Monthly Archives: December 2010

December 29, 2010 · 1:14 pm

How to… keep your New Year resolution

1.    It’s all about picking the right resolution. For instance – ‘I will lose 10 kgs’ or ‘I will go to the gym everyday’ – is just not going to happen. You know it, I know it and your gym instructor knows it too. On the other hand, ‘I will not waste money on unused gym memberships’ or ‘No more fad diets for me’ are perfectly doable. And they make you feel vaguely virtuous at the same time. See what I mean?

2.    As a corollary, it pays to be deliberately vague while wording your resolutions. In other words, give yourself wriggle room. “I will wake up at 7 a.m. everyday so I can go for a walk” – not good. “I will wake up earlier in the mornings” – good. Because 8.29 a.m. is earlier than 8.30 a.m. and you did keep your resolution, so there!

3.    If you must make impossible resolutions that give you a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach even as you make them (“No more chocolate chip cookies!” and such), keep them to yourself. We’re entering slightly murky ethical waters here, so pay close attention. The idea lies in this deeply philosophical question – if you break a resolution that no one knew about in the first place, was it ever really broken?

4.    Ok, so you have an over-developed conscience and Tip No. 3 makes you uncomfortable on various levels (“I’m just fooling myself” etc.). Well, in that case, you simply need to enlist extra help – your family, your closest friends, you colleagues, et al. Whine to them about your resolution everyday. Ask them to cheer you on and support you by giving up alcohol/chocolates/burgers along with you. Whine some more. They’ll either end up actually helping or (more likely) beg you to just give it up please. Either way, you’re home free.

5.    Another sure-fire recipe – make resolutions for others (e.g. “Will teach the dog new tricks”, or “Will support the husband in quitting smoking”). The advantages are, of course, many. You get to feel the gentle glow of the selfless do-gooder because, after all, you’re doing something for someone else. And even if it fails, well, it’s hardly your fault if the dog/husband/friend/parent wouldn’t cooperate, is it?

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December 27, 2010 · 10:38 pm

To all the Divya K(umar)s out there (Part III): The Downfall

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. It was, as I said on my Facebook wall — rather theatrically, I admit, but dammit, I’m allowed! — only a matter of time. Yes, gentle readers of my blog, the sheer infuriating common-ness of my name has finally collided with my career. No, it isn’t another reporter at the MetroPlus or the Hindu writing with the same byline — that would be bad enough. No, there’s now a young lady who’s joined NDTV-Hindu, the new Chennai TV channel (a joint venture between the Hindu and NDTV), and her name is — naturally — Divya Kumar. Why is this such a big deal, you might be asking yourself. There are many people out there with the same name, working in the same field. What’s all the drama about?

Well, it’s like this. See, this young lady (a perfectly nice and harmless person, I’m sure) does interviews with Chennai-based artistes on this channel. With musicians, etc. The sort of thing I might do myself. In fact, given the nature of the relationship between our paper and the channel, I’ve actually done an interview on NDTV Hindu once myself. A lot of my stories are featured as part of the MetroPlus Show that plays on Saturdays. So you couldn’t really blame anyone who doesn’t know what I look like and has only ever seen my byline for MISTAKING HER FOR ME.

After years and years of the nuisance of getting the wrong emails, those meant for all those thousands of other Divya Kumars or Divya Ks — their bank statements, avowals of love from their significant others, etc. — I will now have people putting the wrong face to my name. And the wrong voice. And the wrong body… you get the drift. I feel like I’m in some bizarre remake of The Body Snatchers.

Now those of you who’ve read my earlier pieces on the subject know the commonness of my name has long been a sore spot for me. So naturally I ranted and raved to my family and friends (the poor sods) when I first came across this young lady’s interview. But I told myself to put it in perspective. Be rational, I said. It’s not such a big deal. I was finally reaching the point when I could giggle about it (and I only flinched slightly when a colleague pointed out that it could be worse — the Divya Kumar on TV could have been a guy). Then it happened. I got an email from a well-intentioned professional contact saying she’d seen ‘my interview’ with a prominent music personality on the channel and liked it. And all that was left to say was –aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgggghhh!

Because it finally hit me. I knew why this was happening. And it was all the worse because I’d brought it upon myself. It was all that gloating I did after I created this blog earlier this year. I thought I’d won, you see, because I got the domain name, divyakumar.com, snatched from the grasp of all those other Divya Kumars, and suddenly all those searches for the wrong ‘Divya Kumars’ and “Divya Ks’ were landing up on my blog! I thought I’d thumbed my nose at the universe when finally, after years of hanging around at the bottom of the search results list on my name (yes, yes, it’s pathetic, but you do it too) I was suddenly on the first page with my blog. I believe my precise words were ‘Bwahahaha’.

Well, Universe, you win. You get the last laugh. I eat humble pie. Now, just below my blog’s link at the top of the search results for “Divya Kumar” on Google, we have the link to the TV channel’s interview. And that ain’t my face you see. So yes, I give up. I realise now that I can’t fight it. I will always be one of many. But at least my blog still comes first on the results page. I am resigned. To all the Divya Kumars out there — learn from my mistakes. From now on, we follow the path of Zen.

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December 27, 2010 · 5:25 pm

Book launch: The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India

This Marghazi season, the Oxford University Press has something special to offer connoisseurs of music in the city – a massive three-volume encyclopaedia on 2000 years of music in the Indian sub-continent.

The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India, a remarkably comprehensive work covering classical, folk, film and other forms and genres of music from across India and its neighbouring countries, was launched in the city recently by renowned Carnatic exponent M. Balamuralikrishna and noted playwright and actor Girish Karnad.

“This is a wonderful work – there are books on certain Indian musical traditions, but nothing like this has been done before,” said Balamuralikrishna, speaking at the launch event at ‘Town Hall’ in The Residency Towers. “It’s very important for present and future generations, and to artistes such as myself who will live on forever thanks to books like this.”

Manzar Khan, managing director of Oxford University Press noted that this project, with its 5000 entries and 200 rare photographs, had been in the works for over a decade. “This is the result of a successful collaboration between Sangit Mahabharati, Mumbai, and us over a period of 12 years,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest projects the Oxford University Press has ever published.”

The putting together of this book showed just how much the Indian branch of the Press had grown in the last few decades, said Karnad, who worked for OUP (right here in Chennai, as a matter of fact) back in the 1960s. “When I was there, we produced books such as ‘Treasure Island Simplified’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe Abridged’,” he joked. “I’m struck dumb by the sheer size of this work – not just physically, but by the remarkable range of its entries.”

In a lively speech, he discussed just how integral music was to the Indian way of life, and how it remained a living force in spite of its ancient roots. “The ability of Indian music to imbibe different influences and continue to grow and flourish is its strength and glory,” he said. “Today, Indian music is, I believe, better than ever, with barriers of caste, religion, and patronage collapsing. It’s great to be here to celebrate that moment.”

The encyclopaedia is now available in major bookstores and is priced at Rs. 10,000 /-. It will also soon be available to users across the world online through Oxford University Press, U.S.A.

“We’ve already signed an agreement with them,” said Khan. “India is a growing economic power and there’s an increased interest in its art and culture worldwide today. This work has come at the right time.”

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December 14, 2010 · 9:22 am

Book launch: Red – Full Blooded Romances

Are you in the mood for romance? Some lusty, red-blooded desi romance? Then Chennai-based Pageturn Publishers have just the thing for you. Two things, actually — the first two titles of their Indian romance imprint “Red — Full Blooded Romance”.

The two books “Dewdrops at Dawn” (by Sahana Sankaran) and “Together 24 X 7” (by Sunita Suresh) were launched at Full Circle bookstore at Chamiers recently, with heart-shaped brownies and chocolates and a panel discussion on romance and relationships that featured actor Abbas and his designer wife Erum Ali, VJ Paloma Rao, and designer husband-wife duo Vivek Karunakaran and Shreya Kamalia.

The panel discussion tended to veer off course a little, dealing not so much with heady romance and passion as with the trials and tribulations of marriage and relationships in the urban Indian milieu. But the books, luckily, stay right on course, reproducing those escapist romantic formulas so familiar to Indian readers raised on a steady diet of Mills & Boons and Harlequin Romances. Only, these fantasies have a decidedly desi twist.

“Sunita (Suresh) and I both love reading romances, and a couple of years ago, we met over coffee at Sangeetha and got talking about how there were no romances for Indians, and how we were always reading romances set in another ethos,” said Sandhya Sridhar, who started Pageturn along with Sunita and R. Venkatesan last year. “So we started thinking, why not do it ourselves? And, idea took root.”

The first two titles — slim pastel-coloured volumes priced at Rs. 89 — hit the shelves in mid-November, with two more to come this month and every month after that. “We’ve received e-mails from people asking about where the books are available and such, but overwhelmingly, the query has been — ‘Can I write for you?’ ” said Sandhya with a smile. “And, not just from women either; we’ve had quite a few men asking!”

Over the next couple of years, Pageturn hopes to branch into different genres of romantic fiction, such as teen romances (“we already have a couple of teen writers working on books”), historical romances (“we’re always reading Victorian romances — think about how much potential there is with our history!”) and graphic romance novels. Later, the plan is to diversify into graphic novels in general and mass-market travelogues.

For now, though, the focus is finding quality writers for their desi romance imprint. “Our aim to get as many new writers as possible on board from across India, so our books are reflective of our country today,” she said. “We want our readers to be able to identify with these stories, and feel like, ‘Hey, this could happen to me!’. That’s what romance fiction is all about — pure escapist fantasy.”

 

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December 14, 2010 · 9:15 am

Interview with… R.P. Jain of Motilal Banarsidass Publishers

Photo: R. Ravindran

 

In 1903, Motilal Banarsidass (MLBD) began as a tiny store of spiritual books, built on a capital of Rs. 27. Over the next century, it developed into one of the world’s foremost publishers of scholarly works on Indology, with a formidable catalogue of priceless works – 100 volumes of the Mahapuranas, 50 volumes of the ‘Sacred Books of the East’ edited by Max Mueller…

Today, the 107-year-old Delhi-based publishing company, still run by the descendants of Motilal Jain, its founder, retains its focus on Indian culture and spiritual heritage, but is evolving to meet the changing needs of the 21st century. Speaking to Rajendra Prakash Jain, one of the five brothers who currently run MLBD, what emerges is the picture of a company that straddles the old world and the new, combining tradition with modernity.

“Our thrust is to bring ancient wisdom to modern times, in a way that makes it accessible to the younger generation,” says Jain, who was in the city recently, visiting the MLBD store here which is in the process of being renovated.

Their efforts have taken a number of forms, from a sister publishing house, ‘New Age Books’ they began for lighter, easier-to-understand works, to their music label ‘New Age Music’, which brings out CDs for relaxation, meditation and yoga, produced primarily abroad. Now, they’re going all out for events across the country to promote various aspects of Indian culture.

“We’re talking to various organisations to do workshops, seminars and lectures featuring our authors, to spread awareness,” he says. “We’ve already done about 250 free workshops on Vedic maths (one of our most popular areas) all over India.”

Jain is himself a Gandhian scholar, and has been invited to give lectures at universities, seminars and conferences across the world to talk on Gandhi’s philosophy. “I’ve also been trying to promote young scholars and speakers in the area of Indology and Indian arts, but none of this is easy – it takes time and a lot of funding,” he says.

Naturally, their other big focus is the Internet, the digital frontier. “Our full catalogue is already available on our portal mlbd.com; now we’re planning to get into e-books,” he says.

They’re also looking into ‘Print-On-Demand’ (POD), a new form of publishing that’s gaining popularity worldwide. “This allows you to print only the number of copies that have been ordered as opposed to having to print a minimum of, say, 1000 copies, bringing down storage costs considerably,” he says. “It’s only just entering India now.”

It’s all quite cutting-edge, but that’s what it takes to survive in the current economic climate. “The publishing industry is undergoing a lot of changes the world over and has been hard-hit by the recession,” he says, adding that nearly 60 to 70 per cent of their sales comes from exports.

And this is a family that knows a thing or two about survival – after all, they lost everything during partition riots when the store was burnt down, and began again from scratch. With the fifth generation – Jain’s son and nephew – having entered the business as well, the MLBD brand is all set to keep growing and evolving.

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December 12, 2010 · 11:51 pm

Men & Cars: The Beemer Safari

Disclaimer: Writing up this blog post was delayed by the fact that Google informed me that BMW enthusiasts frown upon BMW cars being called Beemers. Apparently only BMW bikes can be called that. The cars, I discovered, are called Bimmers (hee hee. Sorry. But doesn’t BIM-mers have a slightly funny sound to it? No? Just me? Right. Moving along then.) Now, being the good little get-the-facts-right journalist that I am, I promptly changed my title to ‘The Bimmer Safari’, but it just didn’t feel right. So I sat and pondered, browsed Google for more gyan and consulted UrbanDictionary for a bit (now you see why I so rarely get any  writing except for the submit-or-else-your-head-will-roll type done) and came to the conclusion that using ‘Bimmer’ here didn’t make sense. No one I know, and certainly none of the people in the little story chronicled below calls it that. They all call it a Beemer (with a nicely satisfying, long eeee sound), just like most other Indians I know. So ‘Beemer safari’ it became again. But to all BMW enthusiasts who read this blog entry (and I’m certain there’ll be legions of you), let it be duly noted that the mis-naming is deliberate and not just a result of general cluelessness (which you’ll probably find plenty of other evidence of below anyway).

It was a beautiful day for a roadtrip. Or even a mini-roadtrip. Oh alright, it was more like just a nice, long drive. Whatever it was, we had the perfect weather for it, cool and windy, with plump white clouds shrouding the Chennai winter sun just enough for it to be pleasant rather than dismal or gloomy.  It was the sort of weather that made you feel like a heroine in a Yash Chopra movie, what with the soft-focus lighting and the gentle wind teasing your hair and making your dupatta stream behind you just so (later there was rain, but not to worry, dear readers, there were no sultry dances in see-through saris. We stayed indoors and ate hot kebabs and drank hot coffee. So much more comfortable, don’t you think?).

The final destination of the trip doesn’t matter for the purposes of this story (if you’re dying of curiosity, I’ll just have to feed you the clichéd ol’ it’s not the destination but the journey that counts blah blah quote). What is of significance is the fact that we — two yuppie couples — found ourselves at the massive Mahindra World City development at Chengalpet in the suburbs of Chennai on this gorgeous morning. And there, in the middle of that quiet 1550 acre property with large corporate and residential buildings laid out across wide-open grassy spaces, the two men in the car had something close to a religious experience.

Now, I’m not generally one for gender stereotyping. God knows I’m not your typical girly-girl (I own precisely four pairs of shoes and hate shopping. Yes, really), and I know enough people of both sexes who defy gender norms not to put much store in it at all. However, even I had to admit that our reactions to what happened next on that particular day were quite ridiculously stereotypical. A crappy TV show like According to Jim couldn’t have done it better.

Girl 1 (Me): [Typically clueless] “Why are we stopping here?”

Girl 2 : [Exaggerated eye roll] “Oh god.”

Guy 1 (the husband, henceforth known as TH) and Guy 2 (the other husband, henceforth known as TOH): [In a state of breathless excitement] “Oh. My. God.”

Me : “What??”

Girl 2: [Sighs] “It’s the BMW office. We’re going to be here a while.”

Me: [Still confused] “But there’s nothing there. No showroom or anything.”

A gasp from the front seat. “It’s only the mothership,” said TH in a pained, trying-to-be-patient voice.

“But…” I started.

And then it happened. TOH, who’d been inching the car forward till its little grey nose was virtually touching the wire-mesh fence surrounding the office (sorry, Mothership) building and its grassy grounds, gasped again. “Look!”

“Oh man, a car!”

“A test drive car!”

“They must be doing a test drive!”

“With that car!”

“Oh man!”

I turned to the only other person in the car who had not apparently lost their mind and said, tentatively, “Do you see anything? I don’t see anything. What’re they talking about?”

She sighed again with the been-there done-that air of one who’s been married a lot longer than I, and pointed.  And then I saw. Sort of. In the distance, past the mesh-wire fence, mostly hidden by long, uncut grasses, I got a glimpse of pale-grey metal glinting in the sunlight. I squinted and I could just about make the shape of a car sitting there, apparently sunning itself.

“But it’s not moving,” I said, starting to sound a bit plaintive by now.

“Shhhhh,” TH said, apparently afraid I’d spook the Beemer. “What series is it, can you tell?” (Obviously he’s not talking to me, but I ventured “250?” which earned me a dirty look).

“It doesn’t even have the BMW logo in front,” pointed out Girl 2.

“It doesn’t need to,” said TOH in his pained, trying-to-be-patient voice. “You can tell from the front grill.”

For a few seconds after that, all that could be heard is the odd gusty sigh, as they peered reverently into the distance, not moving or speaking, drinking in the sight of the car sitting still amidst the waving grasses.

“Oh for god’s sake,” snapped Girl 2 suddenly, breaking the silence and making them jump. “It’s like you’re on a bloody Beemer safari.”

The sarcasm, inspired though it was, unfortunately missed its mark completely.

Wide grins spread across the guys’ faces as they turned to each other. “Yeaaaah,” said one. “We’re seeing it in its natural habitat.”

“Yeaaaah,” said the other, grin getting even goofier. “A Beemer in the wild!”

By this point, I was pretty much useless since I was busy fighting off a giggle fit brought on by mental images of the two guys in full safari gear ala Shikari Shambu, training their binoculars intently on the wild Beemer.

But the G2 hadn’t given up. “It’s all dented and stuff. It’s not even new,” said that lone she-ranger of sanity, persevering, trying something, anything that’d get the show back on the road . “Can’t we go now?”

“Oh man. It’s like… like a tiger wounded in battle,” said Shikari Shambu 1, eyes shining. “Yeaaaah, that only makes it even better,” said Shikari Shambu 2.

“Oh, I give up,” huffed G2.

We finally got on with the trip,  but only having promised our intrepid explorers of the wild that they could stop by again on the way back. And then we drove on for… well, about 200 metres. Because we simply had to stop at the the pastry shop G2 and I spotted down the road, its sinful confections beckoning seductively  (we may or may not have turned to each other and squealed “Cake!” as we passed it).

Sitting at the shop and having a moment with my rich chocolate truffle cake (with a blueberry muffin packed to go), I realised something. It was a bit of a Eureka moment, so bear with me with I lay it out to you. You see, what had happened was that the guys had just indulged an urban, automobile version of The Hunt (I suppose the ancient equivalent would have been cavemen scoping out the biggest, furriest woolly mammoth around — they were never actually gonna kill the thing and bring it home for supper now, were they?), and we were just indulging in the modern woman’s version of ‘gathering’ (is it any surprise the two of us were the ones that noticed the cake shop? I mean, if we’d lived a couple of thousand years ago, we’d have found all the berry-bearing bushes like that). All four of us were, I realised, just following our anthropological imperatives, giving into to hunter-gatherer urges programmed into our genes by our cave-dwellin’ ancestors thousands of years ago (yes, that’s right — my genes make me go in search of cake). This wasn’t stereotypical behaviour. This was science, see?

No?

Oh well.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Here’s to plenty more hunting and gathering, I say!

Note: A big thank you to Preeti Seshadri (Girl 2) for the awesome ‘Beemer Safari’ idea and to both her and Anant Sood (TOH) for a wonderful day out 🙂

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December 8, 2010 · 9:20 am

Book launch: Ramachandra Guha’s ‘Makers of Modern India’

 

Photo: R. Ravindran

 

The launch of historian and columnist Ramachandra Guha’s latest anthology, Makers of Modern India in the city was as much about what he’d included in the book as what he’d left out.

Makers of Modern India, edited and introduced by Guha, features fascinating excerpts of the writings of 19 influential Indian political thinker-activists whom he has chosen not just for how they shaped the formation of our republic, but also for how original their ideas were, and how accessible and relevant their words remain to this day.

“This is one of Penguin India’s most important non-fiction books of the year, and it comes, fittingly, at the end of a year of celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Indian Republic,” said Kamini Mahadevan of Penguin India, introducing the book to the packed audience at the Ballroom at Vivanta by Taj, Connemara.

The book begins with the writings of Raja Rammohan Roy, whom Guha calls ‘The First Liberal’, and then proceeds chronologically to cover the works of great thinkers up into the 1960s, some well-known, such as Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore and Ambedkar, some almost forgotten, such as Kalmadevi Chattopadhyay, Tarabai Shinde and Jotirao Phule, and some rather controversial, such as Jinnah and M.S. Golwalkar.

At various points during his lively, nearly hour-long speech, Guha defended and explained his choices, whether it was the controversial inclusions: “These men shaped India; for good or bad, you have to decide. I have to keep my ideological biases apart, that’s my job as a scholar”, or apparently glaring exclusions: “I left out people such as Subhas Chandra Bose, Vallabhbhai Patel or even Indira Gandhi because they haven’t left behind a legacy of original written work. They were actors, not thinkers.”

In response to other omissions brought up by the crowd, such as those of Kamaraj or Annadurai, he welcomed other scholars to do follow up volumes to this 500-odd page work. “I hope to spark many more volumes on other thinkers – the history of ideas has been very neglected by Indian historians,” he said. “I’ve given a mere glimpse, and it’s a fat book already! This is an attempt to start a debate, not close it.”

The other running theme of the evening was encapsulated in a witty yet poignant and at times downright poetic speech by former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who launched the book. “The book betokens a very real sense of loss… we had him and him and her too – where are they now?” he said. “How truly they cautioned us, admonished us and put steel into our spines. Whither have they gone?”

Guha addressed this loss in his own direct, energetic and no-nonsense style (which he, in a characteristic cricket metaphor likened to the ‘orthodoxy of Gambhir’ after the ‘sparkle of Sehwag’ in Gandhi’s speech). “Yes, no politician or social reformer writes or thinks like this anymore, but we have this remarkable resource available to us, in the form of their writings,” he said. “What we should worry about is that so many of us are ignorant of this legacy.”

These works, he pointed out, were not just of archival interest but just as relevant today. This hit home powerfully in the few passages he read out – a chillingly prophetic essay by the relatively obscure Marathi scholar Hamid Dalwai, in which he foreshadows the Ayodhya and Babri Masjid issue, to a pithy piece by E. V. Ramaswami about religious gurus in the 1920s that could have been written today.

The question and answer session that followed was typically Guha – covering a number of subjects, from NCERT’s new history text books to L.K. Advani’s rath yatra, and at all times spirited, well-informed and highly opinionated. And, judging by the strongly-worded suggestions from members of the audience, it may spawn a sequel or two to Makers of Modern India.

 

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December 6, 2010 · 1:32 pm

Interview with… Ashok Amritraj

Photo: R. Ragu

Ashok Amritraj has had a rather good year. His productions in 2010 have met with critical and commercial success. He’s all set for his first 3D movie. And Variety hosted a swanky do at the Cannes Film Festival this year to celebrate his achievement of 100 films completed in Hollywood.

“They did a huge star-studded party for me on the beach at Cannes, and everybody from Jean Claude Van Damme, who did my first big film, to Eva Longoria and Bruce Willis was there,” he said, looking relaxed and, as always, debonair, as he lounged in his Chennai home. “It was very special.”

He was in the city for his customary year-end trip, before heading to Romania and Turkey to the sets of Ghost Rider 2, the sequel to the 2007 superhero flick starring Nicolas Cage as the motorcycle-riding, skull-flaming titular character.

“It’s very much the same Marvel Comics character, with the bike on fire, the skull on fire and so on, but in 3D,” said Amritraj with a laugh. “So the fire’s really going to come at you. It’s very fun.”

It will also be Hyde Park Entertainment’s (Amritraj’s company) first foray into 3D films, which he believes are here to stay. “The technology has given our industry quite a boost because of the ticket prices, to be honest,” he said candidly. “The price of tickets for 3D movies is 40 per cent higher in the U.S. and the U.K.”

The big tipping point, he said, is when the technology makes it into the average family’s home. “My kids already have 3D glasses to watch movies at home. I think there will soon come a time when we won’t need glasses at all, and then the technology will really take off.”

In the meantime, though, Hyde Park Entertainment is doing pretty well. Its September 2010 release, the hyper-violent, tongue-in-cheek, exploitation-style flick Machete by Robert Rodriguez (starring Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and “Steven Segal resurrected from the dead”), received largely positive reviews and was a surprise summer hit. And the upcoming December release Blue Valentine (Amritraj has partnered with Harvey Weinstein for its distribution) is already receiving Oscar buzz for performances by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

Which brings us to that inevitable question — any plans of an Indian production next? “I’ve had meetings with a couple of writers and directors to see if there’s any potential — it’s something I’d like to do since I haven’t done one since Jeans,” he said. “Whether it’ll be a fully Indian production or Indo-U.S. or Indo-Chinese, I don’t know.”

What he’d also like to see, though, is more Indians coming to Hollywood. “The second generation Indian-American kids are doing quite well, but I’m surprised that more people from India haven’t given it a shot,” he said. “I suppose if you have success here, you don’t want to go knocking on doors in Hollywood. But I hope to see a few new players soon; it just takes commitment, because finally, the colour of our skin doesn’t stand in the way of being a Hollywood movie star.”

He remembers when his friend Sidney Poitier led the African-American revolution in Hollywood, and again when another good friend, Antonio Banderas did the same for Latinos. “The Chinese have done a decent job as well, with people such as Jet Li, Jackie Chan and John Woo making a mark,” he said. “I think it’s India’s turn; we certainly have enough talent!”

If anyone knows about making it in Hollywood, of course, it’s this Amritraj brother, who is surprised at his own longevity in the industry. “There are maybe just four others in all of Hollywood history who’ve done 100 films. And my movies have altogether grossed $1.5 billion,” he said with a smile. “So I really am quite proud.”

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December 6, 2010 · 1:20 pm

Book launch: “Another Chance” and “Urban Shots”

Chennai’s book lovers got a neat little two-for-the-price-of-one deal at a recent book launch at Landmark. You could even call it a three-for-the-price-of-one deal.

Two books – a romance novel and a collection of short stories were launched — and three authors were on hand to discuss the books with the audience that valiantly filled the seats in spite of the rain.

The books in question were ‘Another Chance’, Ahmed Faiyaz’s take on the rather complicated love lives of urban, upwardly-mobile yuppies in India, and ‘Urban Shots’, an engaging collection of 29 short stories by 13 Indian writers on life in our metros.

Both had Faiyaz in common – he’s contributed to three short stories in ‘Urban Shots’, and is the founding member of Grey Oak Publishers, which brought out both books. Their themes are similar too, with a focus on the urban experience in India.

“’Another Chance’ is reflective of our generation, where people are in a relationship but external and internal factors cause friction between them,” said Faiyaz, in conversation with Chennai-based writer Vibha Bhatra. “Careers make them move from city to city, they choose to go back to those they were in relationships with before, and so on.”

The story, then, sets up a love triangle (or should it be quadrangle?) between four beautiful, globe-trotting desi urbanites who’re trying to figure out what they’re looking for in life and love. “My greatest challenge was writing from a woman’s perspective this time, to bring out her point-of-view,” said Faiyaz, whose first novel, ‘Life, Love and All that Jazz…’ came out earlier this year.

‘Urban Shots’ (edited by Paritosh Uttam) touches upon relationships as well, dealing with themes of romance and infidelity. But it also takes on a whole lot else, from the loss of the child to domestic abuse, often with a great deal of sensitivity. Two of the contributors to the collection, Chennai-based freelance writer Malathi Jaikumar and journalist and author of travelogue ‘Chai, Chai’, Bishwanath Ghosh, were present at the launch and discussed why it was an important book.

“It’s very relevant as more and more people move to urban areas today,” said Jaikumar. “There are a lot of conveniences and chances for success, but also a lot of loneliness and depression. Anyone who reads these stories can identify with these situations, and feel like they’re not alone.”

Ghosh described the writers of ‘Urban Shots’ as spanning generations and providing different perspectives. “The youngest writer is 20 and the emotions one undergoes at 20, 25, 35 or 45 are different,” he said. “’Urban Shots’ is really many books in one book.”

This was a coming-out party of sorts for Grey Oak, set up earlier this year. These are its first two books and Faiyaz called ‘Urban Shots’ its “first big step.” “We thought why not make a statement by bringing young writes and noted writers together for a collection, and show our support for Indian writing,” he said.

The question and answer session that followed was a tad lackadaisical, punctuated by a series of mini blackouts. Still, there was time for a fairly in-depth discussion on short story writing and its evolution, and even a profound exchange on Somerset Maugham’s final book. Not a bad deal for the audience, overall.

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December 2, 2010 · 6:26 pm

Interview with… Ashish Rajpal

Every year Ashish Rajpal teaches science for fourth or fifth standard students at a school in Delhi. Not exactly business as usual for an MBA and the managing director of a company. But then teaching is Rajpal’s business at iDiscoveri and it was a similar stint of teaching fourth graders that laid the foundations of his popular XSEED programme a few years ago.

“I came back after doing my M.Ed at Harvard University eight years ago, with this crazy mission to change education in India,” says Rajpal, an MBA from XLRI. “Given that we have six million poorly trained teachers in India, I dove right into teacher training, but found that in itself did not change classroom practice or help the children ultimately.”

That’s when Rajpal himself started teaching science at a Delhi school. “And I found it’s incredibly tough to teach 45 children in a crowded classroom!” he says. “I realised that all this theoretical nonsense we’d been feeding the teachers meant nothing in a real-world situation. We needed something that worked in the classroom.”

The result was that iDiscoveri began to create minute-by-minute plans for the teacher to follow in class, including group work, experiments and other forms of experiential learning. And so XSEED was born. “Today we’ve created over 8000 lesson plans across all subjects for nursery to seventh standard, and XSEED reaches 450 schools across the country,” says Rajpal. “We’re hoping that number will reach 1000 by next summer.”

About a hundred of those schools are right here in Tamil Nadu, which is one of XSEED’s flagship states. “Although we stared in 2002 in Delhi, we found that the South was far more receptive to our ideas,” he says. “So we decided to focus on Southern states, and picked Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.”

Rajpal describes the programme as going inside the schools like ‘Intel Inside’ and doing not just lesson plans, but also teacher training, creating work books and doing quarterly assessments of students (“sort of like a stock market report”). Somewhat strange MBA-esque metaphors to use for an educational enterprise, but then that’s Rajpal for you – a mixture of starry-eyed idealism and businesslike pragmatism.

“I am an idealist at heart – I’d have to have been, to give up my well-paying corporate job in Paris, uproot my family and go do my M.Ed at the age of 31,” he says. “But my corporate experience for 10 years has also shaped me. Ideas aren’t enough – you have to make it work.”

He recalls how he applied in secret to Harvard, inspired by the birth of his children. And once there, he was “like a greedy hog”, making the most of the opportunities before him. “Intellectually, those were the best years of my life – I was getting to hang out with legends such as Howard Gardner and David Perkins,’ he says.

To ensure these ideals aren’t lost, iDiscoveri launched The School of Tomorrow conference here in Chennai last year, with the second, bigger edition around the corner (see box). Then there’s the leadership programme for young adults he’s working on, along with supplementary programmes to meet different needs of students and a national network of XSEED centres. Oh, and he’s considering diversifying to teaching English as well. It’s all in a day’s work for this educational entrepreneur.

BOX: The School of Tomorrow conference
The second annual edition of iDiscoveri’s The School of Tomorrow conference will be held on December 7, 2010 simultaneously in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, using Internet and videoconferencing technology.

It will feature several high-profile speakers, including writer and columnist Gurucharan Das, who will give the India Education Address, and leading American educationists Peter Senge of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David Perkins of Harvard University, who will present the International Keynote Address.

In addition, there will be a micro-panel of educationists discussing issues of classroom and school practices and a macro-panel of leaders from the corporate sector discussing society’s expectations from education.

For details call 044-42658585 or log on to www.schooloftomorrow.in.

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