I couldn’t take coming back to a spic and span hotel room every night. It so didn’t feel like home. I had to sit stiffly on the well-laid-out bed and watch movies on the plasma TV – and I used to long for my crumpled sofa set where I could put my leg up and watch Everybody Loves Raymond on the boxy television. I used to also be in perpetual dread of the housekeeping staff. It was like Murphy’s Law: these guys used to ring the bell just when I was tucking into a huge breakfast, and I had to quickly gobble up everything in front of me so that they could go about their business of cleaning up. Worse, at times, I had to cut short my shower lest they just opened the door with their master key and let themselves in!

All in all, I guess it’s fine to be confined to a hotel room for a few days; not so, when there is a sense of permanence to a stay.

And there was this amusing side story of security measures too. If anyone came over to see me – and if I was going to stay in a place over the long term, chances are people would drop by (man – or woman — is a social animal after all). One of my friends dropped by to pick me up for dinner, and when he walked into my room he roundly cursed the ‘security’ downstairs. “Those guys demanded an ID card, and when I produced one they said they would keep it with them till I left the premises… I mean, what the hell yaar?”

My Pakistani friend Maria’s sister, who still lives here in Dubai, just round the block, dropped by the next evening. She too had to produce identification – and had to keep her labour card with the front office chappies till she left. “Do you think they thought I am a …?” she started.

“Don’t even say it!!!” I hollered back. “I’m moving back to my old building.”

The evening before I moved back, I was stepping out for a walk. There was a commotion breaking out right at the entrance. One of the guests, this Indian guy who I’d seen a couple of times in the elevator, was shouting at the guards because one of his friends wasn’t being “let in”. She wasn’t carrying an ID on her, the guards argued stolidly. What clearly wasn’t helping the girl’s case was the fact that she was blowing cigarette smoke – while arguing that she had forgotten to put her passport inside her bag — into the faces of the two burly security-men. I didn’t hang around there so I don’t know what happened finally but I did manage to wink at the girl (also an Indian) — and she rolled her eyes in response.

Welcome to the third edition of the lounge podcast with your host Anindita Ghose. We hope you had a great week following up on our weekly artsy recommendations.

Today we’re going to move to something more somber than what usually qualifies as Lounge. This Thursday, as you all know, marks the first anniversary of the terrible, terrible tragedy that unfolded in Mumbai last year with the terrorist siege. This week’s Lounge issue is almost entirely dedicated to that. And it’s only appropriate that the podcast is as well. We’re going to start off by speaking with Lounger Parizaad Khan from our Mumbai bureau about the process of putting this issue together—it’s really a job well done. As Parizaad will tell you, several of the people featured in the issue, have never spoken to the media before this. Their stories offer new and more humane insights to the 26/11 events.

We’re also going to have Mumbai writer Altaf Tyrewala, who’s written a special column for the issue speak to us about the impotency of people’s reactions straight after the attacks.

Another regular Lounge columnist, Aakar Patel, will offer his insights on Pakistan’s state of denial in the days that followed.

And then we have our regulars for you. Book critic Chandrahas Choudhuri will review “The Ayatollah begs to differ: The paradox of modern Iran” by Hooman Majd. And of course we have our inhouse cinephile Sanjukta Sharma tackling terrorism’s embrace on the big screen, with her review of the release of the fortnight — Kurbaan.

Getting back to the Mumbai attacks, there are several tribute events and discussions in Mumbai and other cities. For those who’d like to stay home, you can catch National Geographic’s documentary on 22 November at 10 pm. Discovery channel will also air a documentary chronicling first person accounts of those caught in the siege on 26th November at 8 pm.

That’s all from us this week. In the next podcast we’ll be rounding up the French festival that takes off across India in December amongst other things.

Have a great week!

I went on IMDb.com to see what you were up to next …
Most of it is lies …

Well, it listed Snootworld as your next directing project. Is that true?
No. [Laughs] Snootworld is a kind of children’s film, and it’s not happening yet.

What is your next project?
I’m going to make a film on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It won’t be a so-called David Lynch film, really; it will be about Maharishi and the knowledge he brought out. It’ll hold a lot of abstractions. We’re on our way to India in December to start the India part of it.

Will it be a narrative feature?
It’ll have to go in the documentary department, I think. I don’t think it’ll be a talking heads kind of thing, but we’re going to do a lot of interviews with people. We’ll interview — I hope — in India, a 97-year-old man who was with Maharishi from the beginning and get stories of times that weren’t so well recorded.

David Lynch

The auteur of such storied films such as Mulholland Drive, Elephant Man and Blue Velvet, is currently busy with a Twitter account and an online video series, and this documentary will be just his third film in the last 10 or so years. Lynch has been a proponent of Transcendental Meditation for some time and Mahesh Yogi, of course, took TM global by teaching it to the Beatles, Clint Eastwood and David Lynch himself.

Lounge last year extensively covered the Beatles trip to Rishikesh in 1968, including this interview with Paul Saltzman who spent time with the Beatles, Mia Farrow and Mahesh Yogi:

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi took his brand of spritiualism global in the 50s and 60s thanks to a steady stream of celebrity TM aficionados. His legacy in literature and music is pretty impressive and when he died in February last year politicans and celebs from all over paid tributes. The Yogi’s Wikipedia page drips names:

During the 60’s and 70’s a number of celebrities such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Deepak Chopra, Jane Fonda, Mia Farrow, Shirley MacLaine, Joe Namath, Stevie Wonder, and Howard Stern, as well as author Kurt Vonnegut and Major-General Franklin M. Davis, Jr reported using the technique. Singer-songwriter Donovan (who befriended the Maharishi and put his picture on the back cover of his A Gift from a Flower to a Garden album) also learned the technique. Comedian Andy Kaufman and magician Doug Henning were also students of the Maharishi. Howard Stern interviewed the Maharishi twice and credits Transcendental Meditation with saving his mother from depression. Clint Eastwood and David Lynch are two notable film directors who practice the Transcendental Meditation technique. Republican Party politician William Scranton, another student of the Maharishi, lost his 1986 bid for the Pennsylvania governorship when political consultant James Carville ran a television spot about Mr. Scranton’s affiliation with the “guru”. In October 1975, the Maharishi was pictured on the front cover of the Time magazine.

In 2002 the Yogi appeared on TV on CNN’s Larry King Live for his first televised interview in almost 3 decades. King was a little more reverential than usual:

KING: What is transcendental meditation?

MAHARISHI: Transcendental meditation is something that can be defined as a means to do what one wants to do in a better way, in a right way, for maximum results. It’s a program that the mind begins to experience its own finer impressions, finer thoughts, and then finally transcends the finest thought. And that is the level of what they call self-referral pure consciousness, which is the ultimate reality of life, pure intelligence from where the creation emerges, from where the administration of life is maintained, from where physical expression of the universe has its basis.

So transcendental meditation brings about transcendental consciousness, which is self-referral consciousness, the source of all intelligence.

KING: Why…

MAHARISHI: That level of intelligence becomes creative intelligence.

But Lynch, it appears, is going to make a straight documentary on the Maharishi’s life. So expect none of those quirks and unorthoxy that sets apart Lynch’s filmography. But at least, as some people online seemed to comment, it won’t be another Slumdog.

Or will it?

Picture courtesy of UNICEF

The State of the World’s Children report highlights how severe the problem of maternal mortality is in developing nations like India.

On the 20th anniversary of the Child Rights Convention, the UN has released a special edition of its annual State of the World’s Children report.

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most ratified human rights treaty in human history,” said UNICEF executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “It has transformed the way children are viewed and treated throughout the world.”

The report charts the progress in children’s rights and quality of life that has been achieved globally over the last 20 years: the under five mortality rate has declined by 28 percent, 84 percent of primary school age children are in class today globally, and progress has been made on a range of issues like child trafficking and child labor.

However, it also points to the problems that continue to exist, specifically maternal mortality in the developing world, stating that “the difference in pregnancy risk between women in developing countries and their peers in the industrialized world is often termed the greatest health divide in the world.”

The report emphasizes that education girls and strengthening health services are the most powerful ways to combat this phenomenon. It also identifies interventions and actions that must be scaled up to save lives: adequate nutrition, improved hygiene practices, antenatal care, skilled health workers assisting at births, emergency obstetric and newborn care, and post-natal visits for both mothers and newborns.

India and Nigeria together account for one third of maternal deaths worldwide. The latest international estimates show that India’s maternal mortality ration stands at 450 per 100,000 live births. A quarter of the world’s unattended deliveries take place in India.

Through initiatives like Janani Suraksha Yojana, which provides cash incentives for antenatal care during pregnancy, assisted institutional delivery and post-partum care, the Indian government is attempting to expand health care access for women. In some states, like Gujarat, the government is also partnering with private hospitals in initiatives like Chiranjeevi Yojana, which provides free obstetric care for pregnant women living below the poverty line.

So clearly this is a big deal for the country. But not big enough, alas, to get some original art work made for it.

This is the image of the note from the endlessly fascinating Banknote News website:

Victory, and Photoshop, is ours!

The CBSL press release has a full explanation of the banknote’s design elements, including the predominant image of President Rajapakse or, as a co-worker calls him, the “Lipgloss Dictator”. (Google up Rajapakse’s images and human rights record for details.)

But see the other side of the note? That image with the Lankan soldiers hoisting up the Sri Lankan flag?

Well that image is a complete rip-off of the famous Joe Rosenthal photo taken at Iwo Jima during World War II. The photo, which plays a crucial role in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, was also the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial monument in Arlington, Virginia.

Open source?

The Rosenthal photo signifies the quite hard-fought victory the Americans won over an intrenched, desperate Japanese force on Iwo Jima.

But it is also one of the most ripped-off martial images in history. I have seen versions of the image with corporate logos, assorted national flags, a tree and so on. And even a version of it by a prominent Indian news channel to promote a series of India Independence Day programming. Blurred image below:

Tryst with Google Image Search

Cut, paste, replace flag.

Surely Sri Lankan banknote designers could have been more original. I can somewhat see the parallels in symbolism here. But still… (Perhaps Adobe Photoshop can have a “Warning!: You are ripping off that Iwo Jima picture!” alert built in.)

Meanwhile my Lankan co-worker can’t decide which side of the banknote disturbs her more.

The movie begins innocuously enough. Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan are the trendiest college teachers you’ve ever seen (but at least Khan doesn’t play a student like in Love Aaj Kal). He’s a Muslim, she’s a (badly dressed) Hindu. They fall in love over coffee and Kapoor’s seriously thick eye makeup. He’s aggressive, she’s coy. “Are you afraid of your feelings for me?” he wants to know.

They frolic amidst the picture perfect monuments of Delhi. Then Kapoor is offered a job in New York. Khan doesn’t believe in long distance relationships. So he comes up with the perfect solution: I’ll go with you. The dialogues (by Anurag Kashyap and Niranjan Iyengar) are unbelievably prosaic.

“What will I do there,” he asks?

“The same thing you do here,” she says.

“But what will I teach?” he says.

“We’ll think later,” she replies.

Half an hour into the movie, they’ve moved cities and married (after sidestepping some clichéd protests from her father about how he always wanted a Hindu boy for his Hindu daughter). So it’s bye-bye Delhi, hello Statue of Liberty.

Overnight, Kapoor abandons her dowdy Delhi ethnic clothing for trendy westernwear and looks so much more comfortable. The couple finds a house in a desi suburban neighbourhood that looks like a combination of a M. Night Shyamalan village and Wisteria Lane.

Then the spookiness begins. Less than one hour into the film, there’s a kahani main rather predictable twist. Everyone spouts inane dialogues about jihad, the Koran, America. Everyone says Allah Hafiz menacingly. Kirron Kher takes her Kabuliwala accent very seriously. And wipes her tears very dramatically. Om Puri is lovely as always but what is he doing here? And poor Khulbushan Kharbanda gets only a couple of scenes and one telephone conversation. He gets to spout this gem: “Mazhab se wafadari fundamentalism kab se ho gayi bhai?”

In the midst of all the mess, Vivek Oberoi pops up. They says it’s his make or break role. Break, I think. The director makes him speak in an American accent. So Oberoi rolls the occasional R. “Kya batau, Iraq’s a mess,” he says. Or “It looks like a typical case of domestic violence.”

As the mood turns black, the characters dress only in blacks, greys and browns. The film is shot beautifully. Most of the acting is not bad too. But the film lacks soul and a story.

The FBI is depicted as a bunch of complete idiots. They take four days to reconstruct a half charred face. They can’t find any clues from a burnt vehicle—why didn’t any of them think of calling the CSI guys. One lone FBI officer handles the entire climax.

“Did you know the Talban was a creation of the CIA,” Vivek Oberoi tells a class of students as dumb as his character. All real Muslims have “Mazhab ka saccha junoon” for those of you who didn’t know. That’s why 9/11 was successful.

There are lots of dark, tight, nicely-lit close-ups. My favourite was one of the last shots of Kapoor. Or even the one of Oberoi after he does something he’s never done before.

The sex scene comes only two hours into the film. Kapoor and Khan compete for the Best Back competition.

Before this movie I believed that New York was to Karan Johar what Switzerland was to Yash Chopra. Why would he make such an offensive film about his favourite city? Bas karo yeh meaningful cinema. Please give us a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai again.

The blue-eyed boy of the fashion circuit (who is not-so-boy anymore) just launched his first flagship store in India. The venue is Carma, a feted designer space nestled close to Delhi’s Qutab Minar. This reinvented 14th century stable was previously a multi-designer space that stocked the likes of Manish Arora, Rajesh Pratap Singh and Abraham & Thakore. It was famously listed in Vogue as a Shopping All Over The World destination alongside Prada and Hermes stores. The management’s decision to go solo with Sabyasachi has understandably ruffled a few fashion netas.

I’d first heard Sabyasachi at a panel at the Lakme Fashion Week in Bombay in 2006. I don’t remember the precise topic of the panel discussion but I do remember a rather emotional young designer speak of his stumbling foray into the fashion industry, his family’s disapproval, his pain, and finally his rise to success.

The Sabyasachi I met today was a different man. He spoke of consumer types and sales percentages. He elaborated on wardrobe width and wardrobe depth and how people tend to go for the latter during an economic recession (Fashion also has smart-sounding phrases. What did you think?).

More in Lounge later. For now, I leave you with a video of the man himself, talking of ten wardrobe essentials for women. They’re almost all “back to the roots” themed. Some are very basic but I’d say it’s the first women’s must-have list, even in India, that doesn’t include a white shirt and a pair of black pants:

embroidered jootis, woven saree, your mother’s wedding saree, mogras, Janpath-style batua, woven/tribal handwork dupatta, ornate Indian earrings, “folksy” choli, full-length skirt, basic churidar.

I check eight out of 10. My mother’s wedding saree was vintage silk and true to old silk’s difficult ways, it tore on a bad day. But the “folksy” choli hunt shall begin. You check?

A united opposition threatened not to allow Parliament to function till the centre withdrew the ordinance, alleging the decision on the Sugarcane (Control) Amendment Order, 2009 was taken without consulting the state governments or any political party.

Without getting into the validity and soundness of the opposition’s contention, it has been as that as far as Indian Parliament is concerned, there is a very thin line of distinction between dissent and disruption. While it is nobody’s case that dissent is not a legitimate democratic tool, the former often crosses the line and turns into disruption, interrupting House proceedings and wasting valuable Parliament time. This time could have been spent in debating and discussing the same issue constructively and keeping a check on the government using question hour. After all, isn’t debate and dialogue more desirable and meaningful than loud, stubborn protests?

And disruption of House proceedings has other consequences as well.

When the opposition disrupts the first hour in Parliament, it actually results in the loss of an opportunity to keep a check on the government through question hour because the time on question hour once lost is never made up, even with Parliament sitting late. The question hour is strictly between 11am and 12 noon and once lost, the opposition misses the chance on cross questioning the government on that day.

According to PRS Legislative Research, the percentage of time lost due to interruptions in question hour last year was 42%. The figure was 23% in 2004, 30% in 2005, 44% in 2006 and 51% in 2007.

Thus while any Parliament time lost due to disruption can be made up by putting in extra hours, the time devoted to question hour is irretrievable once lost. But clearly, these technicalities and considerations barely figure in our parliamentarians’ game plan and in shrewd political strategizing. Shrill and camera friendly protests obviously make more political sense and have a greater immediate impact than productive deliberation within the House.

With the first day of this session of Parliament beginning on such a turbulent tone, the script seems to have been written for this month-long session!

Note: The Sugarcane Control (Amendment) Order 2009 Ordinance has changed the sugarcane pricing policy, fixing a uniform Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP), which would put the burden on states if they choose to pay more than FRP

A new report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says that women, particularly those in developing countries, are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“Given women’s significant engagement in food production in developing countries, the close connection between gender, faming and climate change deserves far more analysis than it currently receives,” says the UNFPA report, which comes a few weeks before the Copenhagen talks.

The report also emphasizes that women are potentially key players in combating climate change, as voluntary declines in fertility, would reduce population growth, which would in turn contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gas-emissions in the future. Population dynamics—changes in geographic distribution, household size and age structure—must also be taken into account in formulating strategies to combat climate change.

The human and gender dimensions of the climate change problems must be considered in order to “launch a genuinely effective long-term strategy to deal with climate change,” said UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid.

The UNFPA report follows close on the heels of the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index, which ranks India at 114 out of 134 countries, on the basis of economic participation, political participation, education and health.

Also Read: Women are the lowest hanging fruit

BBC Debate on Female Talent and Gender Parity

WEF Report: Gender Gap in India Still Gaping

Tokyo: Hundreds queued for the launch of the Jimmy Choo for H&M collection at the Shinjuku store*

A fashion earthquake shook the world on Saturday.

New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Berlin, Stockholm… Hundreds of people lined up in cities across the world last Saturday in front of H&M stores – the Shinjuku, Tokyo store pictured above had a 500-strong queue – for the launch of the Jimmy Choo for H&M collection. (It’s a lovely collection with broad popular appeal – bling, electric blue, zebra, cheetah, gorgeous shoes, slinky dresses, bags, accessories, and even some men’s stuff.) And when the doors were flung open, the same scene repeated itself in store after store around the globe – a mad frenzy of grab, giggle, glee, the shelves plucked bare of merchandise as if decimated by a hoard of locusts. At many stores the women’s collection was over in less than an hour.

Here’s my friend Sooheang’s experience from Hong Kong: “Accidentally I was at H&M on Saturday when Jimmy Choo’s shoes was first introduced in Hong Kong H&M. Little did I know that for die-hard fashionistas it was the must-have moment of the year. What madness. It could be a scene from Sex and City. The girls were opening their bags outside the shop to show off their catch to each other. The register line was soooo long that I had to push people through to get to the elevator so that I could go to the top floor (the kids section where I bought my sweater).”

Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, these heady heels – with stratospheric prices to match – are what girlish dreams are made of. And now suddenly one of them has broken ranks and has offered up the legendary Choo’s at one-fifth the price. Call it luxury on a shoe-string. Call it luxury for the masses. Call it McLuxury.

Jimmy Choo and H&M have plenty to smile about too. Ringing cash registers aside, Jimmy Choo has extended its reach to the H&M masses, and H&M has a new luxe sheen on its brand image.

Importantly, Jimmy Choo has dipped its toes into the clothes and accessories business and judging from the way they were snapped up in minutes, I don’t think Jimmy Choo is going to be just-a-shoe-and-bag brand for long.

Whether you are in the luxury business or not, there are provocative questions this episode throws up. What would be the equivalent of McLuxury for your business? Would it extend the reach of your products many times over? How many of them could possibly enter your consumer base for good?

Happy thinking, and click here if you’d like to have Tamara Mellon, the founder of Jimmy Choo, take you through the collection.

*Photo from http://tokyofashion.com/hm-shinjuku-opening-day-pictures-video/

Swirls! Swirls!

And yet another Google post today on Play Things! (We would love to stop blogging about Google products. But as Somerset Maugham once said, I think, control hee nahi hota.)

The people at Mountain View have announced a brand new image search concept, still experimental, called Image Swirl that not only searches for images based on your keywords, but also groups them into clusters based on similarity. So if you’re searching for a Volkswagen Beetle, and not one of those creepy crawly things, Image Swiril will know.

The “Official Google Blog” has this to say:

Back in 2001, to give people a new, quicker way to find images, we launched Image Search. When you do a search for [eiffel tower] you’ll find an array of images of the tower in the daytime, in black and white, at sunset and more. With Similar Images, which recently graduated from Google Labs, you can click “Find similar images” to narrow your search to, say, pictures of the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. Today, we’ve launched an experimental feature in Labs called Google Image Swirl, which builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.

The operative words here are ’similar’ and ‘fun’. Swirling for images is entertaining at least for the first 20 minutes as you search, cluster, click, swirl and so on.

What happens when you swirl for, say, ‘apple’?

I like apples.

You get search results where various types of image results are grouped into 12 sections. Here you can clearly see that the Apple logo, an apple itself, the iPhone and so get clustered automatically. Now let us click on the red apple in there…

How web 2.0 this is...

And the screen zooms (swirls?) out into a little branch with many such red apple-like images. And there are little sub-image clusters within. And then you swirl in further. And so on. Fun.

Image Swirl, as the Google Blog explains, is a further refinement of Google’ image search capabilities. And while it currently only handles around 200,000 keywords, it will be a welcome addition to the current Image search service. Also it showcases how real-time searching, clustering and browser graphics can make searching fun.

I like Image Swirl. You can give it a go here.

More related articles from around the web:

Image Swirl Brings New Visualizations to Google Image Search (mashable.com)
Google adds a sexy new Swirl to Image Search (thenextweb.com)

World Food Program Map showing per capita calorie consumption on a nation by nation basis via Huffington Post, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein

Wealthy nations at the UN’s World Food Summit have failed to commit to concrete targets to eradicate global hunger

It’s not just climate change that’s polarizing the world. At the 3-day UN World Food Summit, which began in Rome on Monday, aimed at combating world hunger, rich countries showed themselves to be decidedly at odds with the targets advocated by the world’s poorer countries.

For one thing, Berlusconi was the only leader from a G8 nation present at the summit. For another, richer countries effectively removed the Millennium Development Goal to end world hunger by 2025 and also did not endorse the UN’s call to commit $44 billion annually to agricultural projects in the developing world.

Instead, the draft declaration, issued at the beginning of the 3-day meeting, reiterated the goal of halving world hunger by 2015 and said that obliterating hunger should come at the “earliest possible date” and called for “urgent action” to boost food security. The declaration has been slammed by Jacques Diouf, Director of the FAO, for not including any concrete targets. “I thought it made sense to set that target, and I thought we would be discussing whether it should be in four years or five years or so on, not that we would be eliminating any target date in the declaration,” said Diouf, referring to the Millennium Development Goal, in an interview with the BBC. “I am not satisfied that some of the concrete proposals I made were not accepted.”

The Financial Express reports that agriculture and food minister, Sharad Pawar, is attending the summit and will make India’s position “clear.” The summit occurs at a time when the UPA government has pledged to offer food security: providing 25 kg of rice and/or wheat at Rs3 to every family below the poverty line. However the bill will not be brought to the winter-session of Parliament.

The FAO reports that there are over one billion hungry people around the world, with over 600 million residing in Asia and the Pacific.

But strangely, the new rule will also consider the use of hands-free devices an offence! The argument is that your conversation on the phone could distract you from driving. If that is the case, what about talking to other passengers in the car? Is that not also a distraction? And what about listening to music?

But the prohibition of mobile phones are not only limited to the vehicle! Apparently some offices have banned talking over the cell phones during work hours, while new guidelines approved by both the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) and the Kerala Film Producers’ Association last week, have completely banned the use of phones on movie sets.

…The reason? Actors and background workers phone calls often interrupt the shoot! The fifth in a series of decisions taken to combat rising film industry costs is very explicit. “Only the producer is allowed to use a mobile phone on the sets.” But actors and technicians can take heart. They won’t be exiled from their mobile phones for too long, because the second of those decision reads: “No Malayalam film should be shot longer than 45 days”!

Sam Anderson, New York magazine’s excellent book critic, has a good review of The Original of Laura here, in which he touches upon the ethics of publishing a work the author did not wish to see in print. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book yet.) Anderson raises the possibility that The Original of Laura is in fact a very finished work, and that Nabokov was possibly having an elaborate laugh. In the book itself, “Philip Wild’s manuscript — the first-person account of his experiments in “self-deletion”— ends up finished but unpublished: He dies of a heart attack before his secretary gets a chance to type it up. One of Laura’s last cards suggests that a mysterious figure steals the book, intending to publish it in a different venue than Wild had planned.” That is certainly suggestive, and it isn’t beyond Nabokov at all to whip up this sort of jape from beyond the grave.

But Nabokov’s sense of humour aside, what are the ethics of publishing unfinished work? Anderson talks of how, from the selfish point of view of a reader, we feel lucky to receive anything more from these masters, however unfinished. But this is just greed disguised as literary hunger. Somebody like Nabokov has written enough to ensure that a final glance into a new work will reveal no legacy-shaking insights. Even if, by chance, any unexpected perspectives are gained, how sure can we be that they are well-founded — that the paragraphs or sentences or structure upon which they are based would not have been changed and edited by the author ahead of publication?

One argument has it that viewing a rough draft of a manuscript lets us into the author’s mind, to see how it functions. An example is in the image above, where Nabokov has tried a number of synonyms for “erase” before settling upon “efface.” But this sounds redundant too. We already knew of Nabokov, for instance, that he was obsessive about how precise his language should be; the merest acquaintance with one of his books can reveal that. We already knew that Wodehouse scribbled extensive notes on every event in every single chapter of his book in advance, before he started writing; we didn’t need Sunset at Blandings to tell us that. (It remains possibly the only Wodehouse I have never read, solely because I cannot contemplate it simply dropping off a cliff midway. It would feel too much like the deaths of Gally and Lord Emsworth and the Empress of Blandings; I’d rather they remained alive in my head, even if their creator has passed on.)

All of which can only lead me to surmise that such publications are motivated almost entirely by publishing houses — by their need to sell one final book by a major author before they have to stop capitalising on his brand. Which is a shame. An author usually has a restricted sphere of control. He cannot influence how massively his books are marketed, or how many people buy them, or how they are reviewed. What he can control is his book — what he put in it, and when he decides it is ready to publish. The least we can do is respect that.

P. S. The usual riposte to the above is: “But what about Kafka?” Most of the work of Kafka that we know today was left unfinished, to be structured for publication after his death by his friend Max Brod. It’s a tough riposte to answer. I can only say that there are always exceptions to every rule, and that such decisions must be taken on a case-by-case basis. For the record, Brod claimed that, when Kafka asked him to burn his papers, he replied that he would do no such thing, so we can hope that Kafka knew that publication was inevitable. Perhaps I can also plead that there’s a difference between trying to excavate a literary genius who would otherwise have remained unknown — as Brod did — and piling yet another work on top of an already impressive canon, as has been done with Nabokov. But it is, I concede, a fine line.

All through childhood, I associated Children’s Day with something special. At school, we’d be given sweets and allowed a longer lunch break, and all our teachers seemed to make at least a marginal effort to give us less homework.

My passage out of childhood however, has been marked by an evolving recognition of the many strata that comprise the “children” celebrated on Children’s Day. While sweets may have been the order of the day for my friends and I, for many of the children in the country I call home, Children’s Day is yet another day to survive — rather than celebrate.

This past Children’s Day was particularly significant because it marked the 20th anniversary of the UN Child Rights Convention. We talked to Angela Walker, spokesperson for Unicef India; Deepa Bajaj, chief executive of Child Survival India, and Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children in India, to get their thoughts on Children’s Day.

What are the three biggest issues affecting children in India today?

Walker: Child labour, obstacles to the enrollment and attendance of children in schools, and child marriage. Ending child marriage is very important because a girl who stays in school when she has children is far more likely to send her own children to school, to get them immunized and to practice better health and hygiene.

Bajaj: Malnourishment, illiteracy and the compulsion to be gainfully employed at a young age in order to support their families.

Chandy: Death from easily preventable and treatable diseases and conditions — two million children below the age of five die every year from these, while over four lakh children die within the first 24 hours of life every year in India. Child labour — officially there are approximately 13 million children below the age of 14 engaged in child labour. Finally, there is a lack of education in a country where education is a fundamental right. Approximately 53% of children drop out at the elementary level and 20% of children drop out by the second grade.

Click here to view slideshow of photographs taken of children in India by Raghu Rai

How can a regular individual help?

Walker: Every individual is a voter and can make a difference. People need to bring these issues to the attention of lawmakers. The capability of this country is enormous: there are rockets being sent to the moon, luxury hotels, Bollywood stars, engineers, teachers — the list goes on. If Indian society as a whole stood up against these issues, they would end.

Bajaj: They can support needy children in their own environment. They can help their maid’s children, their driver’s children, their peon’s children to get a quality education and basic health and nutrition. They can volunteer their time. They should not employ children to work as maids.

Chandy: They can show their support for a campaign through offering funds, signing up to volunteer, writing letters to newspapers, etc. With the EVERY ONE campaign that Save the Children has just launched to prevent children under 5 dying needlessly, we are collecting thumbprints from the public that we will then present to the government. This is not only to show public support for the cause but also to build pressure on the government to deliver on its promise to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Massive public support is critical for policy change to take effect. Again, while the law can act as a deterrent, the social and cultural acceptance must end if we are to eliminate this scourge of child labour. Do not employ children.

What is the one issue children face that you think is most easily or immediately solvable?

Walker: Proper neo-natal care makes a huge difference to an infant’s chance of survival. Of infants who die, 73% are in first 4 weeks. There are no-cost solutions to this such as breast feeding in the first 2 hours, or washing of hands with soap to avoid infection. Many children die of hypothermia due to traditional practices like not putting clothes on the baby right away. If we can make people aware of these simple, no-cost interventions it could make a huge difference.

Bajaj: Every child should have the right to live a healthy life. The state should provide basic health facilities.

Chandy: There are no easy solutions unfortunately. However, if I were to pick one area that needs to be worked on immediately, it is the government’s commitment to the UN Child Rights Convention guaranteeing its children the Right to life as enshrined under Article 6 of the UNCRC. India is also committed to the Millennium Development Goals. There are several low-cost home-based interventions that can reduce the number of children dying by up to 70% if provided universally.

What is the one piece of legislation you would like to see enacted?

Walker: The proper legislation is already in place. I would like to see it implemented. Although the Right to Education bill has been passed, millions of children are still not in school.

Bajaj: The implementation of the Right to Education bill and child labour laws.

Chandy: The Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act is a flawed pieced of legislation and must be scrapped and replaced by new legislation that bans all forms of child labour.

On the 20 year anniversary of the Child Rights Convention, what score would you give India on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of the rights and quality of life its children enjoys?

Walker: I am not a numbers person. I’m not comfortable rating the country. What I can tell you is that at Unicef, we are very happy with many of the laws enacted — like the right to education, and laws against child labour and marriage.

Bajaj: Four out of 10. We have made some improvements but we still have miles to go.

Chandy: Four out of 10 since India’s growth has not been inclusive and does not address the needs of millions of marginalised children in the country.

A Revolutionary Moment in Fashion History

Miranda Priestley wouldn’t have taken kindly to this seating arrangement – and poor Andy (her rookie assistant in the film) would have had hell to pay for that hunched-shoulder, T-shirt-wearing, laptop-wielding young fashion oddity sitting within breathing distance of her majesty – except this isn’t a scene from any movie, this is a real life picture of the front row seats at D&G’s Spring/Summer 2010 show in Milan. The real-life inspiration for Devil Wears Prada, the editor of Vogue, Anna Wintour – her signature blonde bob turned 90-degrees away in the opposite direction – is sitting just one place away from Bryanboy.

Who is Bryanboy? That’s exactly the point, a virtual nobody operating out of his bedroom in Manila until his blog by the same name gained so much popularity that it catapulted him to the front row of luxury brand fashion shows, rubbing shoulders with old world fashion media heavyweights (albeit only size two in the case of Wintour) like Suzy Menkes, the legendary fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune (extreme left in the picture, full marks to her for sporting a laptop). A nod from these ladies could send the career of a fashion designer soaring, and oh no, you definitely don’t want to be on their wrong side.

In the case of Bryanboy, of course, he is neither on the wrong side or the right side, he is smack in the center. While Wintour and Menkes have formidable nod-and-veto power amassed over decades of fashion pronouncements from the lofty pages of Vogue and IHT, Bryanboy has oodles of squishy soft power thanks to his quirky blog replete with weird-and-wonderful videos (check out the ode to Marc Jacobs, it is a scream) and his with-it take on the fashion world, all underpinned with a huge passion for fashion. To understand the kind of effortless power that Bryanboy carries on his slim shoulders you have to look at the statistics: his blog gets 215,000 unique visitors a day, whereas a magazine like Vogue sells 200,000 copies a month in an established market like UK*. (BTW, Marc Jacobs called within hours of that video, they have become such good friends that Jacobs has named a bag after him.)

There is a growing tribe of Bryanboys out there – the D&G show itself had four super-bloggers in attendance, besides Bryanboy, there was Scott Schuman a.k.a The Sartorialist, Tommy Tom from blog Jak & Jil and Garance Dorè – and the question is what should luxury brands do about them. Give them a warm D&G embrace? Or a Vanity Fair like cold shoulder? (Michael Robert, Vanity Fair fashion and style director, sitting next to Bryanboy in the picture, didn’t say a word to him

I was at a Luxury Roundtable (during Luxury Week Hong Kong 2009) in August organized by Taubman – it was one of the best I have attended with Asia Chiefs of several luxury brands around the table, and a frank and vigorous discussion of issues facing the luxury industry, the evolving role of the Internet being one of them. My point then was – and still is – that like it or not, there is little choice but to whole-heartedly embrace the internet, Bryanboy and his colorful ilk included.

The argument that some brands offer about the Internet making luxury “too mass” doesn’t really hold – it is not just the Devil who wears Prada, but millions of internet-savvy Andy Sachs who buy it too. Luxury is hardly an exclusive bastion of a wealthy minority; it has been “democratized”. In which case, more power to the style bloggers.

This single photograph captures a revolutionary moment in fashion history, when the power equation changed, when the tables (laptop in place) were turned, when the outsider was let in, when the baton was silently passed from the old guard to the Bryanboys. What do you think this means for the fashion industry? And indeed, the world at large?

* Style bloggers take centre stage, By Nicola Copping, FT.com, November 13 2009

Husain’s horses, women and breezy lines are all explained.

His just-launched autobiographical e-book, Untitled, chronicles his life with a sublime non-linearity. In its animated narration, we meet the skinny boy called Maqbool who sold his geography textbook to buy his first tube of oil paint and we meet the Maqbool Fida Husain who earned 4 annas per square feet for his film poster work in Bombay in the 1930s. We meet the man who is forever searching for the mother who died when he was barely two years old, the man who fell in love one too many times and the man who deifies all the women he has known only to deify the one he hasn’t known—his mother.

Kamna Prasad, an Urdu language publisher and cultural activist, pressed Husain to pen these stories. The writing—all 40 chapters of it— and Husain’s sketches and their animation happened over the last three months. Apparently, Husain worked on the sketches in a very short span of time and then called Kamna from London or Dubai almost everyday to inquire into the project’s progress. He works at an alarming pace himself, and three months to animate a 40 chapter e-book seemed like a ridiculous idea to him.

I just finished seeing all of it. The music, for one, is lovely. So is the Hindi- Urdu narration that criss-crosses between the real and the metaphoric. Don’t expect motion picture animation: All that this digitized version entails is running text and a cursor brush that draws up black and white sketches as the narrative goes forward. And it is all tied together beautifully with an original score.

The Thursday evening launch had an avant-garde theatre presentation (by which I mean it was only vaguely comprehensible, though still beautiful) by students of the National School of Drama. Since publishing the book is part of Kamna’s larger solidarity campaign called “ M.F Husain@95” to have Husain back in the country, artist Subodh Gupta also made a related appeal as he formally launched the book.

What is it about Husain that makes him transcend the art world to the collective memory of the masses? No other modern master is as well-known as him, and that is not an indication of merit or market prices. It is something else; something else quite inexplicable.

There was a period when the price of Husain’s artworks drew major flak and several people called him a “fake”. One specific accusation was how he’s used certain motifs to “brand” himself. While I see no problem with that in itself, learning that Maqbool spent many mornings with his grandfather at a horseshoe maker’s as a boy of six, makes his horses even more real to me.

I hope this book can explain much of the man and his motifs, especially the women in his drawings—the cause of his self-exile and pain—to his detractors.

I might be biased. I sleep with a Husain (print, I must add) above my head.

Clips from the book launch:

Husain’s recorded message to the audience

A theatrical adaptation by the National School of Drama


The young Sachin I remember would sport a headband over his curly hair: a John McEnroe clone with a sulking look to match. But there was always something special in the way he hit the tennis ball. It took his brother Ajit and coach Ramakant Achrekar to see that he was a genius in waiting.

Ajit was my cricket mate, the captain of the local team. He once sent a very young Sachin — ten years our junior and barely taller than the stumps — to open the batting. There were silly jokes from the opposing team till the first ball came into contact with the sweet spot on his bat.

There has been enough said and written about his cricketing prowess. Shane Warne famously admitted to having nightmares of Sachin coming down the track and hitting him for a straight six. Sunil Gavaskar says he is the closest thing to batting perfection.

What few realize is how much he did to bring emotional stability to a country that was in flames because of the Mandal and mandir agitations, and had to live through an economic crisis as well. Like the baseball player Babe Ruth and cricketing great Don Bradman in the years of the Great Depression, Sachin was a beacon of hope.

And he also captured the zeitgeist of a post-reform nation. Rajdeep Sardesai was spot on in his Friday column in Hindustan Times: “Tendulkar is a free-spirited artiste who bats with the freedom of an India unshackled of its socialist baggage.”

Roopa Machaiah came close to answering all six, and a couple of others weren’t too far off either.

The answers:

1. What did the refrain of this particular Robert Burns poem inspire?

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro’ ____ ____,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?

A. The title of Catcher in the Rye. The blanks are “the rye.”

2. Chuck Jones, father of the famous cartoons starring Wile Coyote and Roadrunner, often cited this author-philosopher’s idea of fanaticism – “redoubling your effort after you’ve forgotten your aim” – to describe his work. Who is this author-philosopher?

A. George Santayana

3. A slightly cryptic clue: Which Russian parsnip shows up in a poem by Alexander Galich, a song by Regina Spektor, and in the asteroid belt?

A. Boris Pasternak (”Pasternak” means “parsnip” in Russian)

4. Which author typed up his most famous manuscript on this continuous scroll of paper — so charged up that he didn’t even want to stop to change sheets?

A. Jack Kerouac. That is the manuscript of On the Road

5. Which author is shown here in his strapping youth?

A. Ernest Hemingway

6. Complete this quote from Exodus, about Moses’ wife: “And she [Zippo'rah] bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a ______ __ __ _____ ______.”

A. Stranger in a Strange Land

The theme? These are all the writers and works mentioned in the Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start the Fire.

The honour roll:

1. Anil Kothuri (who also identified the theme)

2. Mekhala

Congratulations, you two, and come back next week for more book trivia!

New Moon

Edward Cullen and Bella Swan are finally coming to India. A year too late sure, but they are coming, and in some part this may be a result of an online petition that was started a year back by a 14-year-old Kolkata-based Ritisha Mishra. In fact the Twilight saga fans are in for a double treat—within a fortnight of Twlight’s release (20 November), New Moon will be in theatres too (4 December).

My love affair with the Twilight books started last year when I read all the books back-to-back thanks to a colleague who had all four of them. Both of us eagerly waited for the release of Twilight (we had to see who was playing Edward Cullen) but the film never made it to the screen here. I finally caught the film on DVD sometime in May this year and was super disappointed with the small screen version—Edward Cullen had a puffy hairstyle, Bella looked like she was in pain all the time, Jacob looked like a hippy.

In spite of the not- so-great review in the international media and the DVD viewing, I still hoped that somehow the film would release in India. And while I was just hoping, 14-year-old Ritisha Mishra from Kolkata was making sure it did.

Mishra with her friends had been scouting international websites to figure out when the movie would release in India since August 2008. When no release dates for India appeared on these sites she knew India was being bypassed. So in October 2008, a month before the worldwide release of the film she created an online petition asking friends from all over India to sign up.

In the last 12 months, she has managed to get 1700 people to sign up. “We even created a Facebook group and asked people to sign up so we could demand for an India release of the film. I was really disappointed last year when I couldn’t see the film,” says Mishra over the phone from Kolkata. Like me, Mishra checked out the trailers and clips of the film on Youtube and even tried downloading the film but a bad quality meant that she could not enjoy the film. Like me, she finds Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen “not so impressive. Edward in the book is really cooler and somehow much more exciting. But Kristen Stewart as Bella is awesome,” she says.

Mishra believes part reason why the film is releasing in India now is because of her petition. “At least the producers know that we love the books and are definitely going to see the film.”

Just when I though Facebook and Internet activism had no power, Mishra little success story makes me think that there may still be hope in signing online petitions and becoming members of Facebook groups.

Take the summer placements that just got over. This is the time companies descend on IIMs and other business school campuses to hire interns who will do projects for them next summer. What’s in it for IIM students – well, they get their hands dirty with real work, they can apply theory or the stuff they learn in the classroom to to real-life business, and they get a glimpse of how a company works, useful for a decision on whether they want to walk down the aisle with this recruiter for a full-time commitment, or just say bye after the brief honeymoon, err..internship.

For recruiters, it is the perfect time to test students and scout out a batch for future hires. They get young, enthusiastic people who will come-in for a summer and inject some fresh ideas. Moreover, if things work out, recruiters can ask them to stay by making PPOs or pre-placement offers.

So it is an important time all around. It is also, in India, indicative of which way the job market is likely to go. An upbeat summer can mean final placements will be good, and can be indicative of corporate growth.

The IIMs are hawkishly watched during both summer and final palcement season. And while seeking the limelight at all other times, these business schools routinely shy away from publicity during placements. They issue media blackouts and gag orders to students. Even recruiters are requested not to divulge anything “outside” the campus.

This time, though, the summer placement scene was a pleasant surprise. At least two IIMs, IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Calcutta, briefed the media almost daily. Rohan Mahajan, an easy-going, approachable (surprise!) student of IIM-C who interacts with the media, said the move was “to prevent leaks”. Mahajan and his peer, Paul Savio, it seems, sat down before placements and decided a daily update was better than seeing speculative information in the next day’s newspaper on how many offers were made, who accepted and who recruited on-campus.

At IIM-A, Messers. Rohan Desai, Vivek Jain and Himanshu Nema, sent out not only daily updates, but also their mobile numbers, seeking queries. Lovely.

IIM-C’s Mahajan says the new willingness to share information is not because the campus aniticipated a better-than-expected summer placement season. He also said the trend will continue though he himself will, over the next few weeks, hand-over charge of keeping the outside world informed on campus activities, to a junior from the Class of 2011.

from ifood.tv

Delhi is a much nicer place to be in. Cold nippy winds have replaced hot blasts of air, sweat is a distant (though still terrible) memory, being outdoors at 1pm is now feasible and not suicidal, and most importantly the thought of food is now exciting and not nauseating!

After months (May to September to be precise) of being unable to stomach anything apart from salad or yoghurt, I have celebrated the return of my appetite with unabashed indulgence in Mughlai food.

Mutton seekh kababs with soft romali roti, chicken (or beef) tikka, the unbelievable melt-in-the-mouth kakori kababs and chicken kali mirch now constitute a major portion of my diet and will be the main reason behind well meaning friends and relations telling me that I look “rounded” or that I have “put on” when I go home for Christmas.

But I don’t care. I can’t comprehend a nicer way to spend my time – biting into tender, straight off the fire kababs in the biting cold… weight loss be damned. And you KNOW you want to as well! So if you’re new to Delhi or have not tried them before (in which case you should be shot) kababs are definitely on the must-eat list.

Old Delhi is widely accepted as being the best place to get Mughlai food – we have already spoken of Karims at length. Other good places include Barucha, Zaika amd Pehelwani ka biryani (Pehelwani means wrestler) priced at the unbelievable rate of 14/- a plate. Apart from that, do not hesitate to try the kababs and other meats being sold on the side of the road near the Jamma Masjid.

But Old Delhi is not the only place for good kababs and Mughlai food. Nizamudeen in South Delhi is also a veritable meat haven – where ridiculously low priced (and delicious) kababs and other meat dishes are on sale everywhere. I would particularly recommend Lazeez darbar near the Nizamudeen railway station (bang outside the “reputed” Rajdoot hotel) just for its chicken and mutton kali mirch. Nassar Iqbal inside the Nizamudeen bhogal is another place where you get great Tandoori bread and mutton stew and of course my personal favourite Ghalibs – a tiny little hole in the wall where a plate of kababs is 20 Rupees (although a waiter there stole my phone – However he did give it back…either in a fit of conscience or a fit of disgust because said phone is the lowest priced model in the Indian consumer market).

Higher end places for Mughlai food include Al Kauser in R.K. Puram in South Delhi and the heftily priced Park Baluchi (but so so good) in Hauz Khas village. All these and more I have traversed with my trusted foodie friend (whose name shall not be mentioned here as he works for a rival publication) and Mu (who works here but whose identity cannot be revealed either)

So as tempting as it may be to hole yourself up in your room and read or drink rum (also good ideas), do venture out and try out the mughlai food.

You’ll love yourself – and Delhi a whole lot more.

p.s: Other suggestions are welcome.

“Sooner or later, you either hibernate or get a number.”

But how does one remember this randomly assigned unique number (which apparently will have no intelligence embedded in them unlike in many existing systems), asked Sujatha Ramdorai, a mathematician from TIFR when Nilekani was delivering a public lecture today at the Indian Academy of Sciences on its platinum jubilee.

“If people can remember 10-digit cell phone numbers, this would be easy to remember too. If not, you can store it in your cell phone…err, even tattoo it somewhere”, Nilekani said almost non-chalantly. Fielding all kinds of inane and intelligent questions from a hall packed with scientists and soon-to-be-scientists, Nilekani at least disclosed one thing: “only the laptop and powerpoint presentation” that he claims to have on this project today belie the calculated work he’s been undertaking to keep his promise of delivering the first identification numbers within 12-18 months from August 12, 2009.

You can read in detail about most of it in this recent WSJ interview. But what isn’t here is the fact that as far as technology is concerned he is looking at an open-access platform that could be embedded in any business software/application — that’s a long shot at building business cases for the agencies and institutions he intends to work with such as banks, insurance companies, oil ministry, state governments, etc.

The system would work on any wire or wireless line and all one would need is a cell phone and a fingerprint reader. “All of which can be assembled from off-the-shelf components for Rs 5000—it’s going to be an open architecture”, he adds casually in response to a question on what kind of platforms and software he is looking at.

Hmm … IT folks get ready to build applications for if Nilekani is right, then the use of this ID number is limited only by our imagination.

And what are the identification parameters? While it’s still being worked out, it could likely be biometric data comprising 10 fingerprints, iris scan and photograph.

Quizzing him at the end, a scientist said he was having problem with fingerprint identification in his building since he was old and his fingerprints were getting blurred; his younger colleagues didn’t have any such problem. How would UIDAI solve this?

By having 10 fingerprints, said the chairman of UIDAI. “If one or two fingers don’t match there are others, don’t worry.”

But it seems people just can’t stop worrying. Someone asked: “What happens if a person dies?”

“He takes the ‘Number’ with him, wherever he goes.”

Well, Nilekani will indeed have to launch a massive public awareness campaign once he is closer to issuing those “unique numbers”. Good news is, he seriously means to do that.