Open magazine TruePDF 18 march 2019

THE ILLUSION OF UNITY AN ESSAY BY TONI MORRISON w w w o p e n t h e m a g a z i n e c o m 18 march 2019 / rS 50 AT H T S UTE IA N I N M D IND E V E S GE N A CH NG I H C BREAT BARRIER AS L E H T OR F L L A CA NMENT TAI N O C ND A S I R UB H I TY I N D A I T P PAKISERICAN CU AM contents 18 march 2019 58 LOcOmOTIF GraSSrOOTS caPITaLISm The cult of denial India’s first software product unicorn taps into underprivileged youth By S Prasannarajan By V Shoba INDraPraSTha 64 26 ThE FOrEIGNEr’S hOmE By Virendra Kapoor mUmBaI NOTEBOOK To what we pay greatest allegiance? Family, language group, country, gender? Religion, race? And if none of these matter, are we urbane, cosmopolitan, or simply lonely? By Anil Dharker By Toni Morrison 16 66 FOrm & rEFOrm Out of town TImELESS TrOPES The malleability and universality of the characters in Little Women remain fresh 150 years after its publication 48 By Bibek Debroy By Aditya Mani Jha 18 OPEN ESSaY Pakistani hubris and American cupidity 52 74 64 ThE SUSPENSION OF maTTEr By C Christine Fair Rameshwar Broota and the exploration of corporeal vulnerability 26 By Rosalyn D’Mello SEVEN mINUTES ThaT chaNGED INDIa 78 Inside the Balakot operation and how it will further strengthen Prime Minister Modi ThE cOmPLETE aESThETE Remembering S Rajam the master minimalist By PR Ramesh By V Ramnarayan 34 82 a caLL FOr cONTaINmENT The next stage in dealing with a belligerent neighbour By Maroof Raza 37 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US 48 ThE ILLUSION OF UNITY 52 ThE FIrST DaY OF NOVEmBEr By launching an air strike on terrorist camps in Pakistan, India has called a long-standing Pakistani bluff Despite desperate moves, national opposition lineup against the BJP remains elusive Revisiting old wounds in Kanpur of the 1984 Sikh pogrom as the UP government constitutes a special team for reinvestigation By Siddharth Singh By Amita Shah By Rahul Pandita BrEaKING ThE haBIT 18 march 2019 Sara’s wish By Rajeev Masand Cover by Saurabh Singh Cover photograph by Rohit Chawla www.openthemagazine.com open mail editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor Pr ramesh ExEcutivE Editor ullekh nP Editor-at-largE Siddharth Singh dEPuty EditorS madhavankutty Pillai (mumbai Bureau chief), rahul Pandita, amita Shah, v Shoba (Bangalore), nandini nair crEativE dirEctor rohit chawla art dirEctor Jyoti K Singh SEnior EditorS lhendup gyatso Bhutia (mumbai), moinak mitra aSSociatE EditorS vijay K Soni (Web), Sonali acharjee, aditya iyer, Shahina KK aSSiStant Editor vipul vivek chiEf of graPhicS Saurabh Singh SEnior dESignErS anup Banerjee, veer Pal Singh Photo Editor raul irani dEPuty Photo Editor ashish Sharma aSSociatE PuBliShEr Pankaj Jayaswal national hEad-EvEntS and initiativES arpita Sachin ahuja gEnEral managErS (advErtiSing) rashmi lata Swarup, Siddhartha Basu chatterjee (West), uma Srinivasan (South) national hEad-diStriBution and SalES ajay gupta rEgional hEadS-circulation d charles (South), melvin george (West), Basab ghosh (East) hEad-Production maneesh tyagi SEnior managEr (PrE-PrESS) Sharad tailang managEr-marKEting Priya Singh C letter of the week Not only have we called Pakistan’s bluff but the air strikes at Balakot have also sent out a strong message to the world that India cannot be taken lightly anymore and we will give a fitting reply to terrorism (‘The Fog of War’, March 11th, 2019) The Indian Government gave a tough reply to Pakistan, after the Pulwama attack, given the Pakistani government’s refusal to act against terror organisations operating on its soil The Indian Government claims that the air strike managed to eliminate one of the biggest Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in Pakistan, which if true, then our response is justified and should be celebrated And though Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was captured by Pakistan, his return was a victory for us Only a fool will believe that it was a peace gesture by Pakistan and its Prime Minister Imran Khan He did this because the international community was viewing his every move and any attempt to go against the Geneva Convention would have given India the upper hand We should keep up the no-nonsense policy against terror attacks Germany, Russia, Iran and the US have criticised terrorism as well We should count on our economic and strategic partnerships with the global community to put pressure on Pakistan to away with terrorists Bal Govind chiEf dESignEr-marKEting champak Bhattacharjee Sahil Maheshwari cfo anil Bisht chiEf ExEcutivE & PuBliShEr neeraja chawla all rights reserved throughout the world reproduction in any manner is prohibited Editor: S Prasannarajan Printed and published by neeraja chawla on behalf of the owner, open media network Pvt ltd Printed at thomson Press india ltd, 18-35 milestone, delhi mathura road, faridabad-121007, (haryana) Published at 4, dda commercial complex, Panchsheel Park, new delhi-110017 Ph: (011) 48500500; fax: (011) 48500599 to subscribe, Whatsapp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com or call our toll free number 1800 102 7510 or email at: customercare@openmedianetwork.in for alliances, email alliances@openmedianetwork.in for advertising, email advt@openmedianetwork.in for any other queries/observations, email feedback@openmedianetwork.in Disclaimer ‘open avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing initiatives and Open takes no responsibility for the consequences of using products or services advertised in the magazine volume 11 issue 11 for the week 12-18 march 2019 total no of pages 84 was in touch with the JeM militants, then it said there was no JeM in Pakistan at all So many different statements and such an ardent refusal to acknowledge any of India’s claims can only mean that the country has something to hide If anything, Modi’s plan succeeded in showing how desperate our neighbour is to back away from any sort of responsibility when it comes to terrorism the victory is ours The Indian military forces should be hailed for their efforts to stand up against Pakistan and terrorism (‘The Fog of War’, March 11th, 2019) One should also give Prime Minister Narendra Modi due credit for India's response after the Pulwama attack It takes courage to what he did Diplomacy isn't always enough—certainly not with Pakistan, which still refuses to acknowledge or even tackle terror outfits operating in its territory If someone repeatedly comes to hurt you, at some point, one has to take a stand or bow down Modi took a stand and refused to bow down And even though the outcome of the strikes remains unclear (whether the Indian Air Force took down a terror camp and how many terrorists it ended up killing are still being widely speculated in the media), the fact that the Prime Minister refused to be bullied by terrorists means that the victory is still his In the future, one hopes that those who want to create disharmony in our nation will think twice the nota franchise NOTA basically is the stark rejection of all candidates contesting in an election (‘NOTA Power’, March 11th, 2019) It is a dissenting vote against those who get tickets only owing to their ability to pay money to a party And while they are willing to spend endlessly on their election V Singh campaign, when it comes to post-election promises, Many countries and individ- several let their constituenuals have backed India’s right cies down In this respect, the to protect its country and NOTA option is a great tool citizens Several are also ques- for voters who don’t want a tioning if Pakistan’s claim corrupt or incapable person that terrorists don’t operate to be elected However, it is a in its territory is true This is sign of the kind of democracy because the Pakistani army we are becoming if people are has given several conflicting finding that no candidate is statements after the Balakot worth their vote Yusuf Shariff strikes First, it said that it 18 march 2019 LOCOMOTIF by S PRASANNARAJAN The Cult of Denial T he sceptic enlivens the argument he makes truth too precious to be wasted on the big claims of power the sceptic is a refined doubter for whom freedom is not a set of certainties the sceptic is the dissenter, the instinctive questioner of appearances and attitudes in a democracy, the sceptic prefers a shrug to a nod post-Balakot, the professional sceptic is at play he is proud to be the lone doubter in a sea of what he considers to be fairy-tale peddlers he stands there, bravely resisting all kinds of insinuations and accusations, as debunker, as the last fighter against the nationalist mythographer For the post-Balakot sceptic, it is all (nationalist) sound and (simulated) fury, played out on over-heated television screens the post-Balakot sceptic is yet to quote sartre out of context: “i am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices All these creatures spend their time explaining, realising happily that they agree with each other in heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together?” the most audible post-Balakot sceptic is a type, and he is provoked by another: the post-Balakot let’s-arise nationalist he thinks his moment has come, finally the nation has arisen, finally, defying the doubters and doves, and stood up to the enemy the enemy has always been there, denying the ‘hindu rashtra’ its very right to exist, but, all the while, it has been let down by pusillanimous secular Saurabh Singh regimes—so goes his lament now that justice has been done, and the enemy humiliated and tamed, he feels at home, and home is not new india but Mahabharat—and on its soil he sees those anti-nationalists still questioning the best intentions of the nation the post-Balakot let’s-arise nationalist wants an enemy within and without Both the types reduce an event that changed the perception of a state that pays by its lives to remain secure to a story of denials, disputes and exclusivist assertions the professional indian 18 march 2019 sceptic who looks appalled by the ‘claims’ of the Government is a non-believer For him, this Government itself is a fiction, perpetuating a fiction of national glory, and selling a fiction of aerial superheroism the professional indian sceptic—more secular than you, more liberal than you—needs an ecosystem of fiction so that he can be the lone defender of truth it is an historical necessity for him to lose faith in a land without justice, or to create one, in order to remain the last conscience keeper, the last dissident, the last target to not to believe is to remain the last liberal in a country of zealots he is aided by the let’s-arise nationalist, suddenly vindicated and rearmed he always wanted an action hero in power, and prime Minister Modi did not play to his script he wanted prime Minister Modi to be as much an action star as candidate Modi was on the stump five years ago Modi refused to be the dramatic nationalist even as the shirtless of hindutva waited for one Anybody who followed his career after 2002 should know: Modi only follows his own script in the epic action of Balakot, the base of hindu nationalism saw the Modi of its imagination in realtime action the let’s-arise nationalist was thrilled his jubilation was in stark contrast to the matter-of-factness with which the foreign secretary announced the strike it didn’t need overselling it didn’t need marketing blitz it was too good a piece of action drama to rely on a nationalist ad slogan it doesn’t require promoters and poets it doesn’t require let’s-arise nationalists it doesn’t deserve the professional doubter who sees this Government as bad fiction either As i said in this space last week, the nauseated Balakot-denier thinks patriotism is a mild form of jingoism A show of sentimentalism or a sense of solidarity amounts to an abdication of liberal responsibility—and an endorsement of ‘majoritarian hysteria’ it is one thing to be taken aback by the aesthetics of let’s-arise nationalism, it is another to deny an elected government the right to tell the country what it has done to contain extra-territorial terror the self-righteousness of those who swear by liberal values shows their remoteness from the common decencies of citizenship in a democracy the aesthetics of their dissent is as ungainly as that of the frenzied nationalism they despise the American political scientist Mark lilla, a disillusioned liberal, has written about how liberalism has become an evangelical project instead of a political project: ‘evangelism is about speaking truth to power; politics is about seeking power to defend truth.’ his advice to the powerless as well as power-weary liberals is a quote from lincoln: ‘public sentiment is everything With it nothing can fail Against it nothing can succeed.’ the indian liberal wants to save truth from power, and in this struggle, he has nothing to lose but the echo chamber A place where everything said by the ‘nationalist’ Government lacks authenticity so Balakot must be disputed www.openthemagazine.com INDRAPRASTHA virendra kapoor A fter weeks of wavering, the Congress has finally rejected the supplications of the Aam Admi Party for an electoral alliance before the upcoming Lok sabha polls Paradoxically, for both, their future proved to be the clincher the Congress did not want to squander it further; the AAP wanted to further secure it Besides, a tie-up in Delhi would have entailed some sort of accommodation with the AAP in Punjab and Haryana, not acceptable to the Congress’ state units the Congress reckoned a temporary loss to the BJP was better than helping the AAP up another step of success so that it eventually ends up stealing the Congress’ entire base in the national capital the AAP feared that without the vital Muslim vote, which would transfer more or less en bloc to the bigger party better placed to take on the BJP at the national level, it would be hard to well the Congress, on the other hand, did not want to repeat the mistake it did when it backed a minority government of Arvind kejriwal in 2013 and came to regret it After the fall of the 49-day government, in the ensuing elections the AAP won 67 seats; the BJP, three; and the Congress, zero for once, the Congress has preferred to forgo short-term gain for long-term future, something which doesn’t come easily to politicians A CouPLe of new television channels recently launched have had little or no impact thus far of course, these have created jobs for some of the experienced and not-so-experienced tV hands even genuine well-wishers are disappointed because even among their own peers nobody seems to have noticed these channels Concerned, when one of them asked a promoter, he promptly shot back, “I haven’t launched the channel for making money…” He fell silent mid-sentence, leaving his acquaintance to finish it for him, “…but to impress my leaders that we have now our own outlet for airing our side of the story.” Amen t Hen tHere Is this news anchor who goes about lecturing people not to watch tV for the next two-and-a-half months why? to save democracy, apparently But he himself would not go off air during that period and must hold forth nightly on how terrible the Modi Government is why? Because he seems to believe only his journalism is worth watching while everyone else’s is sheer propaganda such conceit, such arrogance, Pandeyji? I ronICAL tHey sHouLD seek evidence of what our fighter jets accomplished in Balakot, a mere 100 km away from Islamabad, while nearly 60 years later the HendersonBrooks Report on the 1962 debacle remains buried under the top-secret pretence It is another matter the crux of the report has been available on the web for decades, but successive governments have refused release, saying ‘It is top secret’ As for Balakot, the number of dead, if any, is not significant that our fighter jets made an aggressive sortie deep into Pakistan’s airspace is If that is lost on those whom Arun Jaitley likes to call the ‘compulsive contrarians’, let us try to help them understand It is said a man’s home is his castle If so, try entering anyone’s home without his permission, you will be hauled up for trespass Here you have violated the sovereign airspace of your inimical neighbour, dropped explosives, and you still want evidence of ‘what happened?’ Putting them on notice that ‘another Pulwama, and we will come raiding’ is no mean achievement o ne Must CoMPLIMent Delhi Chief Minister Arvind kejriwal for successfully competing with Prime Minister Modi—in fact, even beating him on some days we are referring to the advertising spree launched by the two Delhi may not be even a full-fledged state but what kejriwal has shown is that even with limited resources it is possible to build one’s brand Advertising his wares—good, bad or indifferent— through multiple full-page ads in city papers, with his mug shot staring compulsorily at the readers, has now gone on for weeks Leaving nothing to imagination, voters in each colony are told their colony is being improved, courtesy kejriwal with nearly 10 million voters, multiple full-page ads by the messiah of ethical politics can continue for weeks, a win-win situation for kejriwal and media owners who will assure a splash for him in news columns as well But there could be a small hitch: the election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct would deny the Delhi chief minister further opportunity to endear himself to voters what a pity! n 18 march 2019 MuMbaI Notebook Anil Dharker I n these days of hypernationalism, it’s good to occasionally step back and ask: ‘What is Indian?’ ‘Is the symphony Orchestra of India (sOI) Indian?’ ‘Is the music they play Indian?’ and vitally, ‘are these questions really relevant in the 21st century?’ On its recent tour of the UK, sOI had 15 Indians in a total of 89 musicians these numbers are usually held against sOI But Manchester United or Chelsea have footballers from Manchester or Chelsea? and what about the orchestra often rated as the world’s best? Of the Berlin Philharmonic’s 128 musicians, as many as 50 are of foreign origin and this in a nation with a long musical history and many orchestras to choose from (50-plus symphony orchestras in Germany and almost as many chamber and youth orchestras) here’s another, though somewhat different example: sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah, the most successful British track athlete in modern Olympic history, was born and raised in Mogadishu, somalia When you want to be the best, national boundaries become irrelevant that’s why when nCPa’s Khushroo suntook decided to set up sOI, he agreed with its musical director Marat Bisengaliev’s insistence that nationalities were secondary to musical abilities (Bisengaliev himself is from Kazakhstan) those of us who live in Mumbai, and have heard sOI grow in 12 years into a fine orchestra, don’t give a hoot (a distinctly unmusical sound) whether the oboe or violin or cello is in White, Brown or Black hands that belief found enthusiastic endorsement from British music critics (not the kindliest of souls) when sOI recently played in the UK The Spectator, a bastion of conservatism, called it ‘a world-class ensemble… it has character-rich but also refined, with smoky woodwinds, burnished brass…’ Classical Source said, ‘the concept that music is (or can be) a universal language was triumphantly demonstrated by this concert… the ‘Overture to Oberon’ was a totally committed performance that demonstrated Weber’s original symphonism allied to his pictorial aural consciousness… [It was] a perfect lead-in to Max Bruch’s G-minor Violin Concerto, in which the soloist was Marat Bisengaliev this was, without question, the finest live performance of this masterpiece I have heard.’ and the Serenade magazine critic said, ‘here was a multi-national group of players truly binding together to form a coherent, confident orchestra with a voice all of its own.’ as a nation, we generally look for Western endorsement, especially in the cultural field where judgements are subjective We, the regular audience of sOI, were always proud of our orchestra We can now revel in its triumph and congratulate english critics for their perspicacity in recognising talent, whatever its origins R eCOrds, they saId, are meant to be broken (though they stopped saying it when Cds arrived) and the BMC has done it again a few days ago, the shiv sena-controlled Municipal Corporation cleared 69 civic contracts worth over rs 500 crore within an hour Bring out your calculators and tell me if that beats last year’s record of 97 contracts worth rs 1,500 crore in 90 minutes Why this hurry? Why this haste by the standing Committee to break into a sprint? agreed that projects like cleaning of drains, procurement of linen for hospitals, repairs of roads and schools demand some urgency, but surely contracts also need scrutiny? Or are corporators (for some reason called civic fathers even when they are mothers) all ramanujans calculating at the speed of light? the speculation is the election code of conduct will kick in soon, and contracts will be held up strange: one would think the cleaning of drains would be even more pressing during elections with all that political muck flying around On the other hand, you could argue a few crores wasted here and there is better than not spending anything at all apparently, only 37 per cent of last year’s budgetary allocation was spent But that was (another) record: the previous year, the figure was 31 per cent Presumably, a municipal corporation budget contains proposals for the improvement of the city and the benefit of its citizens By being too busy with whatever else they do, officials and corporators are depriving us of amenities for which we have already paid Or did you think the unspent 63 per cent will waft its way back into our pockets? W hen nIraV MOdI is not in the news, his bungalow is It’s a 30,000-sq-ft house on Kihim Beach in alibaug the local authorities, as is their wont (or more accurately, their want), failed to notice the construction far exceeded what was approved now, of course, they have decided— with nudging from the courts—to something about it, and that is to demolish the whole damn thing easier said than done: nirav Modi’s bungalow is made of sterner stuff, so they are having to dynamite the structure to get rid of it a fugitive’s house of cards is stronger than many a bulldozer n 18 march 2019 openings NOTEBOOK Going Alone in Delhi O n January 1st, 2014, when arvind Kejriwal took oath of office as Chief Minister of Delhi from a bursting-at-the-seams ramlila Maidan instead of raj Bhavan with all his typical dramatic flourish, it was a historic moment for Indian democracy We had a chief minister who used public transport to work and even to his swearing-in, let common people feel that now they had rulers who knew their trials and tribulations of life, and swore by the ideals of Mahtama Gandhi More than a year after he parted ways from his mentor anna Hazare and launched a political outfit, the aam aadmi Party (aaP), following months-long, largely Delhi-centric campaigns against corruption that attracted national attention regardless, Kejriwal and his enthusiastic and scholarly associates sold us a dream of a compassionate government that would live up to Lincoln’s great aphorism of democracy: for the people, by the people and of the people the cliché suddenly acquired a new meaning and there was hope From that hope has come despair of not being able to grow as rapidly as the party had envisaged the goals were so lofty that the aaP now suffers from a huge crisis of perception a likely alliance with the Congress to jointly fight the BJP has fallen through, adding to the woes of the six-year-old party after all, in early 2014, the hope of a new beginning wasn’t only because of the possibility of electing leaders having their ear to the ground and sensing the pulse of the common man What was remarkable about the entry of the aaP into Indian politics was that it ushered in a new culture of political entrepreneurship that didn’t discriminate against new entrants; their years of experience in politics, family connections, educational qualifications—none of that mattered the aaP made history by lowering the entry barrier for political aspirants this was no mean feat considering that other major parties had set high entry benchmarks for those looking to become part of the political process and to make policies and law the Congress party, India’s oldest political outfit, had largely become dynastic, after having grown rapidly under the Mahatma in the thick of the freedom struggle as he experimented with ways to attract world attention to India’s plights and mobilise Indians under one umbrella organisation irrespective of how they behaved in a rigid feudal hierarchy, or thanks to religious affiliations to break through to the Congress scheme of things today for a common man is a tough task Within the BJP, too, things are no different since many of the cadres continue to be from the rss nursery, if not from party families In many ways, these two parties reflected Bollywood, India’s biggest film industry headquartered in Mumbai regional parties, too, have become family enterprises and behave like family-owned enterprises this is famously true of parties such as the DMK in tamil nadu the Left Front parties, for their part, recruit party workers with greater care, after screening cadres meticulously for their loyalty so, it was no surprise that the aaP came to power in the 2013 December polls in Delhi with much aplomb and offered relief to the common man because many of the new MLas were from the bottom of the social pyramid with no experience in politics securing 28 seats in the 70-member assembly with conditional support from the Congress, the aaP government did several things that were unthinkable before: reaching out to people over what is to be done, for instance, when it got into a deadlock over the passage of the Jan Lok Pal Bill the aaP called it quits after 49 days in power Everything about the aaP was a novelty year 2014 also saw the BJP sweep Lok sabha seats in Delhi and the rest of the country, winning an absolute majority in the Lok sabha on its own Kejriwal, who contested against Modi from the Varanasi seat lost by a huge margin and was crestfallen yet the anguish was short-lived In 2015, aaP rode to power in Delhi securing 67 out of 70 seats in an emphatic poll triumph But since then, the aaP has battled with infighting, starting with Kejriwal’s unilateral decision to get rid of anyone who could be an intellectual adversary Over time, more and more people from the senior echelons It is not unlikely that the Congress, which did well in the 2017 municipal election, is looking to improve its tally and hoping to win back lost glory with the AAP’s sway showing signs of wane 10 18 march 2019 books Dissenting Note Nayantara Sahgal tells Rajni George about a world where cruelty has become casual ‘W e only make use of the opportunities politics provides,’ says the father of an arms dealer, speaking of the bounties the Cold War offered, among other great conflicts In veteran writer nayantara Sahgal’s new novella, The Fate of Butterflies (Speaking Tiger; 144 pages; Rs450), it seems this cycle may never end Sergei, Russian, ageing, son of the arms dealer but with a peacenik daughter raul irani and a slowly awakening conscience, is one of the central protagonists; by way of contrast, our other chief protagonist, Prabhakar, is the orphaned son of labourers and has reinvented himself (even his last name), becoming an academic Their worlds overlap at the dinner parties held in the homes of the capital’s intelligentsia, or at Bonjour, the French restaurant run by dancer Prahlad and his French partner, the kind of international Delhi establishment which is like few other places in the world When Prabhakar writes a book that is essentially a modern-day parable, speaking to the rise of evil and how it is normalised, he comes to the attention of mirajkar, a menacing political influencer He also meets the beautiful, half Russian katerina, who bears witness to a brutal mass rape both in court and in person by means of her very visible scars ‘love knows no safe haven in times like these,’ we are told But ‘[t]he times are grim, the times are unbearably tragic, and so, my friends—let’s dance!’ announces Prahlad Cruelty is casual in the book’s landscape; a dead man is left on the street with his skullcap on and an axe testifying to the manner of his death; Bonjour is attacked by thugs on account of a reaction to the owners’ homosexuality; an inspired muslim cook can no longer serve mughal delicacies at his kaif These are, of course, no longer extreme scenarios in these times, and fiction serves only to magnify their effect as recurring features of the news cycle “The story just grew by itself The last novella [When the Moon Shines by Day] came out a year ago, this is like a companion piece They are both about the times we are living in I started to write this after I finished the last novella, I finished it in a few months It just poured out It was a wonderful experience, partly to with the passionate feeling I have about these times a situation which is so new to India We are at an urgent moment, at crossroads,” says Sahgal over the phone, at home in Dehradun This april, before she turns 92, she will be awarded the inaugural loknete Bhai Vaidya Smruti Gaurav Puraskar, for her contribution to Indian literature; she has been awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Sinclair Prize and the lal Ded national award in the past Her novella last year described the ethnic cleansing of muslims overseen by a ‘director of cultural transformation’, among other horrors It is part of Sahgal’s steadfast campaign to speak the truth in the face of injustice; during the emergency, even against her cousin Indira Gandhi In 2015, Sahgal returned the Sahitya akademi award (for her celebrated novel 18 march 2019 Rich Like Us) to protest against the silence of the akademi following the murders of rationalist writers mm kalburgi, Govind Pansare and narendra Dabholkar This January, Sahgal’s invitation to attend the 92nd all India marathi literary meet was rescinded, allegedly because of threats made against her by the maharashtra navnirman Sena an alternative event was organised later “It really amazed me, this huge support I got from marathi writers Some attended the event and spoke against the cancellation Some women went, wearing my mask It was impressive I was very moved They had a meeting in support of me in mumbai, with other speakers Personally, I did not feel insulted because that is the kind of thing that is happening It has almost become a status symbol I’m in good company Tm krishna, Gopal Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha,” says Sahgal Has she faced other opposition, since? “I’ve had a lot of invitations since then, I have had to turn them down only as I have to get back to work,” Sahgal clarifies This is a portrait of a privileged India which may have believed it was unassailable in earlier times but which has found itself becoming increasingly vulnerable, these last few years I ask if there is still a class of people in the country who can remain untouched “In these times, the people who are untouched by politics are the millionaires and billionaires I don’t think they care what happens around them as long as they are fine,” says Sahgal She raises the silence of Bollywood “I was surprised that no film star or colleague of naseeruddin Shah supported him when he spoke in such anguish about what muslims are going through in this country It’s such a contrast to the days when the film industry spoke out during times of censorship, when even the word ‘freedom’ was dangerous now, the rich and powerful just don’t speak The poor and aspirational, the students, have spoken up.” Do our political hopes lie with young people? “JnU has been a great example, and so have others Personally I hope kanhaiya kumar becomes the prime 18 march 2019 Now, the rich and powerful just don’t speak The poor and aspirational, the students, have spoken up” nayantara sahgal author minister one day I think he has it in him I have great hopes in young people of that kind There are, of course, the young who are only interested in the corporate world, and in jobs concerning commerce and so on But many, many Indians, young and old, are deeply involved in politics.” like arundhati Roy’s novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, The Fate of Butterflies’ subject is urgent and compelling, also overwhelming Its priority isn’t the story as much as the message, the big trap of primarily political fiction Sahgal is lyrical about the special world her characters occupy; figures whose glamour crisscrosses continents and fuels exceptional dreams and schools of thought What is less convincing is the idea the dancer Prahlad puts forward: that one must dance while one can (off the book’s epigraph from the 1936 musical comedy Follow the Fleet, starring Fred astaire and Ginger Rogers) It seems increasingly clear what we have been doing is just this Is Sahgal optimistic at all about change in the face of the upcoming elections? “life has to go on, and people will always fall in love and carry on with their usual lives What else should we but celebrate as much as we can?” she says, firmly, not allowing for the luxury of hope “let us hope the elections will reflect a change of mood in the country which we certainly know is happening.” She speaks of the recent terror attack in Pulwama, Jammu and kashmir, and the ensuing events which escalated tensions between India and Pakistan “now we see that with the latest attack, the Government is doing its best to keep a sort of wartime spirit on the boil That is very wrong and very dangerous, but these are the things they are relying on to get them through the next election.” Pratap Bhanu mehta wrote recently, ‘We are becoming a nation of resentful hearts, small minds and constricted souls Democracy should be an occasion for exuberance, lightness, gaiety, freedom.’ How we access that state of being, I ask Sahgal “In the years after Independence, we were a democracy,” she says “Those were great years of striving, an adventure, it was a great, great time This situation is new for India We have never, never faced this dictatorship before except when mrs Gandhi declared the emergency of 1975 That was clearly a dictatorship Here, all of this is happening under the cover of democracy We are told we are a democracy This is up till the moment the Constitution is amended, the ruling party doesn’t have the numbers to amend it now People are being arrested for being seditious or anti-national, and five eminent writers have been shot dead because of their refusal to agree to superstition instead of reason This is not even including the poor people who are carrying out their usual job and accused of transporting beef, and then tortured and lynched all this is going on in a democracy.” I ask her a question, which I’d asked previously, and remains relevant: does she still believe fiction resists closure, in a way that non-fiction doesn’t? “In general, non-fiction has been my conscience Fiction is my first love I had to turn to non-fiction initially to earn a living because I was impoverished by my divorce,” Sahgal remembers “Happily, I was being published abroad so I could earn through my fiction Just about that time, the emergency came and I joined JP’s movement Thereafter, it became a matter of defending what nehru stood for That to me became much more important than anything that happened to me personally.” It remains to be seen if fiction can provide answers to the question of what one does when the dance is done, the song spun out n www.openthemagazine.com 71 books She is the Change Now showing in Bollywood: Her power By Kaveree Bamzai I Penguin Books 299 Pages | Rs 399 pretty’ for the job From the eleven tattoos on lyricist Anvita dutt’s arms to the pots of glitter in the makeup kit charu Khanna inherited from her beautician mother; from the moment a teenage rohini iyer (now a leading publicist) marched into Bhawana Somaaya’s office to confidently ask for work to the unending calls Shubha ramachandra would make to explain why having a script supervisor was important, the book does well to capture the struggles and the successes it may dispense superlatives a little too freely but it certainly shows how each one of these women has earned her spurs And how much Mumbai cinema has changed, from a time when Farah Khan was the only woman in the technical unit of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, her first film as a choreographer in 1992, to now when women can outnumber men in the production team From lighting dadas to cinematography didis, from spot boys to spotlight girls, the distance has been covered with a skip and a swagger these women—and many more— stayed the course, put in the hours, and leaned in And did so, all the while acknowledging their mothers From Gauri Shinde who made her first film English Vinglish (2012) to acknowledge her mother’s enterprise to editor deepa Bhatia whose mother refused to allow her girls into the kitchen because she didn’t want them distracted by the drudgery of making chappatis, Changemakers is also a love letter to all the women whose shoulders these silent stars stand on n h si ng h 72 and a strong sense of frugal innovation they this often overcoming tremendous odds take Geeta tandon, who got married at 15 and overcame years of sexual abuse, to become one of the few women stunt artists in india, on her way to becoming an action director or globally connected producer Guneet Monga, who had to battle years of deep depression, to be part of the oscarwinning documentary short Period: End of Sentence, with dreams of collecting many more the work is demanding, unforgiving, and relentless it can take its toll, Juhi chaturvedi, for instance, ended up suffering from rashes and alopecia while writing Piku because she became so emotionally involved, charu Khanna’s mother sold her gold to raise rs 32 lakh for her to study at Los Angeles’ cinema Makeup School and cinematographer Priya Seth had to go without work for six years after being third camera assistant on Holy Smoke because people thought she was ‘too sa ur ab n her introduction to Changemakers, Farah Khan, the industry’s most successful female director, admits to having ‘low esteem’ While marvelling at the ‘entitlement and arrogance of men’, the buoyant Khan, whose four films since 2004 have grossed a remarkable rs 360 crore, writes, ‘women tend to underplay their achievements’ no surprise then that the gender ratio in the indian film industry is 6.2 men to every woman according to a report by the Geena davis institute on Gender in Media Gayatri rangachari Shah and Mallika Kapur’s book chronicles how that is changing, albeit excruciatingly slowly through 20 women across the spectrum, from stunt work to makeup, from cinematography to editing, women are asserting their right to work, sometimes creating opportunities where none existed, and at other times expanding their areas of influence So whether it is charu Khanna who took her fight for women to work as makeup artists to the Supreme court to Shanoo Sharma whose casting of secondary characters is increasingly giving Mumbai cinema the whiff of authenticity, women are at the forefront of transforming the way movies are made they may not be as glamorous as their superstar sisters whose airport looks are considered as important as their cinematic oeuvre in the muddled celebrity culture that has currently taken root, but their work is often more substantial they bring to their work, whether it is writing lovelorn lyrics or recreating a temple mandap, an unerring eye for detail, a refreshing attitude of collaboration, Changemakers: TwenTy women Transforming bollywood behind The sCenes Gayatri Rangachari Shah and Mallika Kapur 18 march 2019 art inside the studio The Suspension of Matter Rameshwar Broota and the exploration of corporeal vulnerability By Rosalyn D’Mello Photograph by rohit chawla A s if Narcissus wasn’t lured to the edge of a pool, but to the bleached-out interiors of an alienating hotel room Thereupon, in a black-framed, full-length mirror, he gazes not at his whole body in the full bloom of youth, but a singular segment; his right leg, naked hip-onwards, save for socks Besides a table full of technological paraphernalia, and the cornered layout of the room contained within the image, in focus is a subject meditating upon its reflection The wall-mounted photograph, printed on corning Gorilla Glass, has been taken at eye level The mirror reveals the artist’s left leg that’s otherwise absent His is a male body contending not with its beauty as much as its fragility, daring to behold it, daring to capture it through a digital lens, thus alleviating the predicament of having to confront with the naked eye the perilousness of the ageing self indeed, rameshwar Broota, a technophile, handholds a device that helps him gauge how the image will appear on the lens he’s strategically postured His bodily gestures become a form of performance where both his muse and his audience, like Narcissus, is himself The 78-year-old artist has rarely disguised his fascination for the male figure, having inflicted upon it, through the medium of painting, 74 rameshwar broota in his studio, new delhi art inside the studio various forms of clinically administered violence Whether obviously or inadvertently, the male figure usually refers back to himself incidentally, his now well-documented technique of layering his canvas, then lacerating its textured surface with a blade also began with him contending his reflection in front of a mirror one day, from morning to evening, impelling him to mimic its form on a canvas Over two to three days, he applied layers of silver, ochre, burnt umber, and modified tones of black, often while each application was still wet He then proceeded to extract a figure using a blade When i’d met him at his retrospective, Visions of Interiority: Interrogating the Male Body, at the Kiran Nadar Museum of art, saket, in November 2014, he’d told me how when he went to sleep the night he first began nicking paint with a sharpedged blade, he had woken up shaken by a dream in which he was experiencing in a corporeal way, the violence of each gash “it was as if i was scraping my own body,” he’d said a T His laTesT solo, Scripted in Time II, at shridharani Gallery, Delhi, from January 28 th to february 12th, 2019, Broota’s established penchant for such laborious technique that seeks to arrive at self-revelation through some form of corporeal flagellation, via the materiality of his chosen mediums remained evident Wrestling with it even put into perspective an observation made by one of his dearest friends, the late critic and writer, Keshav Malik, whose portrait Broota had on display in a corner of the gallery, as if to invoke his presence Malik posited that Broota’s art was not built upon a ‘great’ idea, but upon a minute conscientious realisation, upon the attainable, upon a craft He meant it as a compliment ‘an artist of this order has to be a thorough craftsman, conversable in his chosen medium, and he at the same time has to be moral By morality i mean he has to be true to the components he is using; he has to understand the attributes of the materials that are being orchestrated Perhaps, even like a composer, he has to know what 76 his instruments can do, what the field force will be like when they are placed together—or displaced,’ Malik wrote in his 2009 essay on Broota, titled ‘in step with the Tortoise’, a reference to the slow and meditative nature of Broota’s practice Malik argued that the artist should not be intimidated by prescriptive notions about how things can be put together— he shouldn’t be afraid to experiment ‘To improvise, you have to have the skills that insure you against thinking only in terms of what might be workable.’ Broota’s studio, on the fourth floor of Triveni Kala sangam, where, since he graduated from Delhi college of art, he has served as head of the department of art, is a site that has witnessed his ceaseless exploration of painting as well as photography His large-screened Mac has served as a canvas for the latter art historian shukla sawant summarised his relationship with this form of technology aptly in her 2007 essay, ‘in the first Person: Photography as selfintrospection’ ‘for Broota, who acquired a computer as soon as it became available to the public at large, the screen is an easel, the mouse a brush, and the pursuit of a digitally perfected vision as solitary, lonely and emotionally involved a task as painting,’ she wrote ‘it is a painterly engagement that draws him to the computer-generated image and not the virtual world of the internet as a social/ public space to make art works for.’ until three years ago, his studio primarily served as a space for these two mediums His foray into sculpture began, like Malik summarised, not with a great idea, but with the intent at something he was sure was attainable—a desire to preserve the tactility of sliced paper sometime in 2016, Broota, who was sitting by his computer, found himself transfixed by a pile of shredded paper “i thought, if this can be contained in some kind of very transparent, glassy medium, so it becomes a sculpture, as if inside the glass…” he explains during my visit He soon went online and began to type in keywords like ‘liquid glass’ and ‘transparent acrylic’ until he arrived upon a potential material: epoxy resin, sourcing a quantity of it from america When it arrived in his studio, he began experimenting with its properties “i did some layering and poured it and placed some things into it… i thought it was wonderful,” he says He eventually arrived at the right ratio of resin and hardener The two had to be mixed carefully and poured onto a contained surface and left to dry Many setbacks ensued What constituted a failure? i ask him “Milkiness” is his answer He was striving for a transparent viscosity, one that wasn’t murky in any way achieving the right effect, he soon learned, depended on various factors within and outside of his control, like temperature He began to improvise, using exhaust fans, narrowing down the technique by regulating it over time “When we mix the semi-liquid and pour it on some flat surface that has to be protected with something, like plastic tape, or a rubber mould, after 24 hours, it becomes hard, like glass Then, whatever you want to draw or paint on it, you can,” he explains “This is how i started writing or drawing, then adding another layer, then again writing and drawing, then another layer each day you add another layer, and so, you get all these kinds of depths.” The end result is a sculptural form that encases a suspension of matter Broota found himself drawing script-like forms that alluded to existing languages but had no real semantic connotation soon, he was incorporating an assortment of shredded paper, from old horoscopes to crumpled newspaper to torn notes, postcards, even his own photographic prints or elements from his own paintings, making his sculptures perform simultaneously as both tombs and shrines He found himself playing with gravel-like material, using it as a form within which he would pour epoxy resin His studio now resembles a laboratory with its traces of failures in the shape of rejected sculptures as well as recent success still lying in silicon moulds He removes one ovoid result and allows me to hold it it feels like liquid entrapped in the form of a solid i see firsthand how he has even begun entombing his own X-rays, evidence of mediums crossing over into each other’s territory 18 march 2019 Pastiche Broota’s foray into sculpture began not with a great idea, but with the intent at something he was sure was attainable—a desire to preserve the tactility of sliced paper intriguingly, he admits, that he can only work one medium at a time Perhaps it is through this sculptural expedition that he has found a way to amalgamate both painting and photography as a viewer, it’s difficult not to be infected by the audacity of such improvisation for Broota, the impelling artistic motive is to exercise agency over a medium in order to allow for his exploration of corporeal vulnerability This inherent contradiction between how much authorial control he seeks to exercise over form and yet the sense of surrender that gets manifest through his wilful selfexposure in terms of his content is what makes his practice alluring He articulates this tendency of his in Hindi: “command mein hai” The repetitious nature of his evolved techniques draws from the realm of craft, while the content reveals a highly individuated subjectivity, a preoccupation with a soft-edged masculinity, one that is determinedly not alpha and that doesn’t derive from any conscious effort to establish its candour by posturing itself in relation to femininity The female figure that does occasionally appear is that of his partner, Vasundhara, also an artist whose presence in Broota’s 18 march 2019 studio one finds in the form of text at the back of her packed-up paintings in Scripted in Time II her sleeping form is the subject of one photograph taken by Broota, who admits to being an insomniac it’s a tender image taken by someone who is unafraid to let us pry into the cocoon of the couple’s private intimacy its mode of looking is markedly different from the somewhat clinical manner that marks Broota’s study of his own body it is Narcissus looking with a non-coveting yet loving gaze at a figure that is not him, per say, and is yet an extension of himself Broota’s decision to print and frame his photographs using corning Gorilla Glass accounts for why they seem to fit in seamlessly with the display of the epoxy resin sculptures There is a suspension of content and the two mediums seem to dialogue with each other in his studio lie test prints of forthcoming experiments that disclose his eagerness to extend these recent experimentations for instance, one photographic image present in the show, of Broota himself, seated on a chair, clothed in loose trousers and a banyan, one hand resting on his lap, is reiterated within the show, between the wall-mounted print and encased in a sculpture When we’re in his studio, he shows me slides of the image in a grouping of three that he’s arranged one above the other to create an animated image of a figure that exists in a simultaneous narrative form, like an unstable, unfixed being Beyond where he holds the grouping that’s held together with a clip are rolls of cello tape in different shapes and sizes mounted on the wall This is in the ‘office’-like section of his studio a few doors down the corridor is another studio space in which i find mugs and buckets bearing traces of the semi-liquid he has been using to make his sculptures He shows me some of the milky rejects that nonetheless perform as testaments to the number of hours and days he spent labouring over their creation He may have to destroy them for the moment he’s placed them on a shelf as if as a reminder Then he shows me a sculpture that’s still in progress, and it becomes increasingly obvious that at 78, Broota has found himself with a form that can possibly synthesise both the mediums in which he has been expressing himself for decades His most recent work, left to dry on a wooden table, was still held within in the temporary rectangular border he made of masking tape to contain the fluid lying transparently was a chalk-like outline of a male figure reclining on his belly, while encased within many seamless layers were scraps of paper Broota lifts it up so i can see how the sunlight passes through it i think of the many digitally manipulated photographs Broota had in his show downstairs at shridharani and his unabashed fixation with mirrors i wonder if Broota’s recent and ongoing effort is in fact to transcend the comfort-zones of his previously considered themes and mediums so as to peer through and past a looking glass, thus extending the boundaries of the self, moving from reflection towards a solidified yet de-materialised state of being? n scripted in Time ii will run at Vadehra Art Gallery from March 27 to April 29, 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 77 music The Complete AesTheTe Remembering S Rajam the master minimalist By V Ramnarayan T s rajam in 2009 hough the trinity of south Indian art music— tyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, the iconic 18th century composers of hundreds of weighty songs, most of them in praise of the divine—are revered by every practitioner of the art, we have no authentic pictorial representations of them their lives predated photography, and their portraits, if any, did not survive them Yet, paradoxically, their pictures, often seen together—are instantly recognised by artists and aficionados alike in countless music halls, in the puja rooms of homes, even temples, courtesy the brilliant brushstrokes of the polymath S Rajam (1919-2010), musicianguru-musicologist-painter extraordinaire, whose painstaking research led to his life-like depiction of the Mummoortis with no detail spared the name Rajam is more common among women than men A couple of names stand out among women in Indian classical music, those of N Rajam, the hindustani violinist, and the late Rajam Pushpavanam, a talented vocalist and daughter of the celebrated vidwan Madurai Pushpavanam Iyer 18 march 2019 artwork by s rajam; (left) carnatic trinity alamy S Rajam was the quintessential renaissance man of 20th century south India, born to advocate and connoisseur of music V Sundaram Iyer and Chellammal on February 10th, 1919 in a home suffused with music Sundaram Iyer, who could play the veena, was Rajam’s first guru unusually for a boy of his Brahmin background, where obedience to your elders was the norm, Rajam had a mind of his own even as a child, and was allowed to exercise his options Keen to develop his strong voice, he chose singing over veena-playing in early boyhood In a household always resonating with the temple bells of the historic Mylapore Kapaleeshwarar Koil nearby, and the music concerts his father arranged in an upstairs hall of their two-storeyed house, Rajam grew up surrounded by music offered by many of the professional artists of the day who lived on the streets bordering the temple he progressed rapidly enough to give his first All India Radio concert at the age of 13 the Madras station had opened just the day before, with DK Pattammal performing for the inaugural concert broadcast Rajam’s was the 18 march 2019 second programme great musicians like Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar and Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer performed at the Sundaram Iyer home Papanasam Sivan, a singer and composer whose songs for tamil cinema would one day find their way to the Carnatic music concert platform, and earn him the title tamil tyagayya placing him on a pedestal alongside the trinity, actually moved in for a while to assume the role of resident guru for eldest son Rajam and his sister Jayalakshmi, even as the youngest, child prodigy Balachander, was discovering his precocious genius on his own While Rajam was Sivan’s first (and in his own words, best) student, he also learnt many songs from Madurai Mani Iyer, a top-ranking vocalist with a huge fan following, and such giants in the field as Kanchipuram Naina Pillai, Ambi Dikshitar, Mylapore gowri Amma, harikatha Ramachandra Iyer, Veena Sambasiva Iyer, Fiddle Sundaresa Iyer and harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar his parents encouraged him to pursue his interest in drawing and painting as well the boy made his own paint with colour alamy powders until a neighbour, an army man, gifted him his first paint box Amazingly, the whole family was involved in cinema, with Sundaram Iyer, Rajam and Jayalakshmi, all acting in films based on Indian epics If he was Rama in his first movie Sita Kalyanam (1933), with his sister playing Sita, he became Krishna in Rukmini Kalyanam and Radha Kalyanam, and also played a supporting role in the blockbuster Sivakavi (1943) which had the superstar MK tyagaraja Bhagavatar in the lead At sixteen, Rajam was already a handsome young man with long hair and a rather regal bearing “Master Rajam” cycled everywhere, to school (PS high School, where the best Mylapore brains were groomed), and the tent cinemas that dotted the neighbourhood to satiate his appetite for films, past the houses of musicians at practice, past the temple where the likes of Bharatanatyam icon gowri Amma danced before the deity After completing school, Rajam joined the Madras School of Arts, where Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, the founder of the Lalit Kala Akademi and sculptor of the gandhi and triumph of Labour statues on the Marina, was the principal www.openthemagazine.com 79 music Roy Chowdhury, who taught western art, totally discouraged any attempts at learning Indian art It was an english poet, Lewis thompson, whom Rajam met at the Ramanasram at tiruvannamalai, that opened the young man’s eyes to the beauty of Indian art, especially the ancient bronzes of the country travel taught the peripatetic Rajam much more than art school his love of art was a magnificent obsession which took him on several journeys for all of eight years he travelled to Ajanta-ellora, elephanta, Sittannavasal in tamil Nadu, even the Sigiriya caves in Sri Lanka to observe and absorb After his first visit to Ajanta, he did not touch his paintbrush for two months, so overcome was he by his astonishment at the magnificence of the work he lay down and did not get up for days after he saw the splendour of the Sittannavasal cave paintings Younger brother Balachander was even more multifaceted he was only six when he played the khanjira on stage, A S A PeRFoRMINg MuSICIAN, Rajam was perhaps overshadowed by the abundance of vocal talent during his career, but never succumbed to the temptation to play to the gallery to boost his prospects he gave much importance to the quality of voice production at a time when virtuosity tended to trump purity of vocalisation For a south Indian musician, he had an unusual preference for the plain note rather than excessive gamaka or oscillation his voice had a bell-like clarity with a shade of nasality noticeable in his mature years though he made the best use of his voice, and sruti suddham (purity of pitch) and swarasthana suddham (the perfect placement of each solfa note) were paramount to him, he did not make a fetish of his voice, favouring a relatively unobtrusive style of presentation It is perhaps these qualities coupled with his knowledge of the architectonics of music that made Rajam a sought-after resource at the academic sessions of the TrAvel TAughT The peripATeTic Rajam much more ThAn ArT school His love of aRt was a magnifiCent obsession which Took him on severAl journeys for All of eighT yeArs accompanying Rajam’s lead singing he gave a full-fledged concert on the sitar before he turned 12, and joined All India Radio as a staff artiste by the time he was 15, playing the tabla, mridangam, harmonium, bulbul tarang, dilruba, and shehnai he mastered the veena, which he started playing on the concert platform by age 20 he also successfully ventured into the world of cinema Incredibly, Balachander taught himself every instrument he played According to Rajam, he used to play the tabla with his right hand and the harmonium with his left while on the concert tours that came the brothers’ way after the success of Sita Kalyanam 80 Madras Music Academy, where he was a member of the experts committee, and at innumerable lecture demonstrations, especially when it came to the elucidation of vivadi ragas (ragas whose appeal may lie in dissonant notes) or Kotiswara Iyer and his compositions in the 72 melakarta ragas (ragas containing all seven notes in both ascent and descent) In his mellow years, Rajam was a minimalist by conviction, moving around Chennai on a moped, clad in a short-sleeved khadi shirt or kurta and simple veshti or the even less formal lungi, again far removed from orthodox Brahmin sartorial styles he was no longer the charismatic dasher of his youth in appearance, but remained young at heart, ever curious to learn new things his home, which was also his workplace, was totally unpretentious and filled with his work equipment, paper and paint of various dimensions he was a hoarder of ‘one-side’ paper, bus tickets and other scraps of paper on the back of which he wrote notes of varying degrees of importance ranging from congratulatory messages to critiques of the recipient’s careless work Amid all the clutter, he knew exactly where to find what he was always willing to help his visitors, doing the artworks they wanted, explaining ideas or acceding to requests for interviews At home, he usually wore a khadi vest and lungi For most of his life, he enjoyed a quiet smoke and idli-dosa-coffee at his favourite udupi restaurants If he did not suffer fools, he kept it a carefully guarded secret from those who inflicted themselves on him With probably more young friends than old, he was a loving, caring teacher even if a strict, demanding one A measure of his popularity as a guru was the number of students who came to him to drink deep of his legacy, not necessarily seeking concert careers If Rajam was a religious person, he rarely showed it, his substantial work as a painter on religious or mystic themes notwithstanding Did he believe in miracles wrought by music? twice in his long career, once in south India, and once in the uS, it rained cats and dogs after he sang Dikshitar’s Anandamritakarshini in the raga Amritavarshini, the legendary rainmaker “I have sung it hundreds of times, but these were the only times it rained,” Rajam was quick to disclaim Rajam found great art haunting—be it painting or music, whether cave paintings or Veenai Dhanammal’s music he once said of Dhanammal, “When she sang Akshayalinga vibho, she shed tears… Shouldn’t we have the same intensity of feeling while performing? how can you be a real singer if you are not a rasika yourself?” that in a nutshell was Rajam he was a rasika, aesthete first n V Ramnarayan lives in Chennai and writes on music and cricket 18 march 2019 Hollywood reporter Noel de Souza ‘I am an ambitious and caring person about the projects I do’ V elvet Buzzsaw takes place in today’s art world, where paintings are bought and sold not for appreciation but for profit When paintings of an unknown artist sell for a good price, some people in the art fraternity manipulate the market to drive prices even higher A supernatural force then seeks revenge on those who have put greed before art In this drama, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a powerful art critic who can make or break an artist’s career He finds it annoying when people are more interested in his relationships than his politics This is the second time you have worked with writer and director Dan Gilroy What you find attractive about him? When I read velvet Buzzsaw, I just thought that the idea was exactly where we are today Gilroy writes these parables; like Nightcrawler (2014) felt somewhat prophetic And I felt the same here It’s a different kind of style, but he’s challenging and trying to kind of get at a particular space in our world and comment on us So, it’s that simple; he can call on me anytime to anything I would have played any part in this movie What are your thoughts on commercialism in art? I think those things are inevitable It’s just a question of value There will always be commerce in art There will always be a financial aspect to it—and people will buy and sell it and it will gain and lose value But I think the real question here is, what we value? 18 march 2019 Jake Gyllenhaal Are we swayed by a group of people saying this is a more interesting piece of art because it sold for $90 million? Is this a more interesting piece of art because other people told me that it is, or is it some thing that I respond to and love, and that I think is extraordinary? These are the questions brought up in the film and brought up in a satirical way What we value separately, and individually? And that is what matters Even in our business we talk about opening weekends all the time—it’s such a huge discussion Does that give a movie value? Does it give a human in the movie value? It’s always an interesting question Despite your good work you hardly figure in award seasons Do you pay any attention to awards? Of course, I pay attention As you know I have been doing this for a really long time, and I think the movies themselves that resonate are random And from my side of the artist in this space, I think what you start to realise after a long period is you find what you love to express as an actor Outside of producing films or trying to help people make films, it is the only thing that you truly have as an actor The movie comes out way after you have done it The response and reaction to it are more for the actor’s ego than anything else—it’s not for the process of what you do, that is what I have come to realise But of course I pay attention to that, particularly when it’s a small movie If it’s nominated, then people will go to see it And I am also an ambitious and caring person about the projects I do, and I want them to be seen by as many people as possible What you like to when you are on your own in a foreign land? A meal for me defines the area I’m in—a meal specific to that place I am always trying to find that out I’m texting friends before I go to any new place and asking them to recommend restaurants they love I was recently in Paris and I went to the Le Grande and had an incredible meal there—an extraordinary meal, it was quite wonderful What wines you prefer? Red wine And strangely recently I have started preferring not a heavy red wine, but a lighter red, sort of a kind of effervescence n www.openthemagazine.com 81 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US RAJEEV MASAND Sara’s Wish Sara Ali Khan has got her wish Or nearabouts The young debutant announced on Koffee With Karan in December that she thought Sonu KeTitu Ki Sweety star Kartik Aaryan was “cute”, and while the rumour mills insist he’s dating her friend Ananya Panday (Kartik says he’s not) Sara may have lucked out with the next best thing: she’s starring in a movie with him And it’s no ordinary movie It’s a love story No regular love story either A sequel to her father’s hit film Love Aaj Kal (2009) Freud would have a field day Lost Opportunity Randeep Hooda probably won’t be among the first-day-firstshow crowds that throng the Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari when it releases later this month The film, based on the historic battle of Saragarhi from 1897 in which 21 soldiers of the British Indian Army fought 10,000 Afghans in the North-West Frontier Province (now in Pakistan), tells a story of great courage and sacrifice, but for Randeep it’ll likely bring back bitter memories A few years ago (and before Kesari was even announced), the Highway star had been signed by The Legend of Bhagat Singh director Rajkumar Santoshi to star in a film based on this war, but the project remains unfinished Randeep famously grew his beard for the role, not shaving for nearly a year while funding for the project fell through and Santoshi tried cobbling together the budget The actor also reportedly let go of at least a few exciting projects while waiting for the film to get back on track, but it never did Insiders say the blame for the film being shuttered rests squarely with the famously extravagant filmmaker whose budget kept ballooning until it became unviable for any producer to bankroll the project Friend Gone, Fortune Gone So it appears that her fallout with a leading superstar is hurting the business of one of Bollywood’s most 82 popular talent managers The lady in question is responsible for giving one of Hindi cinema’s favorite bad boys an image makeover She’s correctly been attributed for his reinvention and for top brands warming up to him despite his tempestuous reputation The association with the former enfant terrible led to her expanding her modest shingle into one of the top talent management agencies in town Soon she was representing the superstar’s actress girlfriend, a clutch of newcomers he was responsible for launching and other stars who signed up hoping she could for them what she did for the superstar The honeymoon ended abruptly a few years ago though when the star’s family decided to handle his business affairs There was much finger-pointing and ugliness, which ended with the lady and the superstar parting ways professionally Now it appears she may be paying the price for falling out of favour with him Not long ago a young male actor she was representing, courtesy the superstar’s blessing, relieved himself of her services on the grounds that she wasn’t getting him any work Truth is that the actor is embroiled in a legal case that has scared off producers who don’t want to risk their films being held to ransom in case the actor is convicted More recently there has been news that a star child, the daughter of a popular 90s action hero who was also being represented by the lady’s agency, has decided to move on No loss, some might say, given that star child’s acting career never quite took off in the first place But the fact that the young actress is moving to a new agency floated by the superstar is indicative of the real forces at work Rumour has it there is immense pressure on the superstar’s former girlfriend and prominent female star (who remains close to the superstar) to ditch the agency, but she has insisted she is too close to the lady to even dream of going elsewhere Some believe it’s only a matter of time, given the actress gets some of her best roles starring opposite the superstar n 18 march 2019 ... Pandita BrEaKING ThE haBIT 18 march 2019 Sara’s wish By Rajeev Masand Cover by Saurabh Singh Cover photograph by Rohit Chawla www.openthemagazine.com open mail editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor... Whatsapp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com or call our toll free number 180 0 102 7510 or email at: customercare@openmedianetwork.in for alliances, email alliances@openmedianetwork.in... the JeM camp at balakot and return in seven minutes flat,” the IaF chief said in a 18 march 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 27 Cover Story The Day afTer measured tone as the Prime Minister and doval