THE ENTIRE nation watched agape as the dharna drama unfolded on prime time TV in the national capital. The lead protagonists of the play were none other than Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his ministers and Aam Aadmi Party men and supporters. Thanks to the firm handling of the escalating crisis between the state and the centre by the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Najeeb Jung, we celebrated our Republic Day with all pomp, show and colour. It is a happy coincidence though that the celebration of Republic Day generally heralds a warmer weather and you can trust Delhiites to turn every occasion into a huge celebration. It is this larger than life quality of Delhi citizens that keeps the democracy vibrant here.

Coming back to the AAP episode, the Lieutenant Governor played a key role in diffusing the crisis by infusing a voice of sanity in that entire din and starkly brought to fore the role of good governance in the government. The Lieutenant Governor, whom we are honoured to present on our Cover this issue, is an epitome of good governance himself. A career bureaucrat of 1973 batch, Mr Najeeb Jung held various posts in Madhya Pradesh cadre and also the Government of India. The former Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia is an academic at heart and his administrative acumen has been credited with taking the varsity to unprecedented scholastic and cultural heights. With his diverse and depth of administrative experience, Delhi can only hope for a 2014better tomorrow. In his address to the Delhi Assembly the Lieutenant Governor had said, “People have voted for change (in Delhi).” We are sure this change is for the good.

On a lighter note, reading Jai Arjun Singh’s piece on cats and feline personalities made me wonder if these ‘ferral’ creatures of Delhi are sensing this change too. Singh’s insights make an interesting read as do Dr Vivek Bhandari’s on our fluid current political scenario. In Looking Back multi-talented Piyush Mishra relives his angst-ridden ride to success which would surely make for an award winning screenplay. With spring around the corner, we decided to give you a glimpse of exotic Bali. The paradise island beckons with its sun, sand, surfing, sea and much more.

As we celebrate our Republic day we at Democratic World sincerely wish that democracy in our country gains strength through good governance.

The busiest official in Delhi, meet NAJEEB JUNG, the Lieutenant Governor and a perfect gentleman

Jung , born at his ancestral home in 1951, was one of the four sons of his business man father and homemaker mother. “My father was a businessman initially. Post 1947, after the partition, he digressed into social work as he suffered losses during partition, as did several other Muslims,” says he. Jung went on to attended St Columbus School, where he stayed till he graduated. Then it was St Stephen’s for an undergraduate degree in history in 1972. “In those days options were limited. If one was ‘well-connected’ then they went for the services. If you had the aptitude then you went for engineering or medical. And then there were people like me who appeared for the civil services. History seemed like a good option to take up for the civil services examination. Two of my elder brothers were part of the civil services as well. One of them went on to work for the railways and the other in the audits. The third went into business.” Jung joined the IAS in 1973.

But we were to meet Jung for the first time in 2009, when he was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia. The man who happened to sign on Jung’s appointment—HRD minister Kapil Sibal— had directed him in the play Che Guevara decades ago when they were batch mates at St Stephen’s. (Jung’s most memorable role; essaying Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.) My initial thoughts about Jung were that he was “a different sort of a Vice Chancellor” as by then I had the fortune of meeting several members of his ilk. Jung was one of the few administrators who had migrated from the administrative services to the higher education sector and believed himself to be “blessed” for his peculiar background.

I remember that at that time he dismissed the idea that his background was a disadvantage by a single line, “All jobs are new when you start.” He went on to say that, “The change was softened because I came to Jamia straight from Oxford where I was leading an academic life in the Institute of Energy Studies. And I believe that my time working with the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) taught me to manage large projects as well. It taught me multitasking and handling a multitude of problems at a single time. My classroom was Shilwarah where I spent two years. It was a mostly tribal area with no drinking water or electricity. I had to focus on holistic development in that area and that taught me a lot. Holistically, that’s exactly how a university should be run, one must look at all aspects. Honestly, this is a wonderful change.”

From Shilwarah, Jung moved as a District Magistrate to Tatiara, next to Gwalior. It was a time when Tatiara and the adjacent lands were under the thumb of three very special “administrators”; Malkhan Singh (Chambal Ke Sher), Phoolan Devi and Ganshyam Singh (Nanhu). For those uninitiated into the annals of history, they were three of the most notorious dacoits of India. “I had colourful company,” he says with a laugh. Fortunately, Tatiara proved less of a thrilling ride than expected, and before he knew it, it was time to shift to Raipur, then the second largest district in Madhya Pradesh (area-wise). Though Raipur today is the locus of the Naxalite problem in India, in Jung’s time the threat was non-existent. From there, the government posted Jung as the Managing Director of the Madhya Pradesh Oil Sales Cooperative. His stint was going to be the start of the soya bean revolution in India.

His first high-profile post came in 1985, when Madhavrao Scindia became the Railways Minister at the Centre and appointed Jung his private secretary. In the meantime Jung completed his Master’s at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he earned his MA in Economics. Post LSE Jung returned to service and became Joint Secretary (exploration) in the Petroleum Ministry in 1993. That was a period when India was recovering from a balance of payments crisis. In exchange of loans from World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB), Indian government at that time had agreed to open up its oil and gas fields to the private sector and Captain Satish Sharma was the Petroleum Minister. Jung took leave from the IAS in 1994 and went on an assignment to the ADB in Manila, where he remained till 1999. His interest in energy was fortuitous.

In 1999, Jung resigned from the IAS and joined the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies in England, a boutique institution, in his words, dedicated only to the study of natural gas and oil. He not only assisted PhD scholars in the institution, he also produced two books in the meantime. “We were engaged in a large amount of environmental studies across studies. Naturally before you ask again, no it was not that different being an academic because the IAS also demands that you learn new things—on the job.”

He went back to ADB for another stint in 2002, before returning again to Oxford in 2005. During this period, he worked as a specialist and a consultant for Reliance Europe and Observer Research Foundation (ORF), funded by the Reliance Industries. In 2007, Jung entered the fray to become the chairman of ONGC but the job went to R.S. Sharma, an ONGC veteran. Jung returned to India in 2008. Back in Delhi, he joined the ORF as director, energy research. During the period, he also consulted for a company called Reliance Global Management Services.

But our perception of Jung being “different” was not based simply on the fact that he came from the IAS background. It was also that my colleague and I were (figuratively) floored by his gentleman-like and yet accessible behaviour. The way he conducted himself around people and the way he spoke—he was pleasant, attentive and yet commanding your attention when he spoke. He constantly referred to his students as “his children” not only when he spoke to us but also when he wrote about them in newspapers, which he did so often in those days.

During our interview he mentioned his inspiration as “Abba”. We naturally assumed that he was referring to his father but it turned out that “Abba” was a father-figure who raised the four Jung brothers and went on to become a “nanny” to the extended family. “He was the gentlest spirit I knew. My family owes a lot to him,” is how Jung describes Abba. Then there was his yoga obsession which started rather interestingly when he served as the collector.

“In those days, I would start working at 6.30 am when I would start with the official files. On one such ordinary day, I was told that a swami was there to see me. When I went to meet him, I was face to face with a Caucasian swami called Mahatma. He had arrived in the city in the morning with an order to start an ashram there. Not knowing where to start or how to, he had started to ask around. The people at the station believed that he should probably meet me. So there he was! I must admit the situation was surprising, but the Collector’s bungalow was a sprawling affair spread over acres so after consulting with the then chief minister Arjuna Singh, we allotted space on the bungalow premises itself. Since I was there, living in the same space, I couldn’t stay away from the classes.” Thus began a long-standing affair with yoga which grew so exponentially that it percolated to the second generation Jung as well. One of Jung’s three daughters is a yoga specialist, a part of the Bicarb School of Yoga–you guessed right, the same school to which Mahatma belonged.

When he came came to Jamia, a lot of friends were apprehensive about how he would cope with 25,000 students and staff of 1,000 teachers. Jung believes that the IAS trains people to cope with every challenge. “In the IAS, departments change all the time. The services train you to cope, and cope well, in new situations. So, I was confident and not afraid that I would learn. I am not been factitious but it has been a wonderful change indeed. People were apprehensive that the academic community would not take to me because I was from a different background, but I have not even felt a single wave of ill will. Not till now.” It seems that he left with an unblemished record.

Who would not take to Jung we wonder? There is something affable and sophisticated about him at the same time. Then there was the sense of humour. When we had asked him about his daughters, he had said, with a most stoic expression, that he had three daughters, “and one wife”. It took us a while to fully comprehend the joke, but when we did Jung joined in our laughter. He was not one to mince words. One of his primary goals while in Jamia was to get it the status of a minority university; a status that Jamia received in 2011 despite the HRD ministry’s opposition on grounds that a petition challenging the status was pending in the Supreme Court and its judgment would have a bearing on the Jamia case.

“Jamia was established for the purpose of keeping Muslim education in Muslim hands, entirely free from external control. The Muslim community brought Jamia into existence in the only manner in which a university could be brought into existence,” Jung had told us very clearly then. Truly being factitious is not something that he is used to.

Ghalib’s poetry, Hussain’s paintings, energy economics, Central Asian history, tennis, golf and Farsi, a long career in energy and IAS and time as an academic; Delhi truly has an interesting man in the prestigious seat of the Lieutenant Governor. And as challenges before him escalate, it would be interesting to see how Jung manages to combine his IAS expertise and VC background to his advantage.

Somnath Bharti’s fate hangs in AAP’s balance

POLITICS// Barely a month into its rule, and Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP government is in the news for all the wrong reasons. The Chief Minister slept on the street in a dharna that ended in a ‘facesaver victory’ for him and his party and paid leave for two of the six policemen against whom he had sought action for dereliction of duty. Meanwhile, the chorus for Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti’s scalp mounts from all quarters for exceeding his brief and ‘constitutional’ authority in conducting the midnight raid in Khirki village (a residential area in NCR). Five Ugandan women residents of the area have lodged a complaint against him with the Delhi Commission of Women alleging grave infringement of human rights and a sixth has moved court for lodging an FIR. One of them has recorded her statement that she recognised Bharti from his muffler which he was still wearing on TV the next day of the raid. Bharti and party have also allegedly made racial remarks. Bharti is also under fire for his use of unparlimentary language. DCW has summoned Bharti and threatened to lodge an FIR against him over his failure to make an appearance. While the party asked Bharti to mind his language, for now, Kejiriwal continues his support of the beleaguered law minister. Sacking Bharti is not the ideal solution to this aam political problem, he knows.

Schumacher ‘To Never Be Same’

ACCIDENT// French prosecutors investigating into the causes of Michael Schumacher’s skiing accident believe that the Former Formula One Champion was off piste, and did not try to reduce his speed just before he fell. Police investigators are still continuing to review footage from a camera attached to Schumacher’s helmet at the time of the crash.

“He was going at a speed that was in accordance with the slope. But he did not make any special turns to reduce his speed,” said investigator Stépahne Bozon from the French Gendarmerie.

The former racing driver hit his head on rocks in the resort of Meribel on the December 27,2013, and remains in a medically induced coma. Doctors say his condition is still critical but stable. In January 2014, Schumacher’s wife called on the media camped outside the Grenoble Clinic where her husband is being treated to leave and let doctors work in peace.

A brain surgery specialist has reportedly claimed that Formula One legend Michael Schumacher will be a completely different person than he was should he survive the severe head injuries he suffered in a skiing accident in December.

Jurist Blames Ganguly

LEGAL// Even as the merits of an intern's allegation of sexual harassment against retired Supreme Court judge A.K. Ganguly are being hotly debated across the country, one casualty of the controversy seems to be the West Bengal Human Rights Commission which Ganguly headed. Taking over in April 2012, Ganguly stepped down as WBHRC chief January 6, 2014, bowing to mounting pressure following the law intern’s allegations which became public a couple of months before Januray. With Ganguly’s resignation, the WBHRC was reduced from being a three-member to a single-member body, with another judicial member, Narayan Chandra Sil completing his term last November 1, 2013.

Former Director General of West Bengal Police Naparajit Mukherjee is now the only existing member, who joined the statutory body November 15, 2013, replacing ex state chief secretary Sourin Roy. Mukherjee’s appointment itself had led to a storm of protest. He was selected by a three-member panel comprising Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee and Leader of Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra, with the latter giving a dissenting note. Former Justice Ganguly also came under attack from noted jurist Harish Salve who charged him with “casting aspersions” by accusing the intern of acting at somebody’s behest. The senior advocate said Ganguly’s explanation over the intern’s charge and allegations against the three-member panel of the apex court judge, which prima facie held him guilty of “unwelcome behavbehaviour” towards the young lady, “spoils his case”. Salve, a former Solicitor General, who was responding to the allegations by Ganguly in his letter to the Chief Justice of India, P. Sathasivam, “regretted” that the retired judge’s explanation amount to undermining the Supreme Court.

Ganguly in his letter to the CJI, had said there was a “palpable design” to malign him as he had given judgements against “powerful quarters”. He also complained that the Supreme Court had not given him a proper hearing. Salve said, “Such an explanation has never been given. It is a matter of regret. There is a young lady who has made a complaint. The factual narrative is not now very far apart except in one vital area....,” he said.

“Three judges saw his demeanour when he gave his explanation and saw her demeanour too. They have thought prima facie there is much in what she is saying. He needs to deal with the allegation rather than cast aspersions on this young lady that she is acting at the behest of somebody. I think this explanation, if at all, spoils his case. It does not do any justice to him and I wish he had not offered this explanation. His allegations against the panel are equally unfortunate.”

Shashi Tharoor’s Political Future Uncertain

DEMISE// It’s been more than 10 days since Sunanda Pushkar, partner of junior HRD minister Shashi Tharoor, was found dead under mysterious circumstances at The Leela in Delhi on Januray 17, 2014. Though Tharoor was given a clean chit in the death probe by both the investigating agency and family members, chiefly Sunanda’s son Shiv Menon, given the ‘sensitive’ nature, the mysterious case seems to be shuttling between different investigative departments. The autopsy report of Sunanda Pushkar was given to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate Alok Sharma by AIIMS stating drug overdose may have caused her death. According to media reports, Delhi Police have said that Tharoor has been given a clean chit based on the testimony of a witness who saw Pushkar alive two hours after Tharoor had left the five-star hotel in Delhi where she found dead. The physical injuries (a dozen injury marks and a “deep teeth bite”) found on Mrs Tharoor’s body were unrelated to her death, which was due to poisoning, according to reports.

It can be your passport to opportunities not just in lean times but at all times

It’s a familiar and oft-repeated scenario. You’re unhappy in your current job and looking for a change, and that’s when go back to crafting and tweaking your LinkedIn profile which, ironically enough, hasn’t been touched since you were last in this situation! Pretty much sums up the broken, dysfunctional relationship many professionals have with their LinkedIn profiles, doesn’t it? It needn’t be this way though—you can make the world’s largest professional platform work for you, possibly even propel you to new opportunities, even when you’re not actively scouting for a job! Sounds interesting? Well then, read on for tips to keep in mind to fully leverage your LinkedIn presence.

Profile Pictures: Whoever said that a picture was worth a thousand words was spot on, because according to LinkedIn, adding a profile picture makes your profile seven times more likely to be viewed by others. What’s more, a photo allows your profile to stand out in search results and shows recruiters that you’re active and can be contacted on the network easily. But keep in mind; ideally, the image should be a headshot, and you should always choose a photo that is contextually correct for the job or role you’re currently playing (or seeking). If you’re a chef, a picture in the kitchen works, or a ‘through the camera lens’ photo if you’re a photographer, but don’t pick one of yourself from last weekend’s party…unless you’re a party planner!

Media: Why stop at just the profile picture? Your profile doesn't have to be all plain old text and LinkedIn lets you upload a whole host of media–images, videos, presentations, and documents–that not only make your profile more engaging but also show off your work. Just click on the ‘square with a + symbol’ icon when you’re editing your profile to upload a file or a link to the content you want to share.

Keywords: Whether you’re selling products online or your own professional presence, the rule is the same—think in keywords. While filling out the text of your LinkedIn profile, think about the keywords people might enter into a search to find someone like you. So, even if your job title technically is “Member, Technical Staff” but you’re really a “software engineer”, use the latter. If you’re unsure what words to use, go look at the job listings that best describe your current role, and use similar words and language. There are no bonus points for exceptionally fancy words, so keep the language simple and search friendly. Over time, you can test whether you're attracting the right people to your profile simply by checking the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” statistics for the list of keywords that people used to arrive at your profile. If you don’t like what you see, adjust the way you describe yourself.

Endorsements: The relatively new feature, which can be found under your Skills & Expertise, lets your connections vote for skills and proficiencies you’ve listed within your profile, as well as recommend new ones they think should be included. As popular a feature it is, endorsements can be a double-edged sword, especially if your network has connections that don’t know you very well and have possibly met you just the once or twice at a professional event. Endorsements from such folks can be misleading or downright incorrect and detract from the skills you think should shine on your profile. Consider pruning your endorsement list to feature your strongest, core skills—just edit your profile and you can choose to either remove individual skills or endorsements from select connections, or if don’t find the feature particularly useful, you can remove the endorsement section altogether from your profile.

Groups: Joining professional groups on Hipposaur LinkedIn that relate to your industry is a no-brainer, but what if you would like to know which ones are best suited for you before you join? When you find a group that looks interesting, click the More tab below the group’s name and select Group Statistics, which reveals details about the group’s demographics, such as the seniority of the group members in their organizations/careers, where they are based and what industries they’re from.

Activity Broadcasts: Each time you update your profile, no matter how small the edit, the activity is broadcast to your connections, which may not be ideal if you’re updating your profile to ready yourself for a job change. Fortunately, LinkedIn lets you mute your activity broadcasts—just head to the Privacy & Settings page, and use the “Turn on/off your activity broadcasts” option.

Recommendations: On an ongoing basis, build credibility by asking the connections who you have actively worked with for a recommendation. It may make sense to approach different people and suggest particular skills or experiences which you would like them to highlight, to give recruiters a well-rounded view of your past work. Ask well before you need the recommendation – personal experience tells me people invariably take their time when asked for a recommendation.

Resume Builder: Now that you’ve crafted and tweaked your LinkedIn profile to perfection, why not use it whenever you need an offline copy of your resume, say for an interview? LinkedIn’s Resume Builder, available at resume.linkedinlabs.com lets you generate one quickly based on your profile. Just connect the app to your account, and within moments, it generates a preview of your resume. You can choose from a number of templates and make edits right on the page. From there, you can save or share the resume to your contacts.

Desperately seeking exemplary leaders

IT IS CLEAR THAT the initial euphoria surrounding the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) rise to stardom has given way to a collective sense of bafflement at the recent antics of Mr Kejriwal and Co. Even as the media continues to forcefully showcase the Modi-Rahul contest as if it were a fait accompli, for many aam aadmis and aurats, the country’s mainstream political drama seems a hodgepodge of the bizzare and banal. Despite their best efforts, leaders in the Congress and BJP cannot seem to get past clichés and age-old platitudes, regurgitating tired lines of argument rooted in their political parties’ twentieth century orthodoxies. The rise of the AAP is essentially the result of such banality, of the staggering lack of political inventiveness by the established parties. Unfortunately, after over three weeks in power, it appears that the AAP leaders cannot seem to decide whether they are most comfortable in their old avatar as street-fighters, or if they want to function within the structures of parliamentary democracy as a political party.

This begs a critical question: What sorts of political leaders do Indians really want; and relatedly, what should the citizenry expect of political parties today? There are obviously many answers to these questions, but most people will agree that political parties are the pillars of India’s democratic framework. No matter how unhappy the electorate is (and undoubtedly it is pretty livid today) it elects MPs and MLAs so that they fulfill their political parties’ manifestoes. When viewed this way, political parties and elected representatives should embody, in the clearest sense, the ideals and values of the electorate, and more generally, those enshrined in the Constitution.

Has this abstract democratic ideal ever been realised in practice? Possibly, on occasion, in the past... But in the present context of political atrophy, crony capitalism, and policy paralysis in the corridors of power, what sorts of expectations should the citizenry harbour on issues of public accountability (and therefore, morality)? More generally, do today’s political leaders have the capacity to rise above their self-interest to serve the needs of the public good, to become exemplars of the values and ideals that our democracy stands for?

On the subject of how to understand the moral core of public life, it is often valuable to turn to that most original of Indian politicians, Mahatma Gandhi. Akeel Bilgrami (in an essay entitled Gandhi, the Philosopher, published in the Economic and Political Weekly in September 2003) argues that Gandhi’s ideas contain an implicit but bold proposal: “When one chooses for oneself, one sets an example to everyone.” For Gandhi, a satyagrahi was required to live an exemplary life. And as an exemplar, he embodied (or as Erik Erikson put it, “actualised”) the ideals that he stood for in the pursuit of his ends, the hardest of which was the truth.

How does this notion of the satyagrahi (or for our purposes, the “politician”) as exemplar play out in real life? Bilgrami answers this with an anecdote from when he was a boy on a walk with his father: “One day, walking on a path alongside a beach we came across a wallet with some rupees sticking visibly out of it. …

My father said: ‘Akeel, why should we not take that?’ Flustered at first, I said something like, ‘… I think we should take it.’ My father looked most irritated, and asked, ‘Why?’ And I am pretty sure I remember saying words more or less amounting to the classic response: ‘Because if we don’t take it then I suppose someone else will.’ My father, looking as if he were going to mount to great heights of denunciation, suddenly changed his expression, and he said magnificently, but without logic (or so it seemed to me then): ‘If we don’t take it, nobody else will.’”

Bilgrami says that as a satyagrahi, Gandhi does not treat the “truth” as a cognitive notion at all, but as an experiential notion, woven into everyday practices

What does this ideal of the satyagrahi as exemplar offer today’s politician? As the institutional embodiment of public life, politicians must (at the very least try to) exemplify moral turpitude. Their legitimacy as politicians depends on this. For the political establishment to meet its responsibilities it needs to not only function transparently and with accountability, but must also be perceived to function in such a manner for the public to have faith in it.

On whether our politicians come close to embodying this ideal, the prognosis, I’m afraid, does not look good. This sobering conclusion emerges from two related developments over the past six months. In a significant judgment in June 2013, India’s Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) ruled in favour of bringing India’s political parties under the ambit of the Right to Information Act (RTI) as a “public authority.” According to the Constitution, a public authority is a “non-governmental organisation substantially financed, directly or indirectly by funds provided by the appropriate government.” The rationale for this, as stated in the CIC’s order, lies in the “public” character of the functions that political parties perform. The CIC’s judgment relies on the impeccable logic that public institutions that receive public benefits because they serve a public good should be subject to public scrutiny. Shockingly, almost all political parties have joined hands in opposition to the CIC’s judgment, and are seeking to amend the RTI Act through a Standing Committee of Parliament.

And as this fight for political transparency unfolds, claims by Arvind Kejriwal—who “will run politics from the road”—that he is an “anarchist” appear utterly befuddling since, if this were so, he should not be in government as Delhi’s Chief Minister! Actually, there is nothing inherently wrong with anarchism, since Mahatma Gandhi’s anarchist views ended up doing India a world of good. Unfortunately, Kejriwal, for all of his frugality and claims of turpitude, is also guilty of moral posturing and sanctimonious heavy-handedness that appear very un-Gandhian and disingenuous at too many levels. As we look forward to an interesting 2014, the good citizens of India are well advised to keep this in mind when rallying around Kejriwal the next time he sits on a dharna. By all accounts, the search for exemplary Indian leaders seems ongoing.

A short interview with veteran, actor, lyricist and filmmaker Piyush Mishra

An artist is one who lives in the world that he creates for himself. An artist is the most selfcentered person you will ever meet; there is a reason why most great artists die alone, in miserable conditions. There is a reason why most of them battle depression, and why many succumb to it. It is a difficult life, one that of an artist. From the wife-beater Ernest Hemingway to the ‘infidel’ Pablo Picasso, each one has been known for the eccentricities their genius brought in them. It then appears to be a burden an artist must carry on his or her shoulders, a small price to pay, some would say, in exchange for such extraordinary talent. When the history of 21st century art will be written, several of its pages would be dedicated to one such man, whose arrogance and artistic pride would have destroyed his everything, but life had a different end in mind.

Piyush Mishra, the artist in question, is known to be a man of many talents. He is an actor, singer, lyricist, and scriptwriter, and he slips into each of these roles effortlessly. Mishra is an unquestionable talent, there is nothing that he cannot do, and he has no qualms in admitting it. Mishra, who was born as Priyakant Sharma in the small town of Gwalior, had a frustrating childhood, where he had to fight for everything that he is known for today. Much like the story of every small-towner, Mishra’s parents, too, disapproved of his artistic ambitions, and to make matters worse, Mishra was the adopted son of his bua, Taradevi Mishra, who ran a dictatorial regime in the house. With the inner artist itching to come out, it was obvious that Mishra had begun to earn the reputation of a rebel, a non-conformist; he was the black sheep of his family. It is the anger that was bottling up in him Piyush Mishra, the artist in question, is known to be a man of many talents. He is an actor, singer, lyricist, and scriptwriter, and he slips into each of these roles effortlessly. Mishra is an unquestionable talent, there is nothing that he cannot do, and he has no qualms in admitting it. Mishra, who was born as Priyakant Sharma in the small town of Gwalior, had a frustrating childhood, where he had to fight for everything that he is known for today. Much like the story of every small-towner, Mishra’s parents, too, disapproved of his artistic ambitions, and to make matters worse, Mishra was the adopted son of his bua, Taradevi Mishra, who ran a dictatorial regime in the house. With the inner artist itching to come out, it was obvious that Mishra had begun to earn the reputation of a rebel, a non-conformist; he was the black sheep of his family. It is the anger that was bottling up in him that later became a driving force in his art.

It is in the same small town that his journey as an actor began. His anger found a vent through theatre, and when it came out, it came out so badly, and so beautifully, that everyone who saw it was enthralled. He was a celebrity of the theatre world. He was a god on the stage, and he liked being one.

“People used to love me, they used to respect me and they used to be afraid of me. It was something that gave me immense pleasure. I enjoyed the fear that I inspired in everyone,” he admits. He tells me that had I met him some 20 years back I would have been impressed by him but I also would have been afraid of him and hated him, for such was his arrogance.

When I tell him that I still am a bit afraid he laughs and tells me that he is a completely different man now, he is “all heart and all love”.

It may have been the bottled up anger at his forced upbringinging that found a voice on the small stages of Gwalior. But when he landed up at the National School of Drama in 1983, this inborn talent found a natural outlet. From his first music score that brought forth the hidden muscian and lyricist in him to the acting breakthrough in his second year at NSD under the German director Fritz Bennewitz in the Bard’s masterpiece Hamlet, Mishra had finally found the nursery that became the training and experimental ground for his multiple talents. If NSD was the springboard, Delhi proved to be his creative research lab for the next decade or so till he went on to script another chapter of history in in Mumbai in 2002.

In the days of his glorious egotism, Mishra had picked up several vices, alcohol being one of them. Reminiscing about those days, Mishra says that alcohol gave him a different kind of high.

“Those were miserable days but I was terribly happy in them.” He would be lost within himself without any interference of the outside world. Intoxicated, he would be in a trance and would just create.

Some of his most brilliant songs are a product of this struggle with alcohol. The song Ek bagal mein chand from Gangs of Wasseypur and Sheher humara sota hai from Gulaal were written during these days.

Mishra today is no more an alcohol abuser, he has won this long and hard fought battle, but that too has come with a price. If alcoholism cost him a few people who were close to him, the end of that phase has cost him that madness that brought out the genius in him. “I do miss those days at times,” he says. “In the morning N.K. (Sharma, his close friend and the founder of Act One, the first theatre group Mishra worked with) would ask me to create six songs and by the evening those songs would be ready. Today it takes me three to four days to work on one song.” Sobriety has its price.

Perhaps to him, madness is that state of mind which destroys every aspect of your being, but is also the utmost necessity for a genius. Giving up that madness may as well be the biggest sacrifice an artist can make. And therefore, it is not surprising that he does not like talking much about those times. Mishra, it seems, is afraid of his past self.

That addictive insanity is something he wouldn’t ever want to go near again. “I would like to look at it all with a bird’s eye perspective but not touch it,” he says.

The biggest woe of an artist’s life is the state of emotional extremity that he dwells in. Every artist at one time or the other has battled with the urge of abandoning the physical life and resigning into nothingness. Mishra says that it could have happened to him as well, the restlessness was there, but his circumstances prevented him from doing so, he, after all, had a family to take care of.

Quoting The Godfather he says, “Vito Corleone ki ek mashhoor line hai: ‘A man who doesn’t spend time with his family is not a real man.’ This line had a huge impact on me.” And so he stayed.

His story reads like the perfect Shakespearean tragedy, except that its end has been changed. Mishra, today, is a popular figure. He is swarmed with film offers and gone are those days of despondent joblessness. Life, as it seems, has finally given him the recognition and success he deserves. Cinema, as a medium with several limitations may never be able to do justice to his talent, but Mishra seems to have made peace with it.

The anger that resided in him may still be lurking around somewhere, but he has learnt how to channel it.

From alcoholism he is journeying towards spirituality. An artist, he says, should be, “...A saint, like Gautama Buddha, he needs to meditate, perform yoga, and become the master of his senses.”

That state of thoughtlessness, that state of equilibrium, where all questions are answered and all predicaments end, Mishra says he had once achieved it in his youth and it is those four months that he has been looking for all his life. Whether or not he finds them again remains to be seen, but for now he has found his peace. His eyes still have the glint of a madman, but this is the madness of a saint, of a man who has chosen this high life of traveller, the one whose journey, he knows, will continue beyond the limitations of this mortal life and this physical world. The manifestations of this multifaceted creative madness or should we say creative genius are in his many works that he leaves behind as his mark on posterity.

A summary of broad personality types

RECENTLY I SAW a funny email forward that compared hypothetical one-page diary entries written by two house pets—a dog and a cat. The dog’s entry was short, semi-literate and full of sunshine and cheer, with such exclamations as “Oh boy! A car ride! My favourite!” and “Oh boy! Tummy rubs on the couch!” while the cat’s entry was written in full, elegant sentences and was cynical and world-weary: the very heading read “Day 183 of my captivity”.

Anyone who knows the two species well should agree that this is a good summary of their broad personality types. And anyone who knows professional writers—the ones who have serious literary aspirations and brood for hours over the construction of a paragraph or sentence—will agree that temperamentally they tend to be cat-like: mostly reserved, unsocial and irritable, but willing to purr for a short while if a satisfying turn of phrase has been achieved. There are also practical reasons why writers are more often “cat people” than “dog people”. Dogs are dependent on human attention, needing to be regularly spoken to and taken down for walks, but felines are more self-sufficient and hence good companions for someone who spends much of his time in fierce concentration.

It is also interesting to consider the difference in tone between books about dogs and books about cats. The former, especially the ones about life with a pet, tend to be sentimental and emotionally demonstrative, whereas cat books have a certain coolness built into them. And this can be the case even when they belong to the Motivational or Self-Help category. Take David Michie’s very engaging The Dalai Lama’s Cat, written in the voice of a kitten who is rescued by the Dalai Lama at a traffic signal near Delhi and brought to Mcleodganj, where she soon settles into the temple complex and becomes known as His Holiness’s Cat (HHC). HHC—alternately known as Snow Lion and, to her dismay, “Mousie-Tung”—spends much of her time in the company of the Buddhist leader himself, soaking in his presence (“had he recognised in me a kindred spirit, a sentient being on the same spiritual wavelength as he?”) and listening in as he discusses the conundrums of existence. Each chapter follows a broad format where a human character discovers the need to rethink his attitude to things, and the cat then applies some of these teachings to her own situation, with varying degrees of success. Thus, an insight about how self-absorption can make one sick and unhappy is linked to our narrator coughing up unpleasant fur balls after spending an inordinate amount of time grooming herself. She realises that a period of self-pity combined with fear of exploring a new setting cost her precious time that she might have spent getting to know a new friend; and she is even inspired to deal with her gluttony, a by-product of being pampered silly.

As an old cynic wary of quick-fix advice and pat life lessons, I am not really a fan of this genre. But The Dalai Lama’s Cat worked for me because of its lack of syrupiness— even in times of emotional epiphany, the cat nature retains a certain distance. At one point HHC overcomes her feelings of distaste for a new arrival, a dog named Kyi Kyi, when she learns about his sad back-story. “We reached an understanding of sorts,” she says, but then she quickly adds: “I did not, however, climb into his basket and let him lick my face. I’m not that kind of cat. And this is not that kind of book.”

Suniti Namjoshi’s recently published Suki, a lovely, whimsical tribute to her deceased cat, takes the form of imagined conversations between human and feline. They talk about such things as morality, about social injustice and hypocrisies, and the tone is mostly droll, faux-philosophical and chatty (or catty). But there are deeply affecting moments too. At one point in the middle of a casual conversation, the ghost-cat remarks that towards the end of her life it had been painful for her to open the cat-flap to go outside, and the author responds with a spontaneous cry of “Oh, Suki!” And another exchange, where the cat mentions that she would have liked to meet the author’s family (who were not animal lovers), should cut deep for anyone who has ever had a special, intense relationship with a beloved pet and been unable to share it with their human world. At the same time, one knows that these conversations are fictional. And so, the book becomes as much about the author herself—it is a form of therapy, a way of examining her deepest feelings, including love, grief and regret. This is also a reminder that there are many types of cat books. Cats can be used to examine a particular milieu as in Pallavi Aiyar’s novel Chinese Whiskers, in which the adventures of two Beijing cats give us a window into aspects of Chinese society. Or they can serve purely representative or symbolic purposes: Art Spiegelman’s great graphic novel Maus depicts the Holocaust by drawing Jews as mice and their Nazi oppressors as cats.

Even overtly cat-centric books like The Dalai Lama’s Cat don’t always try to provide a detailed picture of the feline world and its tactile sensations, which is why Nilanjana S Roy’s delightful The Wildings, and its sequel The Hundred Names of Darkness, are such unusual additions to the kitty-lit corpus. These novels try to imagine what the world might feel like to a cat. And an important plot device is the concept of “linking”: the feral cats of Nizamuddin, Delhi, can transmit whisker signals to each other across vast distances, allowing them to form a network that humans around them are oblivious to. This should strike a chord for anyone who has longsuspected that there is something mystical and otherworldly about cats; that they are, like the cat in that diary entry, plotting something diabolical. “When my cats are happy, I’m not happy,” the poet Shelley said once, “because I know they’re just sitting there thinking of ways to get even.”