Category Archives: People

August 11, 2010 · 12:31 pm

Article: Memories of Maria

A photograph published in MetroPlus results in the coming together of nine surviving students of Italian educationist Maria Montessori for a unique reunion after seven decades.

Photo: N. Sridharan

It’s a hot, sunny afternoon, and a group of elderly gentlemen and women sits patiently under the trees at Kalakshetra Foundation, waiting for the event to begin.

It seems like any ordinary meeting, except it’s not — it’s a reunion of a most remarkable sort.

These nine men and women are the surviving students of the great Italian educationist Maria Montessori herself, and they’ve come together for a reunion — for the first time — nearly 70 years after they were classmates in her schoolroom.

When a group of adorable current-day Montessori students joins us the for the prayer song, the mood is truly set, and we rewind to the time when these septuagenarians were four or five years old themselves — memories of Maria and her adopted son Mario, of Easter eggs and biscuits, and all those things one tends to treasure as a child.

“I still remember the party Maria gave soon after the school was inaugurated — there were cakes, sweets, candles and gifts to be given to us kids,” says K.V.S. Krishna, who was instrumental in putting together the event after the idea was sparked off by a photograph that appeared in The Hindu (see box). “I was always hungry, and I grabbed as much as I could!”

The year was 1939, and Maria had fled to India with Mario, after being exiled by Mussolini during the Second World War. Invited to Madras by G.S. Arundale, she arrived that November, and set up her school at the beautiful old Olcott Garden bungalow on the Theosophical Society grounds.

“Our classes would be held in the ground floor of the bungalow, and we’d have a session of biscuits afterwards,” recalls A.Y. Nithiananda. “I remember, Madam Montessori would be wearing a kunguma pottu just like I am now.”

Some of the memories that surface at the reunion are poignant, such as P.K. Prabhakar’s recollection of the only time he ever saw Madam Maria cry — when she went to see Mario at Pallavaram, where he was interned as a prisoner of war.

When Maria wept

“By the good graces of Mr. Arundale, she could go visit him twice a year, and one of those times, Mario asked her to bring me along — he used to be very fond of me and would call me ‘Paiyya’,” says Prabhakar, the senior-most at the reunion. “When I saw Mario, I rushed to him, and extended my hand, and the sergeant in charge hit me with a baton. And, Maria started crying, saying: ‘No one should hit a child’.”

When they returned to the bungalow, Prabhakar says, she gave him chocolate and made him a promise — she would ensure no one hurt him like that again. “She taught me that one’s love for others is more important than all the education in the world,” he says.

Other anecdotes are in a lighter vein, such as R. Sivakami’s, at being asked to garland Maria on her birthday (“I was so proud to be chosen out of the 22!” she laughs), and a touching email from Sivakami’s brother S. Padmanabhan in Germany, whose aptitude for engineering Maria predicted back then (he ended up becoming one of the earliest staff members of the IIT Madras mechanical engineering department).

Plenty of chocolates

“She would always ruffle my hair and call me ‘bambino’,” writes Padmanabhan. “And, around Easter, there were always plenty of chocolate eggs!”

The picture that emerges is one of a remarkably warm woman who loved children and loved being with them. Sivakami remembers how Maria would often just sit and watch them at work: “Some days she would be on a dais, watching what we were doing, and some days, she would come and sit right by us and observe us.”

As the afternoon wears on, it also becomes obvious that there’s a strong sense of kinship amongst the people present. They’re more than just old classmates — they all seem to know each other’s relatives and friends, and they tease each other and squabble as if they’re family. Which is what they are, says Prabhakar. “Most of us come from a Theosophical Society background, so we, virtually, are all one family,” he laughs.

The sultry afternoon turns into a rain-splattered evening, and the remarkable reunion is at an end. The group disperses and slowly shuffles away, but Maria’s legacy remains, in the hearts and memories of her former students, the ones who could make it to the meet and the ones who couldn’t.

Box: How it all happened

It all began with a photograph. In the MetroPlus column Memories of Madras of September 9, 2009, titled ‘A Bridge with a View’ we carried a black-and-white picture of six students with Maria Montessori at Olcott bungalow.

When Gabriele Binder, executive director of the Montessori Society, Baden Württemberg, Germany, who has been studying Maria’s days in India for the last six years saw the picture, she immediately contacted K.V.S. Krishna, a former student of Maria’s whom she was told could help her.

“I was already in touch with 12 or 13 of the former students who were in Chennai,” says Krishna. “After Gabriele contacted me, we traced 16 of them, and then 19 all over India and abroad. Best of all, we’ve now identified four of the six children in the picture!”

Soon, plans were made for the grand reunion. Naturally, Binder was present, recording the interviews of the students. She had just one thing left to say at the end: “I’m glad you published that article!”

2 Comments

Filed under Articles, Madras, People

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 2, 2010 · 11:16 pm

Article: Grigoryan Brothers interview and concert review (uncut version)

Photo: R. Ravindran

Brothers Slava and Leonard Grigoryan hardly spent time together growing up. Slava, older by nine years, left for London when he was just 18 to make his mark as a solo guitarist, and Leonard stayed behind in Australia, practicing hard so he could one day play with his big brother.

That day came a few years later when Slava returned home and found that his brother, then 14, had turned into a ‘fantastic musician’. “At the same time, I’d gotten quite tired of always being on the road by myself – being a solo guitarist is a very lonely existence,” says Slava. “We started developing a repertoire for both of us, and we’ve never really looked back.”

In the eight years since, the Grigoryan Brothers, as they’re known, have made a name for themselves as the finest guitar duo in Australia, and have toured across the world, from Russia to Japan, Austria to South Africa, to universal acclaim.

And along the way, they’ve more than made up for all those years spent apart. “We’re kind of discovering each other now, later in life, without all the baggage other siblings carry with them,” says Slava. “We’re brothers, of course, but we feel more like friends,” says Leonard.

Playing together has also opened up a whole new world to them musically. “We arrange a lot of music, we commission a lot of composers to write for us – the solo guitar repertoire, in comparison, is much more traditional,” says Slava.  “What you can do as a soloist is more limited as well – when you add a guitar, the range and the possibilities are endless,” says Leonard.

That range, with these two immensely talented guitarists, is quite mind-boggling. Trained in the Western classical style by their father (both their parents are violinists), the brothers were encouraged to explore a variety of influences from early on, whether it was contemporary jazz, flamenco, rock or even Indian fusion. “One of the very first concerts we were ever taken to – I was 12 and Len must have been three! – featured John Mclaughlin, Kai Eckhardt and Trilok Gurtu,” recalls Slava. “And my first band in school played Jimi Hendrix.”

Today, their music is such an eclectic mix of styles – classical, jazz, Latin guitars and more – that the brothers don’t even try to categorise it. “For us, there has to be a showcase of all the different possibilities on the guitar,” says Slava. “Playing beautiful, lyrical ballads is just as meaningful as playing technically demanding classical pieces.”

And they revel in its international flavour. “As a guitarist, you feel like you have a very international ownership – we’re from a Russian background [their parents emigrated from Kazakhstan], we grew up in Australia learning classical guitar, and yet we feel very close to Spanish and Brazilian music!” says Slava.

Plus, they’ve done an album on French Impressionistic music, are planning one on Russian piano music, and every now and again, they take a break from being the ‘Grigoryan Brothers ‘ to team up with another pair of musical siblings from Egypt (who play the Oud and the Req) and perform as the ‘Band of Brothers.’

“We bring contemporary guitar influences into their world, and see what happens,” he says with a smile. “It’s a lot of fun – we were recently in China with them for the World Expo, and our album will be out next year.”

When they’re not travelling around the world or extensively touring across Australia (their last tour had 45 concerts), Slava and Leonard are… well, they’re hanging out with each other. “We have the same non-musical interests – we play golf together, we love food and wine and cooking…” says Slava. “So even when we’re not playing, we end up seeing each several times a week,” says Leonard.

“And after all these years, we’re not sick of each other at all!” says Slava, laughing.

Concert:

A standing ovation and two encores later, the packed audience at the Taj Coromandel Ballroom were still loath to let the Grigoryan Brothers leave the stage. That’s the sort of impact the guitar duo had in their first-ever performance in the city.

The music was gorgeous right from the get-go. They opened the concert (presented by the Australian high Commission, Delhi) with the incredibly soulful ‘Distance’ from their 2009 album of the same name, a melodic piece (full of delicate strumming and harmonies) that defied categorisation. This was followed by two movements from the more traditionally classical ‘Suite Bergmasque’ by the French composer Debussy (adapted for guitar by their father) – first the lively, playful “Minuet”, and then the sweetly evocative “Clair de lune”.

The variety in their repertoire was on ample display as they performed two whimsical and quirky contemporary compositions by Ralph Towner, and then the infectiously high-energy ‘Jongo’ by Brazilian composer Paolo Bellinati. Every note was perfect, their synchronisation impeccable even in the most frenetic interludes, and when they stopped to beat out a complex rhythm on their guitars during ‘Jongo’, it was, of course, to perfect time.

By the time they played their own version of the Beatles classic ‘Blackbird’, it was no longer a surprise that they’d added so many unique flourishes and variations that the original seemed almost staid by comparison. Really, can you blame the crowd for bringing them back not once, but twice?

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Madras, Music, People

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 20, 2010 · 7:04 pm

Article: Voices for all Seasons (profile of the Madras Musical Association choir)

They’ve sung before the Pope and at the Pantheon in Rome; they’ve sung at the Coventry Cathedral in England and on the BBC Radio; they sang at the Sydney Opera House ahead of the 2000 Olympics, and come 2012, they’ll be part of the pre-Olympics cultural celebrations once again, this time at the Alexandra Palace on the outskirts of London, on the banks of the Thames.

We’re talking, of course, about Chennai’s own choir-that-could, the 117-year-old, 80-voice Madras Musical Association choir. Formed in 1893 by a group of Europeans who came together often to sing, the choir has never been disbanded or defunct during the entire period of its existence, though there was a brief lull in the late 80s, says Dr. Ravi Santosham, president of MMA for the last 20 years.

“From about 1985 to 1990, the support we had from the consulates fell away, there was hardly any activity, and we lost a lot of voices – we thought there wouldn’t be an MMA choir anymore,” he says. “But a handful of us continued to meet once a week, we started having membership drives, and we’ve just gone from strength to strength since then.”

That would be an understatement. Composed of 80 Chennai-ites from various walks of life (high school and college students, IT professionals and engineers, doctors and nurses, playback singers and homemakers… the list is endless), the choir today is the largest it has ever been, in terms of size, and perhaps the most accomplished, holding its own with choirs across the world.

“At least 75 per cent of our repertoire today is international standard – these are not simple compositions,” says MMA’s current conductor, Augustine Paul. “We are an amateur choir, yet we do pieces performed by paid, professional choirs at the Albert Hall or Carnegie Hall.”

No wonder then that the choir received an invitation from the International Church Music Festival to perform in England in 1998 – its first such international invitation. “I got an email asking if the MMA would be interested in performing at the Coventry Cathedral for a massed music concert,” recalls Santosham. “I couldn’t believe it and neither could the choir!”

But perform they did – the only choir from Asia to do so – and they impressed acclaimed conductor Sir David Wilcox so much that they were invited back in 2000, and again for the 25th anniversary celebrations of the festival in Rome in 2009 (where they did a one-minute performance before the Pope).

Along the way, they were invited by World Voices Australia (“maybe they heard us performing on BBC Radio,” says Santosham) to be part of the cultural activities ahead of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. And now, the men of MMA are gearing up to be part of a 1000-voice all-male choir that will perform at the Alexandra Palace six days before the 2012 Olympics open in London.

“We’ll be taking the ladies along too, because there will be a concert tour all over England for the participating choirs after the event,” says the president.

The choir, of course, also does two or three full concerts in Chennai every year, in addition to its well-known annual Christmas show, ‘Carols by Candlelight.’ The remarkable thing is that all of this is accomplished with the choir meeting just once a week (on Monday evenings), for a two-hour rehearsal.

“We’re now geared to do a concert with just three months preparation, with up to 80 per cent new music, which is very good by Indian standards,” comments Paul. “We have a blend of youngsters who bring tremendous energy, and seniors who have a thorough knowledge of the music.”

The practices are intense – each constitutes one-twelfth the preparation for a concert, after all – but they’re also a space for fun and friendship.

Husband and wife pair Revi and Lalitha Thomas, for instance, never miss a practice session and have missed just one concert in the two decades they’ve been part of MMA. “We love the music, of course, but also our fellowship with the other members – some of our closest friends are from the choir,” says Lalitha.

And Roshin Abraham, a 27-year-old psychologist, loves the fact that rehearsals are on a Monday: “It’s the perfect way to beat the Monday Blues,” she laughs. “There’s a lot of energy and a lot of variety in the music we sing.”

Today, the choir’s repertoire includes everything from Broadway musical numbers and jazz to ABBA and Michael Jackson, enabling the MMA to reach out to a wider audience. But the oratorios that were a staple of the past remain – both in its music library (“The MMA has one of the best Western classical music libraries in India, left behind by the British,” says Paul), and in its repertoire (the choir recently performed the immensely challenging ‘Israel in Egypt’ for the first time in nearly a century).

An amalgam of the past and the present, the young and the old, the classical and the modern – that’s MMA for you, a unique and integral part of Chennai’s rich cultural tapestry.

BOX:

You can catch the Madras Musical Association choir’s next performance in Chennai on August 27 and 28, 2010. The classical music concert will be held at the Museum Theatre, in aid of the Hindustan Bible Institute’s social service activities. For details on passes call 98400-85531 / 98844-99456.


1 Comment

Filed under Articles, Madras, Music, People

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 20, 2010 · 11:15 am

Article: Personal yet universal (screening of Kimberly Reed’s ‘Prodigal Sons’)

Carol McKerrow, Marc McKerrow and Kimberly Reed

It was an evening of sharing and cross-cultural exchange, an evening that showed just how universal the search for identity and acceptance is, whether it’s under the wide Montana sky or in the sultry streets of Chennai.

The event was the screening of ‘Prodigal Sons’, an acclaimed documentary by transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed, at the U.S. Consulate auditorium as part of the city’s ongoing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride (LGBT) Pride Month celebrations.

Entirely autobiographical, the documentary is a startlingly honest telling of Reed’s own transition and the struggles of her adopted brother Marc, who suffered brain-damage in a severe automobile accident in his 20s. With gorgeous shots of ‘big sky country’ Montana as the backdrop, the story of their sibling rivalry, Marc’s search for his birth parents and the family’s difficulties in dealing with his degenerating mental state unfolds in a powerful, and at times disturbing, tableau.

What begins as a tale of Reed’s return to her hometown (where she was last known as Paul McKerrow, star quarterback of the high school football team) turns into something far more universal – a story of making peace with one’s past, and coming to terms with difficult family relationships.

“This is such a personal story, and it’s wonderfully rewarding to see it connect with people across the world,” said Reed during the video conference interaction with the audience that followed. “There are a lot of unusual things going on, but this is basically a film about love and family, and I hope that message made it across to India!”

Judging by the reception the filmmaker received – a big round of applause, cheers and waves from the packed audience comprised of members of Chennai’s own transgender community, social activists, etc. – it would appear that it did. Warm and immensely likeable, Reed spent the next half an hour answering questions from audience, helped along by coordinators Kalki, transgender activist, and Amy Hirsch of the U.S. Consulate.

The result was a discussion on everything from mental illness (“Sometimes I feel that is the real taboo subject in our society”) to Reed’s own transition (“One of the best things I did was not be afraid to take it slow… it’s more important to get your head right about it rather than get your body right”). In between, Kalki spoke of some of her experiences and those of the transgender community in Tamil Nadu, leading to sharing on the similar difficulties the communities in the U.S. and India face.

“The fight is still going on in the U.S. – poverty is a problem here as well,” Reed said. “About 50 per cent of transgender youth take their own life – it’s absolutely tragic and something needs to be done about that.”

If some of the questions veered more towards rambling commentary, that was a minor issue during an otherwise rewarding evening. It was apparent that ‘Prodigal Sons’ made a deep impression on much of the audience, and what made this event truly meaningful is that they were able to share that with its director –and its subject— living halfway across the world.

DIVYA KUMAR

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Movies, People

Tagged as , , , ,

May 11, 2010 · 7:11 pm

Book launch: Capt. Gopinath’s ‘Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey’

It was part rousing motivational speech, part long-winded discourse on the Indian aviation scene, part anecdotes of soul-baring honesty, and part exhaustive dissections of Air Deccan’s past and Deccan 360’s future.

The launch of Captain Gopinath’s heartfelt autobiography, Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey, at Landmark recently had its share of ups and downs — much like the author’s own chequered career — but it did serve to underline the amazing connect Gopinath and his story of entrepreneurial glory has with the public at large. Absolutely packed with a cross-section of people, from young students and budding entrepreneurs to old-timers from the aviation industry and the book launch regulars, the launch went on for well over an hour, with the questions coming in an endless stream and a large section staying behind for autographs after.

Gopinath, dressed casually in jeans and a shirt, engaged the audience right from the start, ditching the stodgy desk set up for him to come as far forward as he could (his feet were half off the stage) and talk directly to them. No reading from the book for this maverick.

“I have deliberately written this book as a story — my story and the story of Air Deccan, but also the story of New India, of the India of possibilities,” he said. “This is not a how-to book or a book on Indian aviation — it’s about following you dreams, having a zest for life, about not giving up in the face of overwhelming odds.”

A straightforwardly written, engaging read, the book chronicles Gopinath’s childhood in the little village of Gorur, his experiences as an officer in the Indian army, his days of dabbling in farming, and, of course, his launch of India’s first low-cost airline, Air Deccan.

“Whenever I went to give talks at schools and colleges, people always wanted to know — how did you build an airline after leaving the army with just Rs. 6,500?” he said during a chat afterward. “So, I decided to tell my story. I especially wanted to reach young people who can get disillusioned easily in today’s world.”

That was a recurring theme during the talk — having ‘inextinguishable optimism’ about our country, and ‘perennial enthusiasm’ for trying to make a difference. “We’re all concerned about the state of affairs in this country today, but we need to stay engaged. Cynicism is suicide,” he said earnestly. “My naïve optimism sometimes got me into trouble, but it also got me out of it.”

He may have been given to platitudes (“never give up”, “find happiness in the small things”) and the overuse of inspirational quotes (Gandhi, Napoleon, Einstein…), but it all still carried conviction because of his very enthusiasm, and his anecdotes — how, for instance, he refused to pay bribes for his licenses to start Deccan, but still got them through dogged determination. Or, how he stood for the Lok Sabha elections as an independent in 2009 because of the corruption in our existing political parties.

Things, however, got a little hairy during the long Q and A session that followed, as audience members tended towards long, rambling anecdotes of their own experiences with aviation (“Is there a question?” Gopinath had to ask a couple of times) or highly specific questions on his new undertaking, Deccan 360, or on issues in aviation including, at one point, fuel tax (“Maybe we should get back to the book,” he said, a shade desperately.)

Inspiring moments did come as youngsters asked about taking the entrepreneurial leap, or being afraid of making mistakes (“only when you make mistakes do you create something — wanting to be perfect is a disease”). The detailed dissection of Gopinath’s decision to sell Air Deccan to Vijay Mallya had its moments too, as his honest, tinged-with-regret appraisal gave the audience insight into the high-stakes world of decision-making.

In spite of its duller moments, the launch was, like the book itself, a touchingly idealistic call to action. As Gopinath put it: “An indifferent citizen is worse than the most corrupt politician.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Books, People

Tagged as , , ,

May 11, 2010 · 6:59 pm

Interview with… Ramesh Krishnan

Pic: R. Raghu

Ramesh Krishnan doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t play tennis. Literally.

“I’ve been around tennis courts with a racquet in hand for as long as I can remember,” he laughs. “There was a clay court in our garden, where my father learnt to play, and I’m sure I came out there as a toddler and hit some balls!”

It came from being part of a large tennis-loving family, he says, where there was almost always a tennis game on, and never a dearth of players.

“My grandfather T.K. Ramanathan was very keen on tennis and he made sure we all played,” Ramesh recalls. “Even back in the Sixties, the ladies in our family — my aunt and my mother — used to play, and there was always someone to play with. Our whole lives revolved around a tennis court.”

Of course, it went without saying that the toddler who played in the backyard would eventually follow in the footsteps of his father, tennis legend Ramanathan Krishnan.

“It was my grandfather’s dream, and I never really gave any other career a thought,” he says simply. “By the time I was in high school, I was representing India in the Davis Cup, so my education was geared towards that. I don’t know what I would have ventured into if not tennis!”

And follow he did, chalking up a stellar career in juniors just like his father — he was ranked No. 1 in the world and won both the junior Wimbledon and French Open titles — and then building a solid career on the main tour (he was ranked as high as No. 23 in the world), featuring in some memorable matches at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and, of course, in the Davis Cup.

“The Davis Cup matches always stand out — we reached the final in 1987 and the semi-final in 1993. And, reaching the quarter-finals at the U.S. Open [1981 and 1987] and Wimbledon [1986] is something I look back fondly on,” he says. “Both the Davis Cup and Wimbledon always meant a little extra to me.”

In a career spanning three decades (1977 to 1993), he won a reputation not only for having a beautiful game, all amazing angles and volleys, but also for being a gentleman on and off the court.

“The bulk of players from India were well behaved — I think our society demands that,” he says, deflecting the compliment in his unassuming way. “You were expected to carry yourself a certain way in public.”

When it came time to retire in 1993, Ramesh was quite content to hang up his racquet , professionally speaking. It gave him more time to focus on that other core passion of his life — family.

“My children had started school and they couldn’t travel with me as much,” he says. “Suddenly I wasn’t that excited anymore about boarding a plane and travelling leaving my family behind.”

Fittingly, his family remains tennis-crazy, with both his daughters, Gayatri and Nandita, playing tennis, first in juniors’ tournaments, and now for their respective universities in the U.S.

Travelling with his daughters to juniors’ tournaments as his parents did with him decades ago, Ramesh had come full circle — and discovered it wasn’t easy. “There were times when Gayatri was playing and I knew her opponent was not being fair to her, but I had to detach myself — it’s a whole new experience as a parent,” he says ruefully. “It’s like being on the rollercoaster all over again… but, this time, I had no control over what was happening!”

Today, sitting in the garden that once housed the clay court he played on, Ramesh exudes calm contentment. His days are spent caring for the Krishnan Tennis Centre (“a place to come play tennis and get some exercise”), the Indane Gas supply service his father started in 1963 (“he played in the amateur era and needed a livelihood”) and his daughters (“helping them achieve what they want to.”)

He still plays tennis socially almost every day of the week, but says his role in the future of Indian tennis is just that of ‘cheerleader’ — “I’m happy to root for people who’re doing well,” he smiles.

Tennis has been his life and his education, and that, for Ramesh, is enough: “It gave me a chance to grow as a person. I’ve had all these amazing experiences, and I have tennis to thank for it,” he says.

Box:

Pitted against the best: I consider Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras the most outstanding players I ever faced – Borg in the early part of my career in the 70s, and Sampras towards the end of my career in the 90s, just as he was starting out.

Toughest opponent: I always found Ivan Lendl very tough to play. His style of play just didn’t suit me – I couldn’t serve big enough to unsettle him and he was a bit too overpowering. He was a nightmare for many players to face, and I was one of them!

On gentlemanly conduct: I think it depends on your upbringing. John McEnroe was from New York and he had a little bit of New York in him. I think we in India certainly wouldn’t have looked kindly upon that kind of behaviour!

1 Comment

Filed under Articles, People

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

April 21, 2010 · 8:19 pm

Book launch: Ravi Subramanian’s ‘Devil in Pinstripes’

You don’t often see these many corporate-types at a typical book launch. Pretty much just one guy in the packed audience is wearing a t-shirt, and that one reads ‘Proud to be an IIMB alumnus’. And all around, you hear scattered gossip about how so-and-so, a common colleague, has been featured in the book…

That was the scene at Landmark during the launch of Devil in Pinstripes, Ravi Subramanian’s second novel set in the cutthroat world of banking in India, following his popular debut novel If God was a banker (2007) (his second book,I bought the Monk’s Ferrari (2007) was more of a how-to guide to corporate success, the “antithesis of Robin Sharma’s book”).

Turns out the crowd consisted mostly of ex-colleagues (from his Chennai days of working for Grindlays Bank) and ex-IIMB batchmates (Subramanian graduated in 1993). Mostly, but not entirely — a fair share was curious readers, people who’d enjoyed his earlier books, people who were intrigued by his insider’s view of the high-stakes world of international banking.

And, they all had the same question. “I have 17-18 years of my banking career left, I wouldn’t risk it by writing an autobiographical book,” he laughs. He admits he has written about things that have happened, but not of specific people: “I’ve taken extreme care that no character is recognisable; that would not be right.”

Devil in Pinstripes (launched by D. Murali, deputy editor, The Business Line, and Sundarrajan, managing director, Shriram Capital) centres around a fictional international bank in India, New York International Bank (just like in If God…), and outlines the politics, the power plays, and the Machiavellian manipulations that go on behind the scenes.

“This book was a lot harder to write — If God… had a clear-cut good guy and bad guy. It was all black and white,” says the Tiruchi-born, Ludhiana-brought up author who currently works at HSBC, Mumbai. “But in Devil…, every single character has shades of grey.”

Both books fall unapologetically into the Chetan Bhagat bracket of the New Indian masala novel — fast-paced easy reads, set in contemporary, urban India, with some frankly clunky writing and editing — that nevertheless appear to strike a chord with their readers. That connect was apparent as audience at the launch engaged the author in discussions on corporate fraud, ethics and intra-personal politics during the question-and-answer session.

“I was quite surprised by the audience reaction — by the way, I was interrogated!” he says laughing. Not surprisingly, his next book The Imperfect God will also be on banking. “Banks are one of the largest employers in the country, and have the largest number of job aspirants; they impact everyone’s lives; there’s money, sleaze and power struggle — and no one else is writing on them!”

This one, he says, will be set in the streets of Chennai, Coimbatore and Tanjavur. And, will also, no doubt, feature the basest form of corporate politics. But as Subramanian says: “Corporate politics is a way of life — learn to deal with it.”

***

Other recent book launches (fiction) in the city:

Aatish Taseer’s The Temple Goers

Shreekumar Varma’s Maria’s Room

Daisy Hasan’s The To-Let House

Not a work of fiction, but an excellent collection of poetry by an unlikely poet: G. Kameshwar’s Seahorse in the Sky

2 Comments

Filed under Articles, Books, Madras, People

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

April 21, 2010 · 7:55 pm

Interview with… M.S. Ananth

Director of IIT-M, M.S. Ananth tells DIVYA KUMAR about his love for academia, the setting up of the Research Park and his future plans for the university

PHOTO: S.R. Raghunathan


The view from M.S. Ananth’s fifth floor office window has to be one of the most beautiful in the city — a sprawling expanse of lush green treetops for as far as you can see below a clear blue sky. It’s enough to make you gasp when you first see it, but Ananth’s reaction is slightly different.

“We found out that a lot of these trees are invasive — there is 70 acres of Prosopisalone,” says the director of IIT-Madras ruefully, looking at the 630-acre campus. “Did you know that South Africa has launched a multi-million dollar project just to get rid of Prosopistrees?”

Of course, IIT-M can’t afford anything of that sort, so they’re working out alternative strategies — like selecting the spots with these rogue trees for future development. That’s just one of the many responsibilities, big and small, this unassuming man has shouldered with grace and a certain philosophical pragmatism during his tenure as director (since 2001).

“You know, I haven’t had too many major surprises in this job,” he says in his no-fuss way. “Conflicts arise, but it’s important to recognise that you’re no more ‘righteous’ than the other party in an argument. I try my best to have my way. But if I don’t, I know that in some larger perspective what happened is for the best. That acceptance is important.”

If all that sounds very philosophical and Zen, it is — Ananth is deeply influenced by the famous lines from the Bhagavad Gita: Karmanye Vaadhika-raste, Maa Phaleshu Kadachana…, perhaps a reflection of the time he spent attending discourses as a child. “It may sound facetious, but I’ve believed in it for a long, long time,” he says.

Academia is another thing this Ph.D. in chemical engineering has believed in for a long time. “I think I made up my mind in the sixth standard,” he laughs. “My maternal grandfather was a professor of English; other men I met were in the civil services, and he was the only one who never seemed to have a boss — so that was my major criterion!”

And he never saw a reason to change his mind while growing up, though if he’d had his way, he tells me, he’d be a doctorate in something else. “My interest initially was in history, of all things,” he recalls with a smile. “My father chose chemical engineering for me.”

He has no regrets — his love for history today finds expression in his interest in scientific history, particularly in the biographies of great scientists. Besides, he’s a firm believer that your discipline of study shouldn’t confine you. That is the basis of his grand ambition for the university — a radical, experimental restructuring of science and engineering departments — that unfortunately hasn’t happened yet.

“This ambition has been unfulfilled for nine years because I can’t get a consensus,” he says.

But another grand plan has finally come to fruition after nine years of pushing by Ananth and other professors — the Research Park that has recently become functional at IIT-M (30 companies have already signed up), the first of its kind in India. “The whole idea is the generation of a large number of ideas by the meeting of unlike minds — of industrialists, professors, and students,” he says. “All that’s required is one idea that clicks. That’s the basis of innovation.”

He experienced this ‘meeting of unlike minds’ as a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida, with innovation occurring due to the meeting of people from different cultures. “I had a lovely time —the American graduate school is an enviable place,” he says. “I’m fighting to try and recreate that atmosphere here — to have 25 per cent post-graduate students and 10 to 15 per cent of faculty from abroad.”

But as much as he loved college life in the U.S., Ananth knew that he wanted to return to India from very early on. “The first time I came back for a vacation, the moment I set foot here again, I knew,” he says simply. “The sense of belonging was here, not there. I’ve gone subsequently to the U.S. as a visiting professor — first to Princeton, then to Boulder, Colorado — and that feeling hasn’t changed.”

His passion for academia has obviously been passed on to both his children — his son is a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, his daughter in theoretical chemistry. His son has even followed in his footsteps and returned from the U.S. to teach at IISER in Pune. And the entire family, especially his late wife Jayashree, has always shared his love for the campus they have lived on since 1972, when he first joined as an assistant professor.

“Jayashree was very involved with the campus — she came up with pocket guides on the animals and birds here, she worked to keep the campus clean, with the Tech Kids crèche and the Atma charity wing,” he recalls fondly.

“As far as we were concerned, living on this campus was always a great boon.”

* * *

Striking a balance

* M.S. Ananth’s vision statement for IIT-Madras reads thus: “The institute should be in dynamic equilibrium with its social, ecological, and economic environment.”

* A biodiversity report of IIT-M’s campus was commissioned, invasive plants identified and poisonous plants removed. Fences were moved closer to buildings to make more space for the deer.

* A new hostel building was delayed by six months because an alternative route was created for black buck in the area.

* At urologist Dr. Ravichandran’s request, IIT-M professor S. Sankararaman created a phosphate binding agent for dialysis patients at one-tenth the original cost. (Other such projects have been undertaken since.)

* As part of IIT-M’s involvement in the ‘ Rural Technology Action Group’ (RuTAG), the Chemical Engineering Department developed a way to solidify vegetable dyes to reduce transport costs for artisans in Gandhigram.

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Madras, People

Tagged as ,

April 11, 2010 · 11:25 am

Interview with… Shreekumar Varma (Uncut version)

Photo: S.S. Kumar

Things can get a bit chess-game like in this writer’s study. Novel A gets cut by Novel B which in turn might get overtaken at any time by Play C or even Children’s Book D…

Welcome to the world of Shreekumar Varma, Writer-Multitasker extraordinaire. His website lists four items under ‘Work in Progress’ (“I actually deleted two others yesterday”) and his output in the last decade includes two published novels, two plays staged by the Madras Players, three children’s books, and contributions to a whole bunch of short story anthologies. And that doesn’t count the columns and articles he’s done for pretty much all the local newspapers or his forays into poetry.

Or, of course, the projects that have fallen behind in the chess game of completion and publication.

“It’s all very exciting,” he says, adding drolly, “But really, what I’m best at is not doing anything at all. I just seem prolific because a lot of things have come out around the same time.”

Nice try but no dice, Mr. Varma. The publishing game may not have always been kind to him (“The problem is that publishers always seem to want me to produce something else first when I approach them with an idea… and they specify exactly what they want too!”), but Shree’s mantra has been ‘Just keep writing.’ And just keep sending works off to various competitions.

“I have a compulsive urge to send entries to contests – I don’t know why,” he laughs. “I started small, with a couple of short stories, but by the time my play The Dark Lord (1986) came second at a British Council competition and Bow of Rama (1993) won the Hindu-Madras Players Playscripts contest, I was safely into contest mode.”

His recently-published second novel, Maria’s Room was longlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize and his recently-staged play Midnight Hotel was longlisted for the Metroplus Playwright Award, leading the author to ruefully refer to himself as the ‘Longlist expert’.

But Shree has a whole lot more than a proclivity to land himself in longlists going for him. The veteran journalist began his career with Indian Express in Mumbai and hung out with the likes of Amjad Khan (who spouted shayari to him), Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand (who invited him to join a political party he was starting) while writing for a film paper, Cinema Today, owned a small press and even started his own magazine at one point. He’s also taught journalism and English Literature at his alma mater Madras Christian College, and for the last 11 years, Creative English at the Chennai Mathematical Institute.

“I do enjoy teaching, and I find that science students often come up with more out-of-the-box thinking than lit students do,” he says, thoughtfully. “I love encouraging people in whom I sense talent for writing – I literally pester them to write, actually!”

Other loves include magic (“I used to do illusions all the time as a kid”) and the spooky and fantastical (“Those are recurring themes in my work, though I never had the courage to put in an actual ghost until Midnight Hotel”), music, especially classical (“I love Shree Raga, it brings tears to my eyes – and I’m not just being self-obsessed!”) and the big one, movies (“Movies have always been a major inspiration… before I die, I want to make a movie.”)

In typical Shree style, he tells me how he’s actually converted a couple of his works into scripts for filmmakers, but nothing panned out (so, naturally, he just went and wrote a couple of novels in the interim.) He jokes light-heartedly about Three Monkeys, the ‘unfortunate’ novel that always ends up being put on hold (checkmated?) while others take over (Maria’s Room, for example), his non-fiction book on Chennai requested by a publisher that he never gets around to writing (“It hangs like a terrible shadow over me,” he says mock-theatrically. “With my last breath I’ll say, ‘That Chennai book…’”) and his up-coming novel on Chennai, The Gayatri Club that Chennaiites will see a lot of familiar characters in (“The eccentric ones won’t be mentioned by name,” he says with a wink).

But he turns serious as we talk about his fascinating lineage – as the grandson of Sethu Lakshmi Bai, Maharani of Travancore State, and great grandson of the famous artist Raja Ravi Varma.

“I’m really proud to belong to that family – I believe my cousins and I have all inherited a certain artistic sensibility, and also an entire mythology of stories, some of which went into my first novel, Lament of Mohini,” he says, “But sometimes it’s difficult when that heritage is applauded more than my accomplishments.”

Well then, here’s to Shreekumar Varma, writer, Longlist expert, teacher and bonafide Chennaiite (“Chennai’s my home, Kerala’s my soul”). May your chess game of novels, plays, short stories and poetry continue uninterrupted, and may movies be added to the list very soon.

Factfile

–          Shreekumar is a vocal supporter of the Right to Read campaign, and at his request, two of his works, children’s book Devil’s Garden and novel Maria’s Room are now available in audio format.

–          In 2004, he was the recipient of the Charles Wallace fellowship and spent three months in Scotland. That is the inspiration for one of his many works in progress, the novel Indian Scotch.

    1 Comment

    Filed under Articles, Books, Madras, People

    Tagged as , , ,

    March 17, 2010 · 12:58 pm

    Interview with… William Barton

    William Barton doesn’t just play the didgeridoo; he makes it sing like the kookaburra, he makes it hop like a kangaroo, he makes it dance like a hip-hop artiste, he makes it scratch like it was a DJ’s turntable.

    The talented young didgeridoo player — considered one of Australia’s finest — was in Chennai recently for a special concert, ‘Songlines of Australia’, as part of his tour of India (including a performance at the Hockey World Cup in Delhi), organised by the Australia-India Council.

    The concert might have been in the plush environs of the Asiana Hotel, but for an all-too-brief half-an-hour, Barton transported the audience to the rugged Australian bush, conjuring a vivid soundscape of its bird songs and of the wind rustling through its trees.

    “The didgeridoo captures the raw resonance of the Australian outback through its deep tones,” he said during an interview earlier in the evening (there was plenty of time to spare since the concert started nearly two hours late). “It’s the branch of a tree that comes alive when you put your breath into it.”

    The instrument has been an integral part of ceremonies of the native tribes of Australia for centuries, accompanying the ‘song man’ as he sang the ‘dream-time story’, the Aboriginal legends of the seasons and rituals. Barton carried on this storytelling tradition of the instrument during the performance, telling tales through the didgeridoo, and of the didgeridoo.

    He told old-world stories by recreating the sounds of dingo dogs and kookaburras and of ‘papa, mama and baby joey kangaroos’ hopping (his free hand ‘animating’ the sounds with lively finger actions). And then, he segued seamlessly into very contemporary stories of hip-hop dancers (his fingers doing a little dance on the side) and an amazingly-creative piece on a ‘Hitchhiker’s Nightmare’, where the didgeridoo mimics the sound of vehicles whizzing by the hapless hitchhiker as he walks on and on and on…

    “Songlines (the song-style of a particular family group) interconnected the different tribes in the old days; in the modern context, these songlines can connect us to the Western world,” said Barton, who has collaborated with jazz, heavy metal, hip hop, rock ‘n roll artistes as well as a number of the world’s leading philharmonic orchestras, and performed at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. “I’m passionate about connecting the world through the universal language of music.”

    His own musical influences growing up in Mount Isa, Queensland, included everything from opera (his mother was a self-taught singer) to AC/DC (like any other head-banging teenage Aussie boy). But the greatest influence was his uncle, an elder of the Waanyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga tribes, who taught him to play the didgeridoo at the age of seven. He died when Barton was just 11, but his legacy lives on with the young man in his music, and in the 60-year-old didgeridoo that he keeps with him.

    “In traditional law, when an elder passes away, his didgeridoo is broken up, but they let me keep it as a special case,” Barton said. “I don’t usually travel with it because it’s getting old, but I take it to special gigs — out on the Australian bush, to Carnegie Hall, the London Philharmonic, and now to India — so the history is captured in it.”

    He told other traditional stories too — of how he learnt to make his own didgeridoo from his father, for instance: “The didgeridoo is hollowed out naturally by termites, so you go out into the bush, find the tree you need, cut it, remove the bark, then make a mouthpiece from beeswax — after tapping out the termites first, of course!”

    And his music said the rest, as he played on the electric guitar (his ‘second musical voice’) and the didgeridoo simultaneously, heavy metal riffs and soulful intros somehow merging perfectly with the deep-throated percussive notes of the didgeridoo. Fusion with Indian music is up next on his to-do list, but we’ll have to wait until next time to hear him tell those stories.

    Leave a comment

    Filed under Articles, Music, People

    Tagged as , , , , ,