Ronaldo Congratulates Fellow ‘Old Boy’ Klose

Football // Ronaldo was among the first to congratulate Miroslav Klose when the German striker joined him as the all-time leading scorer in the World Cup with 15 goals. “Welcome to the club, Klose. I can imagine your happiness!!!!” @ClaroRonaldo tweeted. But the Brazilian media have not been so magnanimous. Estado de São Paulo preferred to focus on how much longer Klose took to reach this mark than Ronaldo. The age is a source of pride, however, in Germany, with one headline noting: “Well done, Old Boy!”

Bribery, Robbery Allegations Ahead of Cup While allegations of bribery and corruption have plagued FIFA for years, British newspaper, The Sunday Times, recently published “proof” in the form of leaked documents. The cache of emails, allegedly from a “senior FIFA insider”, revealed that former FIFA executive committee member, Mohamed bin Hammam paid more than $5 million to secure support for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid. In 2012, the FIFA ethics committee had banned Mr bin Hammam, a Qatari national, from all football activities over “conflicts of interest”. According to the evidence, Mr Hammam reportedly lavished cash payments, gifts and trips upon FIFA’s executive and African officials in exchange for their votes. However, Qatar has denied any wrongdoing and has distanced itself from Mr bin Hammam. The revelations came as no surprise to many, and merely confirmed what had long been suspected: that Qatar’s successful bid had been “bought”. The scandal has thrown the spotlight onto FIFA’s secretive voting procedures and general lack of transparency.

Muntari Splashes Cash, Makes Friends Ghana’s Sulley Muntari is winning hearts and minds after a video emerged of him handing out cash in a poor community in Brazil. The Milan midfielder went on a walkabout near the team’s training camp at Maceió and clips, seemingly taken with a mobile phone, show him walking along a dusty street, surrounded by guards, but stopping along the side of the road to give bank notes to local residents. Such gestures were hardly needed to win the affections of the host nation, which was already firmly behind Ghana as was evident during Saturday’s superb performance against Germany.

Biggest Sporting Event Suggest Nos The opening matches of this World Cup have broken audience records all over the world, according to FIFA. In Brazil, Argentina, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy and Croatia, tournament broadcasts have recorded highest viewing figures of the year, while there have also been increases in the less established football markets of the US, Canada and Australia. Niclas Ericson, FIFA’s director of TV, said Brazil 2014 will be the biggest sporting event in history.

Eight Bodies Recovered from Water

Trag edy// On June 8, 2014, 24 students including six girls and a tour guide were washed away after the sudden release of water from Larji hydro power project in the Beas. The students were all from an engineering institute in Hyderabad. Around 65 people—including students and faculty members of Vignana Jayoti Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad—were headed for Manali from Shimla.

With 18 bodies already recovered from the dam, now search team has to trace the remaining six bodies of engineering students and their co-tour guide. Based on the complaint of a student, a case has been registered at Aut police station under section 304A and 336 of IPC. Himachal Pradesh High Court, which has taken suo motu notice of the incident, has already directed the engineering college to file affidavit containing the details as to who made the decision to allow the students to visit Himachal Pradesh and the concerned site and whether the parents were taken into confidence and also the particulars of the officers, officials, who were accompanying the students. the state government has stated that it has asked the power department to get an inquiry conducted into the working of State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC) and Northern Regional Load Disptach Centre (NRLDC) by a technical person not below the rank of chief engineer.

It was way back in 2001 that I came to the US with my husband. I came here with a lot of dreams and hopes of a new life. My husband, who is a scientist, had an offer to work for his post doctoral research. Everything was not hunky dory when the visa process started. I was, in a way, both scared and excited at the thought of moving to a new country. Scared, yes, because we came here in September 2001 and the day we had our appointment to go to American consulate to get my visa was 9/11, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre.

We were watching the news on television the whole day and when they showed pictures of some suspects, it compounded my fear. Most of those suspects had beard and some kind of turban on their heads which made a few people think that they were Sikhs, who also grow beards and wore turbans. We heard that some angry students in New York attacked a Sikh temple protesting against that attack. One Sikh even got killed in the riot. However, we came to the USA in Cincinnati Ohio, exactly on September 26, 2001.

I was excited after landing here as I am ambitious and fearless. It was sort of an adventure trip for me to which I was looking forward to for a long time. I come from very lower middle class family from India. I had an image of America and I was thinking that I would get a lot of new opportunities professionally. I was hopeful that I would get a better job in America compared to India. I was excited, happy and scared at the same time. But what I was looking at most was freedom. I had an impression that I would feel more human—I mean equal to men. I might have more opportunities to work as an artist and might be much more successful than I was in India.

I felt happy those days because I got married to the person whom I believed that I was in love with. We came here within three months of our marriage. So I was living in a dream world as a new bride. I was looking forward to start a new life with my husband, who sounded very promising to me. I thought it was a win-win situation for me. It was a life with a person who loved me—a person who was highly educated and I thought he would respect me. He already had a job offer in America and I thought we wouldn’t have any economic issues either. In addition, I hoped to get more opportunities to advance in my career. So, it looked like a perfect world.

At first we did not have much problem regarding our accommodation. The company where my husband was to work took care of everything including finding the apartment, paying the rent and so on. Money was not a problem. But I had to struggle to find a job. The rules for working were also different in the US. I found that I needed a licence to teach. Since we were new to this country and city, I was busy getting to know the place and people around. We met both good and bad people. I learnt that other than skin colour and language, there wasn’t much difference between people from India and America. Yeah, culture was different, people talked more about baseball and American football instead of cricket and Indian football. They spoke about ice hockey instead of normal hockey. People spoke in English instead of Hindi.

Now when I am talking of comparing life in India, the reader must understand that I knew India before September 2001—my understanding about India stops there. India has changed a lot after that. My understanding about America started from September 2001 and grew from there. So I am comparing America after September 2001 with India before 2001. So, I do not think that it will be a fair comparison. But truthfully, I did not find much difference in people. As I said earlier, America too has both kinds of people—the good and the bad. We lived in localities where there were people who did not hesitate to indulge in heinous acts and then there were also Americans who didn't hesitate to help us. Yet, there were lots of things different too.

The very first thing I focussed on was to get a job for myself. I was not worried about money and housing conditions as my husband was taking care of all that. It was more a hobby than a necessity. I was bored sitting at home and waiting for my husband to come home after work, which was never an 8-5 schedule. As a scientist, he never had a fixed work schedule and most of the time he worked at nights too. I found myself alone at home often and was getting a little depressed due to loneliness.

At first it was more about learning about this place, finding a job, making new goals. It was not as much fun as I thought. I realised that rules were strict. Well, looking back, I thought BFA and MFA degrees were enough to find a good job. I decided to teach art in schools. But I found out that I needed to have a licence to teach art. Then I realised that we needed licence to do most of the jobs here, licence to teach anything in schools, licence to open a day care, licence to become a human resource professional and so on.

So, after struggling for three years to get a full-time art teaching job, I decided to go back to college to get another art degree; this time a major in arts education to get the licence. Since I planned this at a time when my work visa expired, I was not allowed to work for the next four years. I had to depend on my husband. We both planned at this time to have kids and grow our family so that when I would be eligible to get a job, our kids would be ready to go to school. Though it seemed like a perfect world from outside, my insecurities and dependency on my husband didn't subside. I had to depend on him for everything and slowly I started losing confidence in myself. I always thought that my career was not as important as my husband’s.

Around this time, I started to realise that this was not a dream marriage. During that time, I had several awakening experiences, mostly unpleasant. At first I thought that it was normal to have fights and differences, but that we still loved each other. We have two wonderful daughters. I had no other relative here in this strange land. My marriage and my husband were my world. I was not interested in knowing American politics, economic situation or its different culture. I was more interested in finding a job. If you had asked me around two years ago, then all I had was complaints about the world and how people around me mistreated me. But today, I can talk about all that I have learnt about myself and how I have grown into a better human being.

As a girl growing up in India, I always felt like a piece of somebody’s property and not a human being with emotions. In my parents’ house I was a prestige issue. If I talked or laughed loudly, I was pulled up for not being disciplined. I was always confused and wondering what wrong I had done. I was adventurous, ambitious and fearless by nature, so I wanted to try whatever I could to achieve my goals, but it was difficult. After passing high school I took up a part time job before finishing college, but a little later I decided to return to college to study full time and get some degree. In this, I decided to follow my heart and instead of trying to become a doctor, an engineer, a nurse or a lawyer, like most of others do in India, I chose to earn a degree in fine arts and become an artist. The four years in college and then another two years in Shanti Niketan were full of fun and excitement.

Little did I know then that art would fetch me good income one day. It was during this time that I met my future husband and fell in love. At that time I felt I was the luckiest person on earth. Though professionally, I would wonder if having a degree in either science, architecture, commerce or law would not have been better than a degree in art because such degrees would have helped me get a higher paid job. However, I felt lucky because the person whom I fell in love with was finishing his PhD in science. So, I was very proud of myself when I learnt that he had got a job offer in America. Today I am different. I am on my own and live alone with my two children. I have learnt more about American theories and styles. I have two Masters’ degrees, one from India and one from America, two wonderful children, a great paying job! America has been my alma mater on life.

A recap on social media to max your mileage.

Are you new to handling social media, or someone who’s simply looking to close some knowledge gaps? In either case, we’re glad you stopped by, as we revisit some of the basics of how you can fully leverage arguably the two most crucial components of your social presence – Twitter and Facebook. What are we waiting for? Let's dive in!

Fuelling Twitter Engagement

When you are on Twitter do you sometimes feel like you are chirping… okay make that tweeting with no one listening? Don’t worry, you’re not alone – it’s easy for your tweet to get lost in the ever-flowing stream that is twitter, and many small businesses are in a constant struggle to increase their engagement on Twitter. Here are five simple strategies to boost your twitter cred.

Reach Out and Reward: If you’re building from a small base, reach out personally to your new followers and start a discussion, even if it’s about their profile. Remember, twitter is more about the interaction and less about being a broadcast platform! Once the base grows, reward folks who engage with you the most, whether it is via a tweet that promotes them, their websites or their content!

Know the Best Time to Post: You could choose to tweet several times a day and measure when your audience is most receptive. Or you could use tools like Tweriod and Followerwonk to do the job for you. Tweriod, for instance, connects to your account and evaluates your followers to discover the best time for you to post out tweets to reach the widest audience. It can tell you when your followers are likely to be online, and when your tweets get the biggest exposure. You could then choose Hootsuite or Buffer to queue up these tweets, even if it’s while you’re sleeping!

Follow the Right Folks: Twitter’s often a two-way game - if you think people ought to follow you, why shouldn’t the same rule apply to you? Don’t be a red carpet tweet – you know, the kind who follow 3-4 people and still expect everyone to follow them! But follow wisely – identify the thought leaders in your industry or folks you respect, and connect with them. You can even find folks you may not even know by searching in Twitter for keywords relevant to your line of work.

Share Images and Media: Videos (Vine) and Twitter images are great for attracting a crowd, and research shows that tweets with multimedia content, whether its image or video, receive four to five times more engagement compared to those without. Go on, don’t be shy!

Watch the Trends: The trick to holding better conversations is in being clued into what’s going on, trend wise. Keep an eye on the top trending topics and get a feel for what folks are talking about. And don’t forget to use your #hashtags, great for people to discover you and your content!

Grow your Facebook Page

It’s one thing creating a page on Facebook and getting everyone you know to like it, and quite another to make your Facebook presence a ‘community’ for your fans. Here are a couple of simple tips to get the most out of your Facebook page.

Content is King: Remember, if your page is useful and your content original, it will be shared. It could be a screenshot of a useful tip, or a behind-the-scenes photo of how your organization works, or even an inspirational quote. Ask yourself while posting each update – will I share this? If you find yourself saying no most of the times, revisit your content strategy, post haste! As a rule of thumb, questions, photos, fill in the blanks work best. And don’t forget – always use a Call-to-Action – a specific objective behind each status update like “Tell us what you think” or “Like this if you agree”.

Cross Promote: One way to rise above the noise is to get page admins from pages similar to yours / catering to your demographic to cross-promote your content, and vice versa. All of a sudden, you get your brand in front of a whole new audience; from a brand they trust themselves. Why stop there? Use your own personal profile to occasionally share your business page content, and while we’re at it, add the "Facebook Like" tools to your website or blog – this makes it easy for people to find your fan page and to "like" it from your site or blog.

Comment as ‘Your Page’: Instead of commenting on other pages with your personal (individual) profile, comment on these pages while you’re signed in as ‘Your FB page’, thereby letting your brand do the talking and building a relationship with potential FB fans.

Run a Contest: If you’ve got a marketing budget to fund a contest, it’s a great way to get several new folks to engage with your brand. Many of the apps that are available for Facebook contests (and you MUST run a Facebook contest through an app) are not too expensive and are easy to set up yourself. If you’re so inclined, you can set up your contest page to ensure that people like your page before they can participate. At the end of the day, you’re the real winner.

Know your Best Times: Much like Twitter, a quick review of your Insights page (under your brand page) can help you determine when your best updates were posted (in terms of total views). In general, three time slots – morning (7-9am), evening (5-7pm) and late night (10pm-12am) - see peaks of Facebook usage. You could either use this to hit a maximum possible audience, or take a contrarian view and post at non-peak times when your content is more likely to stand out. In either case, experiment with your sharing schedule and test and iterate often!

Indulgence, adulation make star memoirs what they are!

When the long-overdue autobiography of a 92-year-old movie legend hits the stands, there is reason for enthusiasm, but the literary critic can also find himself gnawing at his knuckles apprehensively. Such a book can easily turn out to be an exercise in self-importance, selective memory and misjudged nostalgia. People who have spent most of their lives being worshipped are apt to become preachers doling out nuggets of wisdom, portraying themselves as a well of inspirational stories from which the reader may draw endless quantities of ganga jal for his own benediction.

Which is why I was relieved to find that the just-released Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow is predominantly a grounded, dignified work. It is written very much in the style of the classic memoir, with Dilip-saab (or Yousuf Khan, to use his birth name) taking the reader through episodes from his life in linear order, without thickly underlining their larger significance. A certain degree of quiet pride in his achievements is visible—for instance, in a passage where he discusses his prefilm days working at the British Army Club in Pune, and using his initiative to set up a sandwich and fruit stall for the officers. But even here, there is selfdeprecating humour; he recalls being forced by the British soldiers to strip and join them in the shower room, and being so mortified by his own hairiness that he made sure to always keep his shirt on as a leading man.

Actually, the tone of the writing fits the understated Dilip Kumar screen persona—the actor who often spoke so softly that you strained to hear him. (In her Introduction, Udayatara Nayar, to whom Kumar narrated the book, says that the thespian disliked talking about himself and didn’t want to do a memoir “because that meant the profuse use of the capital I, which he abhorred”.) Which brings me to a very different type of star memoir that also matches the personality of its subject: the 2007 Romancing with Life, written by Dilip Kumar’s great contemporary Dev Anand.

This is one of the most entertaining books I have read in the past decade—and I don’t mean that as an unqualified compliment. Romancing with Life is overwritten, meandering and often unintentionally funny, but it is almost without question Dev Anand’s own work. It is full of the uninhibited, narcissistic floridity that marked everything the man did, and that no ghostwriter would have been able to simulate. How could anyone but Anand himself have produced a sentence like this one: “Those I am closest to, those who like and love me and I them, call me ‘Dev’, just ‘Dev’, short and sweet and possessive, godly and sexy, and intimate to the extreme, in bedrooms, in drawing rooms, in the streets and in public squares.” The reviewer’s stock complaint “this book should have been better edited” is completely irrelevant here, for Romancing with Life is an immediate representation of Dev Anand on the page in a way that a better written, better edited book could never be.

Interestingly, while Anand employs an almost soft-porn tone while describing his first sexual encounter with an anonymous woman on a train, his candour is selective—when it comes to public figures, he doesn’t kiss and tell to the same degree, which can make this a disappointing book for Stardust-collectors. And this is another thing about many of our film-star memoirs, which gives them a sterile, vapid quality: people are cautious about revealing too much. When a Hollywood legend like Kirk Douglas enters the terrain of self-analysis (with The Ragman’s Son, one of the most absorbing and frank memoirs I have read), he can almost matter-of-factly mention a brief sexual liaison with a much older actress, and admit to his own less than exemplary conduct in the situation; but our stars are more mindful of their public image, more respectful of “middle-class morality” (even if they haven’t adhered to it themselves). Thus, in Conversations with Waheeda Rehman, Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book-length series of interviews with the legendary actress, every time the interviewer broaches the subject of Rehman’s much-talked-about relationship with the actor-director Guru Dutt, she is met with either a wall or an evasion. (“Guru Duttji was good to me. He was caring and protective. But in truth, he looked out for everyone.”)

My point is not that our actors and actresses must openly discuss their private lives—it is their prerogative not to. But when a politically correct tone is used to describe a particular incident, one starts to wonder about how honest they (actors) are being about other things as well.

In this sense, one of the most atypical books I have read about an Indian film star is Jessica Hines’s Looking for the Big B: Bollywood, Bachchan and Me. This isn’t a biography or a serious attempt to examine Amitabh Bachchan’s legend: it is a book about the author attempting to write such a book but eventually giving up and opting to write about herself instead. Hines, a small-time English actress, is best known in India for an alleged affair with Aamir Khan a few years ago. If you read Looking for the Big B, take one thing as a given: she’s on air-kissing terms with many people who matter in Bollywood, and was on reasonably close terms with Bachchan himself for many years. Don’t bother about the whys and hows, just accept the name-dropping.

Almost by accident, this book provides a fresh view of Bachchan. One wouldn’t have thought this possible, given how ubiquitous the man has been in our lives in the last three decades, but Hines has the advantage of the outsider’s perspective; she doesn’t bear the burden of adoration that the average Indian does, and this seems to make her subject more relaxed when he’s in her presence. She speaks of Bachchan with an offhand flippancy that we haven’t encountered before in thousands of pages of magazine articles and books; it’s almost as if she were describing a Regular Guy!

She writes of him fixing her in a stare that’s “a cross between a monitor lizard and Paddington bear”. In the more inspired passages of this sort, she gives us the unlikely spectre of a maller-than-life Amitabh. And if the book works (I’m still undecided about that, to be honest), it is because of this demystification: Hines takes the Star of the Millennium, the cynosure of a billion pairs of eyes and turns him into a supporting player, with herself cast in the lead role. Perhaps such authorial selfindulgence is the best approach to writing about a big movie star.

Gandhi Peace Prize awardee Bulu Imam wears many hats, each related to his central concern—that of getting Jharkhand’s people their dues.

Bulu Imam has many claims to fame. He is a poet, a writer, an artist, an activist and many things besides, all rolled into one. But all his diverse talents and interests are bound together by a single leitmotif—his abiding socially relevant application of each of them for the betterment of human life. When we met him finally, unravelling the layers of his protean personality was a journey of discovery and denouement.

Imam was born into an illustrious and erudite family—his greatgrandfather was Nawab Imdad Imam, Shamsh-ul-Ulema, a Persian and Urdu poet-laureate, his grandfather an eminent lawyer and jurist, Syed Hasan Imam, while and his father was S.A.H.A.A. Tootoo Imam, a well-known international wildlife and equestrian authority. Growing up in the backyard of the natural resource rich Jharkhand, Imam developed an affinity for the wilderness and an abiding love for the simple folk of the land. The formative years of the artiste-activist were spent in the soaking in the pristine ambience of the natural habitat. “As a child I spent my days amid the natural beauty of Jharkhand’s forests and my attachment for nature and wildlife has only grown stronger over the years. I grew up observing wildlife and this led to many researches in the field.”

This perhaps explains the career choices that Imam made later in his life. His vast body of work in various fields can roughly be divided into three distinct phases. The first was dominated by his contributions in the fields of art, wildlife, and literature (1960-80). The first great artistic output found expression in his works in at the one man exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta in 1961, at the All India of Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, 1962 and 1982, and Museum of Fine Arts Punjab University , and Chandigarh State art Museum. His paintings were acquired by Chandigarh State Art Museum and Punjab Arts Council. The next period—1987–2004—saw him emerge as an environmentalist, author and art researcher of repute. And the subsequent years crystallised his zeal as an activist. However, none of the phases are distinct and each activity segues seamlessly into another.

The childhood umbilical bond with Jharkhand’s wilds brought Imam international recognition as a wildlife armament. “I have conducted research and identified tertiary albinism in crow (Corvus Macrorhincos), golden crow, mithun and sub-species of Gaur/Gayal in Assam,” says Imam talking about his many landmark researches. The study on indigenous dog (Santal Hound) was another milestone in his wildlife career. “I studied the ancestral link of Santal hound and traced the relationship between Australia and India. The study led to the discovery of the ancestral link of the dog breed to Chinese wolf and I documented it in 2005 for the National Geographic channel in a film titled In Search of the first Dog,” he adds. Imam’s work in identification of wildlife corridors in India, especially of tigers and elephants confronted by transit habitat loss, has also been widely recognised.

Speaking of his ties with art, the artist says, “they are as old as I am”—he has spent more than six decades in the field. “Art is my way of looking at life and representing it. I have held 54 international and many national exhibitions related to tribal art forms.”

His intense involvement with the tribals of Jharkhand began sometime around 1987 when he became the regional convener of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) Hazaribagh Chapter, and began environmental work to protect the upper watershed of Damodar Valley (North Karanpura Valley) in Hazaribagh. In 1989-90, Imam became the coordinantor of the Chipko-Chotanagpur and began conducting padyatras in jungles to save forests. He launched Chipko Jharkhand in October, 1989.

Imam was felicitated with Rashtriya Gaurav award for his work in environment protection. “In 1986 coal mining was at the peak and resettlement of the displaced tribals was another issue for the state. It was the time when the state and the nation were plagued with various issues relating to human rights. At the time I saw the real condition of rural people, especially women, and took up the cudgels to work for women and their human rights.” The activist is pained to see the environmantal degradation today. “The major agenda today is global warming,” says a concerned Imam adding that given the rapid degradation of the environment in the last 20 years, human species may soon join the list of extinct dinosaurs. “Now my primary concern is to work towards global warming.” The crusader is now on another important mission.

In 1991, Imam’s love for the indigenous people of Jharkhand took another turn when he discovered the Isco rockart site in Hazaribagh district. Over the next six years he worked diligently to bring rockart sites in Upper Damodar Valley to the notice of the world discoving a series of them—1992: Thethangi, Satpahar I, Satpahar II, Satpahar III, Raham, Khandhar; 1993: Sariya; 1996: Sidpa, Gonda; 2000: Nautangwa Pahar I (Salga), Nautangwa Pahar II (Salga). In 1992, Imam brought to light palaeolithic habitation sites connected with rockart and ancient megalithic sites, and outlined the basis of the Damodar Valley Civilization archaeologically. He institutionalised his efforts by building the Sanskriti-INTACH Museum collection of palaeo-archaeology of Hazaribagh, dating from 250,000 BP to the contemporary period. The collection has been certified by the pre-history branch of Archaeological Survey of India (Nagpur).

His work with rockart led him to the Khovar marriage art of Hazaribagh villages which he then brought to paper in natural earth medium. Imam later brought Sohrai art the same recognition and wrote a book, Bridal Caves, on the art form that was published by INTACH in 1995. His work in the field led to the founding of Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC) and the Sanskriti Centre at Hazaribagh and fetched him the Vijay Ratna award for his immense contribution to tribal art of Jharkhand.

“Even now my passion and energy for art is same, as it was earlier,” says the artist. His dedication to Jharkhand’s ancient art forms remains undiminished. “This year I am releasing another book titled Antiquarian Remains of Jharkhand,” he informs. The book with 250 coloured photographs of varied art forms of Jharkhand is scheduled to be released in Ranchi. Jharkhand is certainly close to Imam’s heart and a prominent subject to be imaginatively rendered through his various creations. His largest art creation is a mural in oil painting at Khalari Church which is 100 feet x 33 feet and his next project again is a book which will be an exposition on art forms of the state. “I am writing a book Painted Forests and Villages of Hazaribagh.”

Art and wildlife enriched other facets of his life too. “It has helped me explore much in life and this is reflected in my films and books”, says Imam. Imam’s versatility is best brought out by the diversity of subjects he has chosen for his writings. His collection of hundreds of book includes poems, songs and art. “I have written a book on Santhali songs and a book on Birhor and Oraon songs. It is a collection of 100 songs which is now available online.” Talking about his future writing projects he says, “Around 15 books are expected to be released in coming years, all based on art, wildlife and social welfare.”

Jharkraft, that has come to be emblematic of Jharkhand’s aesthetic sensibilities was a result of Imam’s vision of social welfare. Shilpgram, another organisattion promoting tribal art, owes its existence to his vision. “Women in the villages were not getting the recognition they deserved and their human rights were at stake. Tribal mural art is the USP of village women’s identity. It struck me that this creative identity of the women could be converted into income generating medium for them.”

Felomina Tirkey Imam, his wife, recalls, “When he began working for the tribal women, they would close the door when he visited their homes.” Felomina joined him in his cause and so have other members of his family. “There are people in world who have journeyed on the same path as I have, but they seldom received the support of their family as I did,” Imam acknowledges. Today, all the doors in Jharkhand remain open for their leader and his family.

Article 370 failed miserably in its purpose becoming a political tool in the hands of powerful politicians. With battlelines drawn over its proposed abrogation by the central government, the debates are once again hot among the ruling class. But the people of Kashmir suffer on silently.

Iftikhar Gilani// Notwithstanding the trial balloon floated by the Union Minister Jitendra Singh on the abrogation of Article 370, the relations between Srinagar and New Delhi are replete with broken promises and a lack of trust, which often manifest themselves in violent outbursts. The lack of spine in Kashmiri leaders, who chose power instead of standing against these breaches, which, at times, paved the way for such infringements has made matters worse.

Article 370 was kept as a temporary provision in the Constitution, because until the 1960s, the Government of India’s stated policy was to conduct a plebiscite to determine the future of Jammu & Kashmir. Accordingly, a white paper on Jammu & Kashmir published by the Government of India in 1948, which was authored by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, recorded: “In accepting the accession, the government of India made it clear that they would regard it as purely provisional until such time as the will of the people of the State could be ascertained.” The Constituent Assembly debates show that both Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee had fully approved Article 370, which accords special status to Jammu & Kashmir.

Jammu and Kashmir is the only state in the Union of India which negotiated the terms of its membership with the Union. The ruler of Jammu & Kashmir had acceded to India by an Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, in respect of only three subjects: defence, foreign affairs and communications. A schedule listed precisely 16 topics under these heads plus four others (elections to the Union legislature and the like). Clause 5 said that the Instrument could not be altered without the state’s consent. Therefore, Article 370 was a solemn compact with neither side mandated to amend or abrogate it unilaterally, except in accordance with the terms of that provision. While all the provisions of the Indian Constitution were debated in the Constituent Assembly after deliberations in its Drafting Committee, Article 370 was discussed for five months by Nehru and his colleagues with Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of Jammu & Kashmir from May to October 1949.

The successive Congress governments in league with those in power in Srinagar have often violated this solemn compact, creating mistrust and an uncertainty in Kashmir. The legal luminary A G Noorani in his book Article 370: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir documents how the article has been tampered to the extent that only its husk has been left. Way back on December 4, 1964, the then Union home minister Gulzari Lal Nanda had admitted in the Lok Sabha that Article 370 is left only with its shell, while its content is completely emptied. The book mentions first ‘unfortunate breach’ by N Gopalaswamy Ayyanger on October 16, 1949, in unilaterally altering the draft agreed with Sheikh Abdullah. If the original agreed draft had been approved, the ouster of Abdullah from the government later in 1953 would have been impossible.

The state of Jammu & Kashmir has been put in a status even inferior to that of other states. Parliament had to amend the Constitution four times to extend the President’s Rule imposed in Punjab. For Jammu & Kashmir, it was accomplished—from 1990 to 1996—by mere executive orders under Article 370. The article was also used freely not only to amend the Constitution of India but also of the state. On July 23, 1975, an order was made debarring the state legislature from amending the state constitution on matters in respect of the governor, the election commission and even ‘the composition’ of the upper house, the legislative council.

Another case illustrates the capacity for gross abuse. On July 30, 1986, the President made an order under Article 370, extending to Jammu & Kashmir Article 249 of the Constitution in order to empower Parliament to legislate even on a matter in the State List on the strength of a Rajya Sabha resolution. Ironically, concurrence to this was given by the Centre’s own appointee, governor Jagmohan. The former law secretary of the state G A Lone described how the ‘manipulation’ was done ‘in a single day’ against his advice and ‘in the absence of a council of ministers’.

Article 370 cannot be abrogated or amended by taking recourse to amending provisions of the Constitution. For, in relation to Kashmir, Article 368 has a proviso which says that no constitutional amendment ‘shall have effect in relation to the State of Jammu & Kashmir’ unless applied by the order of the President, that requires the concurrence of the state’s government and ratification by its Constituent Assembly. With the Assembly’s dispersal on November 17, 1956, after adopting the constitution of Jammu & Kashmir, there is no authority left to recommend its abrogation.

When the May 1996 parliamentary election in the state, the first since 1989, were marred by the boycott call by separatists and coercive voting, the central government offered a bait to the lone mainstream party, the National Conference, to participate in the assembly poll. Its leader Dr Farooq Abdullah was cooling heels in London and was adamant to seek constitutional changes before committing to take a plunge in the electoral process. His confidence stemmed from the famous ‘sky is the limit’ observation made by the then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao in the African country of Burkina Faso to underline that any kind of future arrangement for Kashmir could be discussed.

In 1994, Dr Abdullah was part of a delegation to Geneva to persuade Iran to drop an Organisation of Islamic Countries resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), later rechristened as the Human Rights Council, to condemn India for human right violations in Kashmir. The resolution, with the UNCHR approval, was to be referred to the UN Security Council for initiating economic sanctions and other punitive measures against India.

Privately, Dr Abdullah says that he had been offered restoration of the constitutional arrangement in Jammu and Kashmir that existed prior to 1953, which is a euphemism for greater autonomy, in lieu of saving India from the possible disgrace at a time when the country had mortgaged its gold reserves. Dr Abdullah was, however, persuaded by Rao’s successor H D Deve Gowda to participate in the October 1996 assembly election with the assurance that he was free to pursue legislative process to seek changes in the constitutional relationship between Srinagar and New Delhi. But, ironically, when the state assembly completed the process and adopted a resolution accepting the report of the State Autonomy Committee on June 26, 2000, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had taken charge in New Delhi, which summarily rejected the resolution. It is, however, another matter that Dr Abdullah was sharing power with the NDA, with his son Omar Abdullah as part of the same Cabinet which rejected this resolution.

Much water has flown since then. The argument that Article 370 constitutes a psychological barrier between the governing elite in Delhi and the Kashmiri youth is a false one. The real problem lies in Kashmir’s history of successive rigged elections and foisting unpopular chief ministers on the people. The two-decade long militancy in Kashmir has origins in the massively rigged 1987 election. Delhi needs to address these two areas of anxiety and suspicion, and not Article 370.

K G Suresh //The debate on Article 370 has been revived once again with the assumption of office by the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre. The abolition of Article 370 has been one of the core demands of the Bharatiya Janata Party since its inception, as was the case with its earlier avatar the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS).

In fact, the BJS founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee died as a detenu on 23 June 1953 under mysterious circumstances after he was arrested while crossing the Kashmir border at Lakhanpur, opposing the Congress government’s decision to grant special status to the state with its own flag, prime minister and constitution. “Ek desh mein do vidhan, do pradhan aur do nishan nahi chalega (a country cannot have two constitutions, two prime ministers, and two national emblems)” was his slogan.

The Abdullah family of Kashmir, which has, of late, threatened to secede from India if the article is revoked, is deliberately misleading the people of India on its special provision.

To begin with, the Abdullahs know very well that Article 1 of the Constitution of India declares India to be a union of states as specified in its First Schedule, which contains the lists of states and union territories and includes the state of Jammu & Kashmir as part of India. The same position finds reflection in Section 3 of the Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir which declares the state of Jammu & Kashmir to be an integral part of the Union of India. Any effort to create doubts with regard to the integration of Jammu & Kashmir with India are contrary to the aforesaid provisions. Hence, it would be a totally invalid argument to say that the Jammu & Kashmir is part of India only because of Article 370.

Coming to history, the state of Jammu & Kashmir acceded to India on 26 October 1947 with the execution/signing of the Instruments of Accession by the then ruler of Jammu & Kashmir and its acceptance by Governor General Lord Mountbatten, even as Pakistani tribal raiders were invading the state.

The advocates of Article 370 among the Indian intelligentsia appear to be unaware that the Instrument of Accession which was signed by the ruler of Jammu & Kashmir was identical to the instruments of accession signed by the other rulers of the states which had acceded to the Union of India.

While in the case of other states, the Constitution of India ipso facto applies to them, Article 370 was deliberately introduced to protect the provisions of the Instrument of Accession in a different manner so far as they pertain to Jammu & Kashmir. This differential treatment to the Instrument of Accession by incorporating its temporary provisions into Article 370 has led to multifarious problems, including a sense of alienation among the people of the state, particularly in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. The apologists for Article 370 argue that the provision has nothing to do with laws pertaining to permanent residents of the state. There cannot be a more fallacious argument than this.

The Constitution (Application to Jammu & Kashmir) Order, 1954, says, ‘In exercise of the powers conferred by Clause 1 of Article 370 of the Constitution, the President, with the concurrence of the Government of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, is pleased to order … (j) After Article 35, the following new article shall be added, namely:— “35A. Saving of laws with respect to permanent residents and their rights.— Notwithstanding anything contained in this Constitution, no existing law in force in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and no law hereafter enacted by the Legislature of the State,— (a) defining the classes of persons who are, or shall be, permanent residents of the State of Jammu and Kashmir; or (b) conferring on such permanent residents any special rights and privileges or imposing upon other persons any restrictions as respects— (i) employment under the State Government; (ii) acquisition of immovable property in the State; (iii) settlement in the State; or (iv) right to scholarships and such other forms of aid as the State Government may provide, shall be void on the ground that it is inconsistent with or takes away or abridges any rights conferred on the other citizens of India by any provision of this Part.” ’

It was under this article that Jammu & Kashmir was allowed to formulate discriminatory laws for its residents as against the fundamental rights guaranteed to the citizens of India.

Another outrageous argument dished out is that that Jammu & Kashmir laws violate the fundamental rights of Indian citizens since Jammu & Kashmir has a separate constitution. However, this is happening not due to the state having a separate constitution, but because the state had been allowed by the Government of India to violate the rights of the citizens of India and the provisions contained in articles like Article 16. Under the cover of Article 35A of the Constitution of India, the Jammu & Kashmir Constituent Assembly incorporated discriminatory sections in the state constitution, like Section 51 (pertaining to candidature for the state legislature), Section 127 (pertaining to employment in the state government institutions) and Section 140 (pertaining to voter eligibility for assembly elections).

Thus, the power of Parliament to enact law under various articles, including Article 16 and Article 19, was handed out on a platter to the Jammu & Kashmir Constituent Assembly and Legislature under Article 35A. Also, the property rights of Indian citizens who do not hold permanent resident certificates of Jammu & Kashmir have been done away with in a very concealed manner by making reference to existing laws coming from the Maharaja government.

There are other equally important issues, like women’s rights, etc., which are also at stake. While the abrogation of Article 370 may not be immediately possible, it is important that the nation debates this issue extensively and does not dismiss it merely as a Hindutva agenda.

Indian Politics of Scaremongering

As the Budget Session of Parliament begins, news channels and commentators have begun talking of the dangers to democracy resulting from a single-party majority and the lack of a numerically-strong opposition party. This issue is a bit silly because it essentially reflects the news media’s desperation to fill time and space.

If the 16th Lok Sabha have conducted debates and written articles mourning an indecisive mandate. That apart, it would appear this is the first time in India—or in democracies anywhere in the world—that a party has won over 50 per cent of seats. As majorities go, the BJP’s is hardly overwhelming. At 282, it has got just 10 seats more than the half-way figure. This is not even a two-thirds majority, which Indira Gandhi won in 1980. It is much behind the mammoth 415 seats, or 75 per cent of the Lok Sabha, that Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress commanded between 1984 and 1989. If India and Indian democracy survived that, and came out richer for the experience, why is there so much scaremongering this time?

In Parliament, an opposition’s performance is often a question of quality rather than quantity. In 2004, the BJP had 138 seats in the Lok Sabha, only seven fewer than the Congress, which led the UPA coalition. However, the BJP could not make use of its numbers and delivered a very poor performance in the 14th Lok Sabha (2004-09). Its leadership was tired and jaded, and its frequent walkouts and boycotts ended up giving the government more room than it had expected.

In contrast, despite his gargantuan mandate of December 1984, by 1987 or at least 1988, Rajiv Gandhi was facing extreme hostility in the Lok Sabha courtesy a small but plucky opposition collective. This was a precursor to the Congress’ defeat in 1989. If you consider parties such as the CPI(M) and the CPI – both very active in Parliament in the Rajiv period – it is worth noting that they punched well above their weight. The presence of first-rate parliamentarians like Indrajit Gupta and Somnath Chatterjee—and in an earlier era Jyotirmoy Basu—more than made up for the modest size of the Left Front contingent.

The problem in 2014 is not that the opposition is tiny. Since the BJP has 282 seats and the NDA—as things stand—has 336, that still leaves over 200 seats to the non-Treasury benches. The point is the Congress is down to 44 seats or about a fifth of the non- NDA space. This is what is worrying the party’s fellow travellers and its intellectual ecosystem—the fact that the Congress may not matter.

The Congress’s choice of leader in the Lok Sabha reflects its confusion and its dilemma. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi refused to take the job and become the de facto—though not quite de jure, as the Congress does not have the requisite one-tenth of all members—leader of the opposition. Their nominee is Mallikarjun Kharge, a veteran politician from Gulbarga (Karnataka). It would be unfair to dismiss Kharge as merely a caste leader. He is a big name in north Karnataka, with Lok Sabha election had thrown up a hung House, the same people would goodwill across communities, including among Lingayats who have of late backed the BJP in his state. He is also the tallest Karnataka Congress politician of his generation who has not become chief minister.

This is an impressive CV; if the Congress were choosing a new leader for Karnataka or opting to send a signal to the state, Kharge’s nomination to a party post or a senior public office would have been understandable. Is he, however, suited to the role of Lok Sabha leader? Is he up to the task of quick barbs and assessments, and floor coordination with other parties, to put the BJP on the backfoot and confound its ministers within minutes of the House assembling at 11.00 am? True, Kharge has been leader of the opposition in the Karnataka assembly and did make an impassioned speech in the opening session of the 16th Lok Sabha second-term MP.

Would not Kamal Nath or even Amarinder Singh—who won a creditable victory in Amritsar against Arun Jaitley and has been named the Congress deputy leader in the Lok Sabha—have been better options? Most important, what message is Mr Gandhi conveying by shying away from the job? If he cannot lead the party in opposition can he lead it in government, and if not then what is the Congress’ road map for recovery and for 2019? Can the Congress operate under a would-be leader who doesn’t want to take a lead role in the Lok Sabha simply because he will be required to attend the House regularly and any sudden departures and short trips overseas will be noticed?

These are the existential subjects confronting the Congress. They denote a crisis for the party—not a crisis of Indian democracy. Simply because the Congress is not in a position to provide the opposition, it does not follow that there will be no opposition. Between them the AIADMK, Trinamool Congress, BJD, TRS and YSR Congress have 111 seats, 2.5 times the strength of the Congress. When necessary, they will unite to take on the Narendra Modi government. At other times, some or all of these parties may do deals with the NDA and support specific legislations. That is how parliament functions and operates in any case. The Congress, due to its numbers and more so due to its defeatism and commitment to shielding its vice-president, will be peripheral to this process, at least for the immediate future.

As such, the question is not whether the lack of an opposition is healthy for democracy. That supposition is not valid because its fundamental premise is flawed. The real question is has the Congress written itself out of the drama, the give and take, and the thrust and parry that will inevitably be part of the 16th Lok Sabha?

Navjyoti India Foundation’s targeted interventions are helping marginalised communities get back on the road to self-reliance and community development.

In June, Punjab’s ignominious drug racket, under national and international scrutiny for many years, finally came tumbling out in the open and a major operation clean was begun in the state with many policemen too being taken in for de-addiction programme. While it exposed the politician-policeman- businessman nexus behind the drug cartel, it also sadly pointed to the extent of the problem—at least one member from more than 66 per cent of rural households in Punjab is a drug addict. Delhi has much to be glad in that department. It had a saviour police officer who took up the cudgels to clean up the state of drug menace way back in 1986.

Dr Kiran Bedi was then the Deputy Commissioner of Police (North), Delhi Police. “She discovered that there was a nexus between crime and drugs, but she did not want to put all these people behind bars,” says Chandni Taneja, Executive Director, Navjyoti India Foundation.

Dr Bedi wanted to strike at the root of the problem. Her first initiative in this direction began as a drug de-addiction programme. “It started as a counselling centre at one of the police stations and later moved on to cover seven police stations under Dr Bedi’s jurisdiction,” says Taneja. Basically a daycare counselling of drug addicts, the programme fleshed out into a full day plan providing holistic development, skilling and counselling to the addicts. “Eventually, we wanted to consolidate our efforts and we came up with a six-month residential treatment programme in one of the police stations in Sarai Rohilla,” Taneja continues.

The de-addiction programmes became the first major step towards crime prevention. The detoxification initiatives that was community supported through professional services became a haven for poor addicts who could ill afford private medical care and flocked to these centres.

The project led Dr Bedi to some startling discoveries. For instance, that drug peddling was not just a male-dominated occupation, but many women too were into it for want of other employment opportunities. Then, there were young children being used as conduits and active drug peddlers. The social malaise was rampant. “This was the foundation for two of our projects started from the jhuggis. The idea for the vocational course came from a police officer when a thief ran away and the juggi was evacuated, while surprisingly, the idea for Navjyoti Pathshala was mooted by one of the woman drug peddlars,” Taneja smiles. “The people and the police officers decided to begin with women—a correction based rehabilitation centre. There was another project on children—Child Education Programme. That’s how we started—with some flagship projects. So, the entire foundation of Navjyoti India Foundation is mainly for crime prevention and social development,” Taneja sums us the history.

The initial experiments were a huge success and the public support overwhelming. The diverse programmes were institutionalised in 1988 under a registered society called Navjyoti-Delhi Police Foundation for Correction, De-addiction and Rehabilitation. Dr Bedi found support in some 15 like-minded officers for her endeavour. “At that time, the police force was looked upon by society with a different perspective,” says Taneja. The image of the police was largely negative and the initiative was to bridge the gap between the public and the police.

The then Delhi Police Commissioner Ved Marwah supported the cause becoming the president of Navjyoti India Foundation. As the work of the society expanded the name was shortened to its current Navjyoti India Foundation in 2007. The organisation had only police officials as members initially, but later the board had a mix of serving and retired police officers. Doctors and other prominent professionals and citizens too volunteered, changing the contour of the Foundation. Bedi though remains the Founder General Secretary and continues to supervise it in an honorary capacity.

Taneja explains the shift in the Foundation’s perspective and work. “Why social development? Because we found that the entire family was disintegrated and the environment was not conducive for their rehabilitation.” Hence, Navjyoti widened its focus from drug de-addiction to include a wideranging social development programmes for the community that would ensure long-term rehabilitation and mainstreaming of the criminalised marginalised poor. “Currently, we are working on child education programme and skill upgradation programme for women, the latter to create employment opportunities; and it’s only because they were involved in drug trafficking.” The effort is to wean them away from drugs through positive counselling and gainful employment. The effort started showing huge results with targeted interventions. But in 2004, the slums in Yamuna Pushta were relocated to Bawana. “When we began community cure programmes, there was no relocation plan by the government. Unfortunately, the entire base of Navjyoti was demolished,” says Taneja. But the Foundation had the steel of its founder running through its veins. It relocated to Bawana along with the community and began more focussed interventions. “We had to start from scratch. In Yamuna Pushta we were mainstreaming children to the school. But in Bawana there was no education plan and they were dumped on a barren piece of land.”

Navjyoti went to government departments in search of justice for the relocated slum dwellers and filed an RTI. “We learnt that there was a plan and schools were being constructed, but we didn’t know what the quality of the proposed schools was.” But Navjyoti never had an agenda to run a parallel administration to the government. “We wanted to add value to a programme or improve the quality of already running government initiatives, ” clarifies Taneja.

The Foundation then took up the cudgels to ensure that every child in Bawana goes to school and does not drop out. “We began with remedial education programme. While in Yamuna Pushta we had a school at every doorstep, here we brought schools to every bylane,” says Taneja. The ambit of programmes now expanded to include health intervention. Education focus took a turn and became ‘play-way’ activities. Skill upgradation began in jhuggis with a stiching unit and was upgraded to impart professional skills like typing and computer training, etc. “In 2010, we made our programmes more structured and set up Navjyoti Vocational School as a part of skill upgradation for underserved.” Skill upgradation became a value-based programme and many youths volunteered for it. The community meanwhile had become so progressive that some youths while attending the vocational programme were also involved in activities for community development.

“We have structured school programmes, for 6-14 years age group, and skill upgradation for 15 and above. For children, we have exclusive interventions under the 3S Model—Shiksha: giving children education through play activities; Sanskar: valued based education; Skills: where we think that skill upgradation shouldn’t be imparted later than 15 years, that is when a child passes out, he should be very clear on what he needs to do. So, that’s how the programmes have been structured under the education vertical,” Taneja explains.

An ambitious project of Dr Bedi is Navjyoti Bal Gurukul for children from class 1 to 12. “We are now telling the children how they can contribute to society.” It wouldn’t be surprising for a visitor to the Gurukul to find a class 6 student teaching a class 3 child. “The experience is beautiful,” declares Taneja passionately. And why not? It is through this visionary programme that Navjyoti has increased the reach of its education platform. “Today, we are reaching out to 2,000 children under this banner. We have 150 children teaching 1,600 other children. This is what Navjyoti Bal Gurukul concept is all about,” says a visibly proud Taneja. Under this unique concept there is no need for infrastructure. Children teach other children on the footpath, at home or other places wherever they find space. They teach whatever they have learnt like dance, music, arts or specific subjects. They are assigned the role of vicechancellor, head of department, etc. “We are replicating this model in other areas of Delhi like Karala and in Gurgaon,” Taneja informs.

Navjyoti has now branched out into environment protection and rural areas and community development programmes like family counselling and women’s empowerment. “We are working with 1,500 women in rural areas and self-help groups (SHG) towards their socio-economic empowerment.” Apart from northwest Delhi, Navjyoti now also works in Sohna block of Gurgaon, a conservative patriarchal society. “They still live in pardha (veil). The SHGs have given them a platform to voice their opinions as each SHG has a strength of about 10-15 women. They take loan for their activities and create assets and empower themselves. They create savings and linkages with the bank. Now we are seeing a lot of change in them. They step out of the house and go to markets and even to Delhi to buy raw material for their products. They are working against child marriage, filing RTIs, working on environment as water is a major problem. Now, they have formed a federation and a separate society that is registered. They are finally self-dependent,” Taneja encapsulates their progress. From a slow start in 2003 with no support from men and even the elderly village women, the Sohna women have come a long way.

Each year, Dr Bedi sets a mantra for her Foundation. For the current year it is ‘expanding horizons’—going back to the community and reaching out to more people— exactly what Navjyoti is doing through its various efforts. Like the mantra she gave her executive director, a young Taneja a decade ago—“work with the people and not for the people.” At Navjyoti India Foundation, every member has to go out to the fields to do shramdaan; the same way that a whole community’s shramdaan helped create a check dam in water starved Sohna village.

For Taneja, who joined Dr Bedi in her mission as a volunteer fresh out of college, and her colleagues, community work is a panacea to all the challenges thrown up in their path. “Whenever we feel challenged, we go back to the community. It’s a very satisfying experience. We have so much to do.” Many flames of new life still need to be lit, as they say.

My Years in Paris

Usually, memoirs bore me a little. I must confess they do not “bore” me as much as leave me with a debilitating jealousy. Edmund White is no exception to this rule—though I don’t really want his life (no one can handle White’s life but he alone), it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall of his life—a gist of which is encapsulated in Inside A Pearl. The book is about the time White spent living in Paris (1983 to 1998) and one can imagine that a lot of people mentioned are now checking whether their egos have been crushed or stoked in the book. Because as an author, White has this ability to confuse the line between truth and stories, and he is viciously indiscreet as he does so. And though he is often cold in dissecting his own life and of others, the man is exceptionally sweet on France’s social elite so much so that his eyes seem to mist over whenever he finds himself describing them. There is one telling occasion when White and a Vogue photographer travel to Marseille. There they interview and photograph “everyone in that city”. By everyone White doesn't really refer to everyone but only ones who matter—the beautiful set you may wish to have lunch with, probably everyday. It is probably not a coincidence that Proust is the writer he cites most often, because in many ways Proust—White wrote his biography— appears to be the invisible hand guiding him through Paris. Indeed, there are moments, such as a sketch of the Rothschilds “tottering forth for yet another dinner party—beautifully dressed, slender, on time, impeccable”, when the writing appears to be slipping into a loving update of Proust’s great novel. To be fair, if White has a soft spot for those things French, he is also aware of the country’s peculiarities. His struggles with the language are central to this process, giving him the insight of an anthropologist when negotiating the social minefield of a French dinner party (“never take twice from the cheese plate”). When he does learn the language, the verbal jousting of French intellectuals only makes him appreciate the “simple declarative sentences” of American prose all the more. According to White, this clean style is something he achieved in one of the books he writes in France, his novel The Beautiful Room Is Empty. It is also on display in a good deal of this memoir. His account of the AIDSrelated death of his lover in Morocco succeeds in being at once verbally spare and emotionally unsparing. It sounds unfeeling but Inside a Pearl is an uneven book. As it goes on, the chapters get shorter, the writing more anecdotal, and at one point there is a chapter-long digression about trips to London that might be retitled “Parties I have enjoyed”.

A generous interpretation would be that White’s uneven structure is an attempt to mimic the workings of memory, which often behaves like a bad novelist, with its crudely drawn characters and messily unresolved plots. But that seems unlikely. If his experience of spending 15 years in Paris was as refined as living “inside a pearl”, his memoir seems more like the “heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolished” that Nahum Tate saw in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Yet each episode gleams so beautifully it almost doesn’t matter that some of the jewels turn out to be made of paste. Sex laces its way through the book, omnipresent but not particularly important, just something one does, as often as possible, until the sky suddenly clouds over with the advent of AIDS. He tells the story of his lovers who fall to the disease, two of them weirdly yoked together with him as their health rapidly declines. Though he–a “slow progressor”–remains healthy, they die. The unreflective urgency of the prose here, its sheer velocity, makes this section devastating. But then, as at the dinner table, the conversation segues rapidly into the next topic, England in this particular case. At the centre of the book is his friendship with the critic Marie-Claude de Brunhoff, who embodies much of what it is about the French that White loves; the relationship is a touching one. But like many of the relationships described in the book, it comes and goes rather fitfully. Promising character studies often just stop, pushed aside by someone else whose story is, for the present, more interesting.