All that finds an expression in one kind of violence to which women are extremely vulnerable to, which is usually sexual in nature. I believe that there is also the fact that there is a kind of modernisation and modernity coming into India’s cities. A lot of women from the semi-urban and rural sections are stepping out into the cities and leaving their homes behind. These are not the women that we spot in the shopping mall or in the BPO or the IT sector, but are the domestic helps and the daily wage earners from Bihar or Jharkhand. They are the ones who are most vulnerable to exploitation because their earnings do not allow them to live in places which have a modicum of law and order, security or protection. There is a general breakdown of law and order. There is also a general breakdown of public infrastructure. The public spaces and travel vehicles are not equipped to provide that extra protection to the vulnerable people— why only the women, it is not safer for the senior citizens and the children, when the streets are badly lit and when the public transport is in shambles. Then there is a creamy layer of modern, urban, educated women who see no reason as to why they will have to lock themselves down in their houses, who feel that they have the right to be out on the streets—and rightly so. They too become targets and it seems that because they are doing that they are “asking for it”. I believe the collection of all these things leads to the thing that is always talked about—which is because some women dress in a particular way or they move around later in night, they are asking for it. In this of list reasons I would think it is at the bottom of the ladder. But it is a reason that gets most picked up; because it is convenient to state that women are moving out of the boundaries that have been set for them and thereby they are being targetted.
BRINDA BOSE// All of us realise that the problem of safety of women is a pan-Indian one. Because I have not systematically studied reports and tables on cases of violent attacks on women in India, I would not like to comment on the actual numbers. But there certainly appears to be a sense that they have increased, which I think is more to do with the fact that the issue has now become a focus of media interest, as well as the fact that there are more ways for stories to circulate in the media and more people accessing them. All of which is not a bad thing at all, if attention is drawn to the issue and it begins to knock on public consciousness in a much bigger fashion. As I said, it is probably that we know more because of greater reportage of attacks. It may also of course be due to other factors like more women being out and about the cities, more women living alone or driving alone today compared to a decade ago, but obviously the answer does not lie in women being less independent or more prudent and ‘careful’ but in the enhancement of safety measures in cities and the greater policing of crime. It is important that we see freedom for women to live and work and dress as they please as a right rather than as a blight on our society. All cities have always had a mix of different realities, spaces and classes, is that not what makes up a city? I am not comfortable with finding reasons for increased crime against women in the notion that it is bound to happen when rural boors have recourse to ogling sophisticated city women in the NCR—which is the purport of the idea that conflicting spaces are now slowly merging into one another, is it not? I think this is stereotyping the semi-urban and rural people most dangerously, and trying to fix scapegoats for what is a larger malaise. Of course, when there are interfaces between different communities and beliefs there may be clashes in expectation and reaction, but I think this is what makes an urban space exciting and dynamic, and would be true of inner-city neighbourhoods just as much as suburban ones. I am sure ‘citizen communities’ need to step up their efforts to spread greater and more urgent awareness about crimes against women as well as to make the spaces within their control safer for women to move freely in. Many of the crimes against women in latenight car-drops home from work are perpetrated because of the callousness of corporate employers in securing minimum safety for their female workers in particular. I do not know of the statistics in demographic spread of crimes against women, except that it is normal perhaps that some cities emerge as ‘safer’ than others for women, which may also be something to do with how many women go out to work, live alone, are out later at night—in terms of sheer numbers— in those cities comparatively, rather than to do with ‘northern’ or ‘southern’ or ‘western’ character, especially of men. It is quite likely that the number of such women in Delhi and the NCR are many times that of its equivalent in another city of the south or west of India—in which case the number of cases of assault against women will expectedly be higher in the north? I would not like to essentialise the character of any region as more brutish than another, but of course some cities are always far more dangerous to live in for women due to a large number of reasons. Finally, I do not think that the panels and commissions do enough, and yes, sometimes they do more damage because many of those who sit in power on them are incredibly conservative about women’s rights! They consider their function to be that of vigilantes rather than of securing freedom for women to live as they wish. If women, who head bodies set up to investigate and frame policies for controlling crime against women, harbour the deep-seated notion that women must behave according to certain norms set for them failing which they invite assault and violence, then they are policing the women instead of policing the criminals.
Have we come to see the world in a way that allows us to exercise and condone corruption?CORRUPTION is hardly a new phenomenon in India but in the past few months we have seen corruption of a scale never witnessed before. Every week brings in a new scandal. Corruption seems to have moved beyond its permanent abode (viz politics and the bureaucracy) into sports, the military, media, the judiciary, religion and godmen and corporate India. It is clear that the problem does not relate to isolated individuals but is of a systemic nature. Of course, corruption is by no means unique to India. But we do manage an impressive ninth rank in the world corruption charts. According to the same study, 54 per cent of Indians claimed to have paid a bribe in the past one year. It begs the question as to whether there is a cultural element to this phenomenon, without descending into gross cultural stereotypes that speak of corruption as a character trait. Is it possible that corruption is a manifestation of the ways in which we have collectively learnt to respond to certain contexts? Have we come to see the world in a way that allows us to exercise and condone corruption? At the heart of the Indian response lies the ambivalent relationship we have with the idea of power, particularly that of power acquired through man-made mechanisms like a designation or political office. Power is seen less as an instrument of making an impact but more as a condition that modifies one’s born station. Power makes all of us rulers, whatever may be the size of the territories. The fondness of visible signs of power (sirens, badges, entourage), as with the extreme touchiness when the less powerful question us, all point to the implicit mental model of power we carry. The election exists to pick rulers not public servants and promotions anoint new despots. It is revealing to see how naked this model of power is; a despotic boss who rides roughshod over his subordinates sees nothing wrong in enacting rituals of greasy subservience in front of his own boss. The message is clear—hierarchy itself must be respected and all power and all modes of use of power are legitimate. Hierarchy exists in every facet of life and we measure ourselves anxiously with those against whom we benchmark ourselves. Even in the private sector there exists a presumption that one should be paid what one’s batchmate gets for no other reason than that the two lie on the same social platform. What this wholehearted embrace of power does, is to legitimise all forms in which it comes to be used. Separated from the purpose for which it was created, it lives on in its mutant form, and recognises few boundaries of right and wrong. A system gets created around this mode of using power. Institutional power that is acquired, rather than in-born, is particularly difficult to digest. Given the deeply-rooted nature of Indian social organisation, where everyone has a defined place, and there exists a great certainty about rules and conventions that govern our lives, we find it difficult to navigate a world where rules do not carry the same invisible certitude. Rules are so visibly constructed by human beings that they carry little moral sanctity. They become frameworks within which we carry out negotiations with local circumstances. New social formations do not have the heft of the older (more defining) categories such as the community. And we struggle with figuring out what is appropriate behaviour for a ‘neighbour’ or an ‘elected representative’. New rules do not imprint themselves with the same finality. The fact that we see everyone around us display the same ambivalence re-inforces the doubts we carry about them. The same does not apply when we are in a developed country; there it becomes apparent that these rules are non-negotiable. The idea of using acquired power for socially-correct reasons has never really been ingrained in us. For all the railing against corruption, in our personal lives we are happy to excuse ourselves from the prescriptions we proffer. The belief that our values are implanted within us, because of a past that is mythically rather than historically defined, makes it easier to believe that all actions are therefore suffused with values by definition. Actions comes pre-fitted with presumed propriety and the outside world is not taken that seriously. By giving the individual endless latitude in dealing with his immediate circumstances, we engage with the world as hagglers, trying to hustle a better deal. Every ounce of power earned becomes useful leverage in extracting a little more. In this view of the world, power is useless unless converted into some form of currency. The awareness of its transience lends urgency to this need. The powerful thus create a system around the extraction of value from their good fortune. Patronage, rather than competency, becomes the key operating principle. Every kacheri, RTO office and passport office has an institutionalised set of touts, brokers and middlemen who get the work done for a fee. Citizens can carry out some civil action if they so desired. But the truth is that even as we moan, we take no interest in dealing with the graft right in front of us. Is there a reason why we are seeing so much corruption today? A change that we have seen in the past few years is the entry of the market into more arenas of our life. It is interesting to note how easily India has embraced the market. As a mechanism, it carries great resonance with the Indian ability to see the world as a place where we carry out negotiations. The market has given everyone a common vocabulary in which to transact. The market legitimises the pursuit and use of power for personal gain. Of course, when regulated well, the market is not allowed to penetrate all walks of life. In India, given the learnt collective tolerance for the personal use of power, the market seems to be present everywhere. For now certainly we seem united by corruption.
A simple move to set up a school in NCR’s slums led to India’s first profit-for-all voluntary organisationHolistic education is one which imparts an applicable set of skills. To do all that a child needs exposure to books—lots and lots of them along with newspapers, storybooks, and educated adults. But does an Indian child, especially he in that impoverished semi-urban, rural and urban fringes, receive all that help? Katha began its journey by asking this simple question. Its inference was obvious—basic, primary schooling in India left underprivileged children with a handful of textbooks (often hand-me-downs with pages missing) and zero exposure to reading. Whom does a child in a family of illiterates, wage-labourers turn to, to know more? Some successfully turn towards Katha, the voluntary organisation which helps India’s underprivileged children through their primary schools, reading centres and libraries. The best bit about Katha is the means they employ to teach the children enrolled with them. You thought education was only through boring text books. Think again, as even illustrated storybooks can be used to explain complicated issues such as nanotechnology, marine biology or trigonometry. As Executive Director of Katha Geeta Dharmarajan points out—what is a subject, if not a story waiting to be told? Today through cooperative action and activism, Katha brings together parents and teachers to boost children’s interest in reading. It brings together the colours of his or her country alive to children across socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural divides—with volunteers and community members. It brings storytelling techniques and expertise to people across age groups. The story of Katha starts some 2,000-3,000 years ago. We do not kid you. The New Delhi-based voluntary organisation derives its vision from the age-old educational traditions of Bharat, a land where learning was a pleasure activity, imparted through stories. “In India storytelling was always treated as the more effective form of learning. There were so many ways of telling a story; through theatre, dance recitals, and puppet theatre. And Bharata Natyashastra encompassed all these. Natyashastra was put in place to take the so-called knowledge of the Gods to humans on earth. We at Katha, have faith in the way in which communication was carried out 2,000-3,000 years ago, which always incorporated a pleasure principle. Learning was not arduous, tedious or difficult,” she adds. Katha began with an idea that students would learn through stories. In reality two kinds of stories—one for leisure and another for learning. The team also decided to source the right kind of stories from across the nation and the world. “Originally I hail from Tamil Nadu. It was there while working as the Director of Indian National Trust of Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and for an orphanage that my duties took to me to the rural sections on a regular basis. There while speaking to children, parents and teachers about education, health care and infrastructure, I always felt that the people carried within them a sense of defeat. They had reconciled to an idea that poverty was a matter of karma. Poverty is not about karma. It is a state that can be alleviated,” she adds. But before she could do more, Dharmarajan shifted to the National Capital Region. Her introduction to Delhi’s municipal schools was through Govindpuri; with its lakhs of people surviving in utter squalor and poverty. The schools she visited there had students who could barely read. It was then that she hit upon an idea of a magazine stocked with fun and informative tales, which made reading so much fun that children would put that extra effort in. In 1988, Tamasha was launched. It was to make stories from across the world come alive on paper, all translated in Hindi. Along with Tamasha, Dharmarajan also began the first library for children of Govindpuri (in Dharmarajan’s own garage). By the third issue Tamasha became a hit and UNICEF picked up quite some copies of it, providing a decent profit to Dharmarajan. With that sum (`20,000) and a year-old experience behind her, she officially started Katha on September 8, 1989. Their first project was to start a school at Govinpuri. Parents agreed to send their children to school. “We calculated that between all of us, we could manage 50 children. The parents had given us their consent to send the students. But around five turned up,” she remembers with a chuckle. It was then that this Executive Editor, and visionary, learnt her hard lesson—poor families did not send their primary bread-earners away to school. It was there that we found a figure (`600) which was required to put food on the table for a month. We started to pay the mothers that sum in exchange they would let us bring the children to school. Thus we started,” says Dharmarajan. Bribery was the way out then—presently the way has changed. And how. Lakhs of students are trained by the first batches of Katha schools. These children will one day, hopefully, train several more and the dominoes effect will pull the evil of illiteracy down. One glance through the pages of the website, it is easy to see their innovative methods have worked. Their students have also come back and joined Katha serving as trainees, teachers and accountants. These are people who are breaking the poverty-karma equation. Their dreams combined with Katha’s effort, gives a polish to the dream of India Shinning.
An interesting perspective on time but lacks originalityWHAT IF THERE were no clocks in the world? What if you did not know what time of the day it is or going to be? How different would the world have been? Would you have lived your life any differently? Mitch Albom’s latest novel The Time Keeper urges you to ponder over these questions and makes you wonder the relevance of man’s obsession with measuring every second of the day, every day of the month. An author relevant to his times, Albom chooses an unusually interesting protagonist to help his readers understand the “meaning of life” or the meaning of time—the inventor of the world’s first clock—Father Time. As is his usual style, the novel shuffles between two timelines (the past and the present) with three story tracks running parallel to one another. One is a story of a man (Father Time) obsessed with counting everything that is humanly possible, set in a centuries old era when no time measuring devices had been invented on earth, and the other two are the tales of two modern-day individuals (a teenage girl and an old, wealthy businessman) who are used to measuring time as the most natural process of their lives. The young girl, hurt in love, wants to end her life, while the old businessman diagnosed with cancer, wants to bypass death and live forever. Albom paves the way for an interesting yet trite perspective on the most precious thing man considers today after money, when Father Time meets the girl and the businessman to teach them the value of time. He learns this lesson himself after being banished to a cave for centuries and forced to understand the phenomenon he had set in motion by counting time. There are a few obvious references to Biblical stories which I did not find too appealing. And around the end of the novel, Father Time assumes the role of Dickens’ The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come to show characters their future. Yet as always, Albom’s everyday characters make it very easy for the reader to relate to them and work well for him. The novel is thought-provoking though some of its lessons—it is never too soon and never too late for spending more time to be with the people you love—are reminiscent of Morrie’s aphorisms from Albom’s debut novel Tuesdays with Morrie. Hailed as his most heartfelt novel yet, The Timekeeper is inspiring, as long as you have not read any of his others.
A lucidly-written, balanced study of constrasts by one of the better-known historians writing on IndiaMUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH, born as Mahomedali Jinnahbhai, in his vision for a new land for his Muslim brothers wanted six provinces and a sperate state of Pakistan. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or the Mahatma opposed the partition with all his being. Interestingly, the two states formed during partition—Pakistan and India—even in the later days were to embody the most fundamental differences between the two men; how they were born, how they were raised and not in the least, the religion that the two belonged. In their essence they were human. But the course of history has ennobled them to near prophets (in the strict sociological meaning of the word). In sociology, prophets are charismatic people who are first-class attention winners. Through their discourse they provoke absolute resentment or evoke absolute sympathy. And Jinnah and Gandhi, have the characteristics that can lead them to be christened thus. One can see that prophetic quality by reading all the tomes that have been dedicated to them—they have been vilified or hailed. Does Roderick Matthews successfully break the mould and manage to put forth a realistic idea of what the two were? He does. Matthew for the best part of the book sees the two as they were, distinct personalities whose differences merely served to put them further apart. Matthew points out that the two great men differed on three points—nature of the country they lived in, the procedure in which to end the colonial rule and the methods that should be used to persuade the colonialists to leave. For one Matthew draws our attention to the detail that Gandhi was an individual, personal being (hence his worries about sexual behaviour and diet). Gandhi was also concerned with personal and national reformation which was, in many cases, one and the same for him (how people could be better authorities and government by being better people). Jinnah, on the other hand, worked for self-determination and political rights, ‘isms’ that were far more western in their narratives and thereby more understandable. While one worked from inside-out, the other worked outsidein. Gandhi believed that good people would make a strong nation. Jinnah knew that a strong nation would have strong (good) people. The last time when I picked up a book which dealt with the past was when teachers at school held me at gunpoint. I am sure there are several like me around—those who would not bother reading tomes unless there was a prize or punishment awaiting. This book catches the reader by surprise. Matthew caught my attention from the first chapter—and there was no flashback to the school days for yours truly. He has taken the trouble to understand the culture and times of the country he has looked at. He has obviously done his research. Matthews ‘assessments’ do not carry the colour of “Hark! I was right”. He lets his readers decide similarities or differences and keeps things less scholarly (a good thing for some readers but not for all). Personally, the de-elitisising of history works. The questions raised by the author are common enough; how did Jinnah, who started out as a secular liberal, end up a Muslim nationalist? How did a god-fearing moralist and social reformer like Gandhi become a national political leader? And how did their fundemental divergences lead to the birth of two countries that have shaped the political history of the subcontinent? Matthews decodes these questions on behalf of his readers by analysis which has been attempted before. Where Matthews gets brownie points is his methodology—he demystifies both the leaders and makes them as human as they can be made. He does so in a lucid and unbiased manner; at least he tries his best to. Personally, I felt Jinnah was left hanging a bit, rather there was more to Jinnah’s “vision” than what was attributed to him. What Matthew does say is, “here are your two leaders—they are equally indecisive, they are trying equally hard to make a better time and they are both human”. It is finally upto the reader to decide who is the poster boy. Do not expect a heavy, scholarly tome in Jinnah Vs Gandhi.
Vivid colours of Kerala captured in the creations of K.G. BabuA friend of K.G. Babu, who also happens to be a colleague, informs me that Babu is a reticent man. He speaks only when prodded and prefers to pour his words into his canvases instead. That to know him one needs to understand a multitude of concepts; the colour green, its role in the lives of people who stay in Kerala and why some people prefer to stay within the womb of nature. Or why Babu chooses to live and work in the backyard of Thrissur, where he grew up in a modest home; its backyard opening out into a grove. His childhood was spent a short walk away to lush jungles, waterfalls, rivulets and all the other abundance that Kerala has been blessed with. I was also asked to examine why Babu chose to leave the bustle of Dubai (he received an opportunity to collaborate with a famous international artist there) and comforts it provided, to return home to Kerala’s cultural capital. A visit to Kerala is difficult proposition. Instead it is simpler to look at Babu’s creations which were recently exhibited at the NIV Art Gallery in NCR’s quieter Neb Sarai area. If the artist is silent, his vividly arresting canvases—collectively called In Spirit with Nature—speak volumes. So, what goes on in Babu’s head and what prompts him to adopt hyperréalisme? Babu believes that his present style crept into his art slowly; it was a natural, organic growth and progression from being a portrait artist (a craft for which he is famous in his home state). As he began to adopt the style more and more, albeit unconsciously, his friends were left astounded with his level of finesse. After conversations with his colleagues, friends and a former professor at Trisshure Art College, he truly began to indulge in the style. He confesses that his modus operandi as an artist is to capture his subjects on his portable camera. But he does not paint them as is. Babu derives inspiration from the images and takes an artist’s liberty (or licence, call it what you will) to enlarge the eyes (as if the image is being reflected on the surface of a dewdrop) and then juxtaposes them with nature. Nature is the overriding theme with tropical lushness of Kerala as its leitmotif—as is apparent in the abundance of bamboo groves, which become his backdrop on several occasions. The iota of artificial or reminiscence of civilisation (depicted through the clothes that his subjects wear) are ‘naturalised’ and adopted into the backdrop as well. The pocket of a child’s shirt curls up like a leaf or a newly-opened bud, women’s floral nighties and scarves become a part of the foliage, a lime green frock complements a leaf in the background or a deep purple shirt reflects the lights and shadows of moonlit night in the bamboo groves. Babu’s subjects are never alone (except on one or two occasions) even when he paints them as solitary objects. There are grasshoppers, dragon-flies, parakeets, macaws, monkeys and fruit-bats, which sneak into the scene or boldly pose with the human subjects. An avocado dragon-fly rests on a child’s forehead while an ruby-red one rests on a shoulder complimenting the child’s claret frock and bindi. As a young woman stares at a red and yellow bug, one realises that it is difficult to separate the flora and fauna; the thin, white antenna of a dragon-fly droops like a bough and the dragonflies merge with the curled up leaves. That is when it strikes you; the point is not to differentiate of course but to grasp nature in all its entirety. Perhaps which is why Babu finds his best muses among the Tribals of Trisshur. He was introduced to them after his brother (also an artist) married a Tribal woman. When Babu met his new relatives, he saw in them an indomitable spirit which was one with nature. There are no points of separation in a life of a jungle-dweller—the lives of every creature and tree and man are intricately woven together. While the reticent artist’s action starts with an urban process of capturing the light and darkness through his lenses, when he paints, he tries to imbibe what the Tribals feel (the oneness with the whole creation). Thus Babu’s creations reflect the sensitive tolerance and acceptance of the tribal way of life. The faces look peaceful, reflective and contemplative. Part of the peace comes from within the artist himself. The same friend who introduced Babu said that when he gets the time Babu loves to introspect and reach within himself for peace. However, as an artist, his expressions have been, on more occasions, directly impacted by the civil society. Babu was deeply affected by a singular incident in which a child was sexually exploited by a prominent religious leader. The violence meted out by the powerful and the vulnerability of the child and the unfairness of the whole situation is depicted on one of his canvases in which a grasshopper strikes at a unripe fruit while resting on a child’s forehead. The girl looks on mutely. While trying to decide on a “title” for the painting, words failed Babu. Nothing came close to describing the horror of the situation—and he left it as is. One of the reasons why all of his canvases carry just numbers. Sometimes, it is imperative for the viewer to feel more than merely see. As an artist, he implores us (the viewer) to put ourselves in the situation. As he did. His earlier paintings were more lush and green. But as he spent more hours in the company of the people he painted, his canvases became darker, and deeper shades of blue and purple started to seep into them. The indigo in Babu’s later works depicts the silence—that gap—which exists between the world of those who have embraced nature in all its beauty and terrifying colours, and the civilisation that constantly tries to breach nature to tame it. Can we understand the Tribal people at all? For K.G. Babu, the answer is an emphatic no. It is impossible to do so, as long as we are submerged in the trappings of civilisation, comfort and normality. “Urban people cannot really be like the rural or jungle dwellers. I have seen a tribal man derive happiness even from a small payment of `20. While towns seem to thrive on dissatisfaction and materialistic cravings, Tribal, jungle dwellers live in an austerity that is impossible for us to imagine. But they live a life that is so much more fulfilling, rich and content. I will not call them happy as theirs is a harsh life. But they see themselves as contented. It is a matter of discipline and inner peace which we all need to learn,” he explains. This characteristic of making the best out of every situation separates Babu’s concept of us and them and that lacuna was felt by him as well. Despite numerous interactions he could never be really one of them. As a result, he felt that unfathomable silence depicted by the deep shades of blue and indigo. The canvases of K.G. Babu shares a striking similarity with the art of Binoy Verghese, also an artist born in Kerala and now living in New Delhi. Both create canvases that are vast and lush. The canvases thrive in a solidity highlighted through subtle light and shade. As is the case with hyperrealistic images which are 10 or more times the size of a original photographic reference, both retain high-resolution of colour and detail. However, while Verghese prefers the airbrush, Babu admits that he is more at home with the brush. He loves to use acrylic which is easier to manipulate as his first base and then once he is happy with the result, he finishes off with the oil. And the result is simply glorious.
Achal Aggarwal is obsessed with perfectly-cooked food which tastes, and looks, goodFor all who survived the good-old 1990s here is a pop quiz—who was that grinning man who ruled your hearts, stomachs and television sets? If you saied Sanjeev Kapoor then you are spot on! Chef Sanjeev Kapoor has inspired a whole generation of chefs, including a young Delhi boy, who grew up watching Kapoor’s Khana Khazana. Like other youngsters, he dreamt that one day he, too, would be like Kapoor—teaching India its spices. But the boy did not just dream—he became a famous chef much like his inspiration. Today, Achal Aggarwal is a known name in the foodie circle. He is one of those rare Indians who can treat Japanese food just right, like it is done in the country. According to the Sous Chef, when he first saw Kapoor he took seconds to decide that he wished to be a chef. He remembers that he was watching Sanjeev Kapoor cook, when something clicked in his brain. Being the meritorious middle-class boy, Aggarwal believed that it was best that he kept his dreams to himself till the time he could make himself heard; apparently no parent wished to see their beloved son become a bawarchi. Instead, Aggarwal took the mommy’s boy route—in the pretext of helping his mother, he began to experiment with dishes he saw being cooked on television. For a while the charade went well. “The family was happy gorging on the dishes that I cooked,” till the day he was banned from the kitchen. The reason: the young man belonging to a strict Hindu family had cooked beef. The ‘lifelong’ ban was lifted after several years. But more of that later. He might have been banned from the kitchen, but he pursued his hotel management course from the Institute of Hotel Management Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition in Meerut. Afterwards, he joined Hotel Metropolitan (Sakura) where, to his surprise, he was put into the Japanese Kitchen. The selection procedure, he tells us, was unique and just a little bit absurd. While chefs are usually asked to prepare a dish or two to get a job, Aggarwal and other candidates were asked to sketch a fruit basket placed before them. That was that. Based on his sketching skills, he got his first job. “They probably judged me by my precision with which I made the sketch. One can not prepare the perfect Japanese plate without precision,” he explains. In the beginning Aggarwal was not all that pleased with his job as the cuisine did not excite him much. “I thought, why Japanese food? What is there to even cook in it? They do not use spices and are happy eating raw fish,” he says. Once he began learning more, he realised that Japanese food was so much more. The Japanese style of cooking left a deep impact on him. So much so that even if he is making a contemporary Indian or a spicy Mexican dish, he makes sure that vegetables are cut in uniform shapes. It irks him if the ingredients are not ‘right’. A Japanese effect indeed! Sakura was a great learning curve, but it was far from what he wanted. Like every other dreamy-eyed young man and woman who enters the kitchen, he, too, wished to work with the Taj Group of Hotels and the Oberoi Group. With his second job, that dream came true. This time, he opted for the Indian Kitchen, at the Rajvilas, Oberoi Group, Jaipur. As fate would have it, he was, by mistake, put in the Continental Kitchen—one of the biggest mistakes of his life. For someone who called himself a chef, he failed to make a decent omelette. “My Chef asked me to make an omelette. I thought that he was asking me to make a Japanese omelette, so I began hunting for a square pan (yes, the Japanese like their omelettes square). The Chef, however, was not amused. He asked me to make a ‘regular round one’,” he remembers with a chuckle. Aggarwal started making the regular round one. In India, when you make an Indian masala omelette we put dollops of fat in it to fry it till golden brown. In the Continental Kitchen that is short of a disaster. Aggarwal’s masala omelette was hurled straight back at him. The Chef kicked him out. But Aggarwal was not ready to give up. He went back and grovelled till he was allowed back to learn the art of the perfect omelette. In the following week, all he made were omelettes—30 of them in six days. It took all of the 30 omelletes to convince the Chef de Cuisine that Aggarwal could cook. His Chef may have finally known but Aggarwal’s parents still remained in the dark about their son’s intentions. One Diwali night found Aggarwal’s relatives asking him to cook dinner—since he was studying hotel management. Till that time Aggarwal had not revealed his plan of becoming a chef to his parents. Nevertheless, he cooked the meal which comprised of paneer makhani, Gujarati kadhi, bhindi masala and rice. Aggarwal says that his father figured out his intentions by simply looking at the meticulously prepared meal. The decision worried him, nonetheless, he gave Aggarwal two years’s time to make a success of it. If he could build a respectable career in these two years he could go on. Today, 12 years later, Chef Aggarwal is the Sous Chef of Megu, The Leela Hotels. He has worked in some of the best kitchens of the country including a Michelin Star restaurant. He has worked with some of the best Chefs of the world, some of who gifted him kitchen knives. He modestly tells us that he loves his knives a lot and carries them around everywhere. He says he is a bit fussy about them (in reality, he absolutely hates it if you touch them). But then, why won’t he? Those finely chopped vegetables and the perfectly shaped fishes we love so much are a by-product of those knives.
FREE time is a rare occurrence in a working woman’s life. When I managed to grab some recently, I wanted to wile it away by doing—well—absolutely nothing and found myself before the idiot box, after years. While surfing the channels I found that the idiot box had done the unthinkable, gotten sillier. That realisation made me nostalgic of the good-old days of television (1990s), when mega serials meant 53-episode-long epics such as Bharat Ek Khoj. My contemporaries might remember Bharat Ek Khoj and Katha Sagar fondly. They were infortainment for both the young and the old. They exposed us to history and literature and great doses of robust writing and scripts. Such serials were inspirational—after all they were directed by one of the best directors of India, Shyam Benegal. For years now, Benegal’s films have been about visceral representations of Indian reality. He has explored the theme of inequality in all his films through some recurring roles; the oppressive landlord, the corrupt official, the struggling tribal woman and the villager trying to break free. A sensitive director, Benegal has also dealt with the urban milieu passionately—in Bhumika he explored an urban woman’s quest for identity, with Kalyug he revisited the Mahabharata, taking us through a modern interpretation of the epic set within a wealthy business family. He has always engaged in different narrative styles, like in Suraj Ka Satvan Ghora, where the story is told from different perspectives. There are several other examples of this man’s sheer genius; how he always tries to bring the mundane and the margins to the mainstream. His Well Done Abba may not have been a ‘hit’, but it did put the twin issues of employment and government schemes in Andhra Pradesh to the forefront. He has truly viewed India through his democratic lens and made us do the same. It should not be surprising that after the bout of nostalgia, DW team promptly tried to contact the man and talk to him regarding his films, life and inspirations. This month, the magazine (I am glad to say), is about the lives of geniuses. Famed photographer Nemai Ghosh is featured in our Looking Back section. For his admirers, there’s a bit of good news; Ghosh’s collection of 90,000-plus photographs were recently bought by a Delhi-based private art gallery. The gallery plans to showcase most of them in a series of exhibitions in December. A legend in his own right, Ghosh is as talented as he is endearing and humble. I hope you like reading his story as much as we loved writing it.
Singh talks of growth pangsPOLITICS\\ For his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chose to focus mainly on his Party’s economic policies, eliciting a few yawns from spectators. Singh said that he and his government will do everything in their power to save the country from the effects of the global economic slowdown. Focusing his address completely towards economic growth, he blamed lack of political consensus for slow growth and vowed to do everything to boost the economy through investments. He also linked development processes to national security. He said that national security will be affected if proper attention is not paid to economic growth and investments are not invited within the country. While talking about inflation Singh said that while it must be controlled, bad monsoons in 2012 could ‘pose some difficulties’. While wholesale inflation has come down to 6.87 per cent in July, prices of food items are still rising by over 10 per cent annually. The Prime Minister had to face a lot of criticism from the Opposition regarding his speech which they called inspiring with ‘nothing new to offer’.
With a tally of six medals, India puts up its greatest show in the GamesOLYMPICS\\ India put up a strong show in the London Summer Olympics 2012 which proved to be the country’s best performance till date—as players from the country garnered a total of six medals, including two Silvers and four Bronzes. Gagan Narang won the first medal for the country by winning a Bronze in the 10-metre air-rifle shooting event. Vijay Kumar won a Silver in the men’s 25-metre rapid-fire pistol event, and became the third man representing India to win an individual Silver, after Norman Pritchard and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. Saina Nehwal won a Bronze in women’s singles in badminton. She is the first Indian to win a medal in Badminton at the Olympics. She is also the second Indian woman to win an individual medal after Karnam Malleswari’s Bronze in weightlifting in 2000. Mary Kom won India its fourth medal at the Games by winning a Bronze in the women’s flyweight category in boxing. She is the third Indian woman to win a medal at the Olympics. By winning a Bronze in the 60-kg freestyle wrestling event, Yogeshwar Dutt won India the fourth Bronze and the fifth medal. This is the third individual medal in wrestling after Bronze medals by Sushil Kumar in 2008 and K.D. Jadhav in 1952. The sixth medal was bagged by Sushil Kumar who won the Silver in 66-kg freestyle wrestling. Sushil Kumar is the first Indian to win an individual medal, back-to-back, in the Olympic Games. He had won a Bronze in the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the same category. With this India finished 55th on the medal tally, climbing 10 rungs from its count at the Beijing Olympics. The success of Haryana’s wrestlers (the state had sent 18 players in the 81-players contingent), led to its chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, fix a target of winning 12 medals for the country in 2016 Olympics. Hooda felicitated the four Olympic medal winners from Haryana at his New Delhi residence and promised to help the state’s players and athletes to the best of his ability. Saina Nehwal who broke the Chinese monopoly over badminton medals missed her chance to play the finals as she lost to World No. 1 seed, Yihan Wang of China. Nehwal lost 21–13, 21–13, and the Beijing Olympics disappointment loomed large over the Hyderabadi girl. Nehwal, however, grabbed the Bronze as she faced World No. 2, Xin Wang (China). A knee injury fouled Wang’s game even though she was leading. Mary Kom, a respected name in the world of women’s boxing and a five-time world champion, won the Bronze by beating Maroua Rahali of Tunisia for 15-6. The mother of two lost the Gold to winner Nicola Adams (11-6) in the semi-finals, but grabbed the historic Bronze. The 2012 Olympics saw around 85 countries win medals. The United States of America went on to take the highest number of medals home.