Category Archives: Madras

All about the city formerly known as Madras

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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December 2, 2010 · 6:16 pm

Interview with… D.J.K. Cornelius

D.J.K. Cornelius has designed so many machines and workstations for people with special needs in the last forty years that he’s lost count.

None of them have anything to do with his regular job as an industrial engineer. And he’s never patented any of his designs. But they’ve made a life-changing difference to hundreds of mentally challenged young people across the nation. And they’ve certainly given Cornelius himself more satisfaction than any designing he’s done on the job.

“It’s far more rewarding than what I was trained for professionally,” says Cornelius, founder of the Navajyothi Trust, which completed 40 years in 2009. “Others may say creating an industrial conveyor belt is more complex engineering, but changing people’s lives this way is much more satisfying.”

His specially crafted workstations are based on a simple principle – that modifying the working environment to suit the needs of the mentally challenged allows them to maximise their potential. “Rather than focussing on what they can’t do, you look at what they can, and find innovative ways to make the most of their abilities,” he says.

This means that youngsters at his institute (with IQs measured at 50 and below) today perform highly precise and complex tasks for companies such as Delphi TVS and Brakes India Ltd., creating diesel pumps for cars, perhaps, or bicycle or motorcycle chains, and earn a respectable salary.

“They aren’t given these jobs out of charity,” he stresses. “This is a business agreement, and the companies’ requirements are rigid.  At Navajyothi, every person is a social contributor, and they can hold their heads high.”

His journey began back in 1968, when he helped diagnose two children of close friends as being mentally challenged (he was a consultant for the Industrial Therapy Centre at the Institute of Mental Health in Kilpauk at the time). An engineer with a love for medicine, he’d spent long hours reading his doctor father’s books on mental disability, and later in Presidency College, had worked with the psychology department, helping design equipment for experimental psychology.

“They came to me for assistance because they’d been running from pillar to post and hadn’t gotten a diagnosis,” he recalls with emotion. “When I broke it to them gently, they were shattered.”

Moved by the impact it had on the children and their families, he dedicated himself thereafter to the cause of mental disability.

“What I found sorely lacking was post school-age programmes, so that 16 year olds emerging from special schools were just left high and dry,” he says. “Employment facilities were more occupational than vocational – their income was a pittance and their products were just not marketable.”

And so he established the Navajyothi Trust in 1969, with a grand total of Rs. 3000 as the corpus of the trust (“A couple of friends pooled in Rs. 1000 each”) and designed his first workstation shortly after (“the more sophisticated the task it assisted them in, the more they’d earn” was his mantra).

Unfortunately, this project found no support in Chennai, and he began work instead in Bangalore under the aegis of NIMHANS, in a small rented residence with just three students, training them and introducing them to his workstations. Soon people began to hear about his work – a National Award came the trust’s way in 1981, and visiting dignitaries urged him to take his work across the country.

“They’d never seen anything like it before, and said it should reach more people,” he says.

That’s how he came to develop the Diploma in Vocational Training & Employment (DVTE ) to teach instructors to train the mentally challenged in his techniques. It became the first such course in India to be licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), and is today taught (in a modified form) at several institutes across the country, from Chandigarh to Thiruvananthapuram. In time, the little centre he started morphed into a full-fledged institute – training, creating research modules and publishing works, and of course, designing and developing his workstations. And in 2000, it finally shifted to Chennai entirely, after the trust was gifted land in Ambattur by the Tamil Nadu state government.

In these four decades, Cornelius has seen a lot change. “There’s greater awareness about disability today, and plenty of work has been done on the legal side, with a lot of rights being legislated,” says the 79-year-old, who is also one of the founding members of The Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu, was associated with the National Institute for the Mentally Handicapped, and has served on several expert committees for government ministries. “But there’s still a need to infuse more science and technology into the fight.”

He adds with a smile: “I would like to spread my work into other areas of disability as well; I only hope I have enough time.”

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October 27, 2010 · 10:10 pm

Book Launch: Jaishree Misra’s ‘Secrets and Sins’

Photo: R. Ravindran

Popular fiction in India is coming of age, and Jaishree Misra, for one, is glad.

The prolific writer was recently in the city for the launch of her sixth novel, ‘Secrets and Sins’, part of her ‘Secrets’ series with Harper Collins, and declared herself happy to be churning out zippy, easy-to-read commercial fiction.

“In the West, my books are positioned as ‘The Big Beach Reads’, you know, the kind that are sent right off to airport bookshops,” said Misra, who recently moved back to Delhi after living and working in London for years. “I’ve tried a lot of different styles, and I feel this is more my natural calling. I quite like the idea of having more readers – one of the perks of commercial fiction!”

With the current changes in the Indian popular fiction market, there couldn’t be a better time for a desi writer to be in the business.

“Earlier, the assumption was always that Indian popular fiction would have poor language, be printed on poor quality paper, and just be rather cheap and tawdry overall,” she said in conversation with Anuradha Ananth at the launch event in Landmark. “But now, publishers are waking up to the fact that they need the buoyancy of the popular fiction market, thanks in large part to Chetan Bhagat’s books selling in lakhs. We have more well-produced and well-written books overall.”

‘Secrets and Sins’, the second novel in a three-part series commissioned by Harper Collins, certainly fits the bill, with its glossy cover design and a plot that’s all romance, glamour and infidelity with a dash of Bollywood masala. It tells the story of Riva Walia, a British Indian award-winning writer, and Aman Khan, a Bollywood superstar, both with troubled marriages, who rekindle their college romance after they’re thrown together at the Cannes Film Festival (minus their respective spouses).

Her first couple of books, particularly her debut novel ‘Ancient Promises’, were rather different. “I was trying to be literary, but even then my agent in the U.K. felt that my writing could end up falling between the two categories,” said Misra.  “Under the auspices of my current editors, I was shoved firmly into the commercial fiction category.”

And she feels no desire to change that categorisation. “One can tackle all sorts of themes in a light, easily accessible way – Marian Keyes, for instance, deals with domestic abuse in ‘This Charming Man’,” she said. “That’s the job of a good commercial fiction writer.”

In fact, she’s already completed a preliminary draft of the third and final book in the ‘Secrets’ series, about a young girl returning to find her birth mother. “It’s confusing to promote one book while writing the next – I get the character names mixed up sometimes!” she said, laughing.

But up next, she’d like to take a bit of a break. “I’m working on a big project on the outskirts of Delhi for people with disabilities,” said Misra, whose own daughter has severe learning disabilities. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for the last 15 years. And then, of course, I’ll return to writing.”

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September 3, 2010 · 12:17 pm

Interview with… Andrew Logan

Photo: R. Raghu

The hotel room is all muted tones of olive green and cream, and I’m worried. It doesn’t seem like the right backdrop in which to photograph the famously colourful designer, sculptor and painter Andrew Logan.

Then he emerges, resplendent in a bright pink, orange and green pant-suit (with sunny yellow socks and bejewelled black shoes) and a glowing piece of his signature mirrored jewellery at his neck. “You don’t need to worry about colour,” he says with a twinkle.

That’s all right, then.

An interview with Logan is a fascinating journey through four decades of fabulous art and fashion, and even more fabulous friends and parties. A distinctive figure in the world of British art, Logan has spent the time since he finished qualifying as an architect at Oxford in the 1960s being ‘determinedly alternative’.

“In the U.K., there’s a system within the art world,” Logan says, adding wryly, “I’m not part of that system.”

His objective from the beginning has been very simple – to infuse a little magic and happiness into people’s lives. “My work is about celebrating life and making people smile, if even for just a little while,” he says. “You’ll find very few artists doing that; it’s such as simple message, yet so little used.”

So his quirky, one-of-a-kind jewellery pieces, for instance, are all bright colour and glittering pieces of mirror and glass, with, more often than not, a smiley face worked in. Even the vast art installation project he’s currently working on in Chennai for the new Hyatt hotel on Anna Salai is cheerfully, colourfully avant-garde, based on bees and flowers and the theme of interdependence.

And his ‘Alternative Miss World’ event – which has been around since the 1970s and is the subject of a recent documentary film – is all about imagination, transformation and a lot of crazy, wonderful fun, where people (a colourful cast of characters over the years) turn out in outrageous costumes.

“I call it a surreal art event for all-round family entertainment,” he smiles. “I carry on with it because it’s all in fun – there’s no huge money involved or sponsorship. People don’t enter to win; they just want to be part of the event. And I’ve always loved giving parties, ever since I was 10 years old!”

That’s also the reason his museum – The Andrew Logan Museum of Sculpture– was opened in Wales, in 1991, making Logan the first living UK artist to have his own museum. “My sculptures are just there, to be looked after and to be enjoyed, without all the implications of exhibiting at a gallery,” says the artist, who grew up in the Cotswolds.

While these otherworldly sculptures and installations reflect his love of the fantastic and the magical (the Cosmic Egg, displayed at the American Museum of Visionary Art, Baltimore, and his Pegasus series, for example), his larger-than-life abstract portraits of friends and family, the famous and the infamous reflect his love for people and their eccentricities (many are displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, London).

And all his works reflect his obsession with mirrors – specifically broken mirrors. “People tell me, ‘Oh, you must have so much bad luck!’. I say, if you remake the broken mirrors into the most fabulous thing ever seen, how could it be bad luck?” says Logan with a grin. “I just love how broken mirrors fracture images – it’s like looking through a hole and seeing another world!”

Over the years, he’s become a well-known figure in a number of worlds – fashion, fine arts and performing arts — though he is frequently accused of not being a ‘serious artist’. “They say, ‘You can’t possibly be an artist because you like to dress up and show off’,” he says casually.

But fans of his work aren’t complaining – they’re just glad to be part of his ‘Worldwide Happy Club’. And Logan is clearly not troubled. He just lives in his – what else – fabulous glass house, with its sunshine yellow walls, along with his better half, Mike Davis in London. He conducts workshops at the Jaipur festival every year and spends every winter in a 250-year-old palace in the middle of a coconut grove in Goa.

“February in London is dark, cold and just miserable, and I’ve had enough of those,” he says, smiling. “For the rest of my life, I’ve decided to spend it somewhere lovely and warm.”

It’s all quite as magical as his art, really.

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August 23, 2010 · 10:30 pm

Book Launch: ‘Aftertaste’ by Namita Devidayal

The Hindu

It’s about food, family, money, mithai and manipulation… Namita Devidayal’s second novel, “Aftertaste”, the deliciously wicked saga of a Baniya family, is very different from her much-acclaimed debut novel “The Music Room”, set in the stately world of Hindustani classical music.

And not everyone is happy about that.

“It’s a problem in our country with slotting — either you’re a ‘serious writer’ writing about classical music, or you’re a ‘light writer’ in the mould of Chetan Bhagat,” she said at the launch of “Aftertaste” in Landmark recently. “Now people expect me to write another book on the classical arts, but I just wanted to have fun with this book, and wanted readers to have fun as well.”

“Aftertaste” takes you into the fascinating world of the Marwari business community, where money is king. “This is a unique world one has no access to, a world where the currency of all emotion and exchange is money,” said Namita, a Mumbai-based journalist. “To me it’s as amazing as the world of Indian classical music.”

It tells the story of the dysfunctional Todarmal family, owners of a successful mithai shop in Mumbai’s Kalbadevi district, its formidable matriarch Mummyji, her emasculated sons, conniving daughters and their resentful spouses.

“Mummyji is based on a lot of grandmothers in the community, semi-destructive towards her own children without meaning to be,” she said, in conversation with Ranvir Shah. “One of the themes I wanted to explore is how Indian families can be both nurturing and destructive, and yet, they’re the place of last resort, where we turn to for support.”

Unlike “The Music Room”, which was semi-autobiographical, “Aftertaste” is all fiction, though Namita did get some help from family and others in the community. “I’ve drawn on anecdotes from many extended Baniya uncles,” she said, “And I went around tasting a lot of the mithai!”

You can almost smell the ghee and taste the sweets as you read the book; they’re virtually like characters in the novel, colourful, seductive and powerful. “The mithai is a metaphor. Food is a very big part of Indian families and for Mummyji, it’s a means of control over her family,” she said.

Naturally, the conversation at the launch turned toward what her third book is likely to be about. “I’m fascinated with the subject of marriage, but I don’t know what form the book will take,” she said.

One thing’s for sure; we can’t predict what it’ll be like from her first two novels. “I’m proud to be a multi-faceted person and I’d like to explore those different facets,” she said. “The third book will be as different as this one is from the first.”

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August 23, 2010 · 10:23 pm

Book launch: ‘The Pleasure Seekers’ by Tishani Doshi

Photo: S.S. Kumar

This might have been the toughest book launch event Tishani Doshi has had to attend.

“It’s very unnerving to be in a position where I know so many people in the audience,” she said with a laugh during the launch of her debut novel,The Pleasure Seekers at Taj Connemara. “I feel you already know so much about me — it’s almost better to have anonymity to start with and have the audience get to know you!”

It was a little unnerving for a couple of other people in the audience as well — her parents, since the book for the most part is inspired by their Gujarati-Welsh marriage and the ‘hybrid’ family that resulted.

“My parents are here and I know they’re squirming in their seats,” she said with a smile. “But it’s an amazing story — I know I’ve never met any other Welsh-Gujaratis!”

Launched earlier in the U.K. to considerable acclaim, The Pleasure Seekers tells the story of Babo, a Gujarati boy who leaves his traditional family behind in Madras to study in London only to fall completely and irrevocably in love with Sian, a Welsh girl from an equally traditional family. How Sian comes all the way to Madras to make her life with him (and his family), and how they create their own little world with their daughters Mayuri and Bean in the “house of orange and black gates” forms the rest of this warm and heartfelt novel.

“This is not a memoir — it’s a re-inventing of their story,” said Tishani, in conversation with musician Susheela Raman. “I took the bits I found interesting and layered and added to it until, over time, the real people faded away and I was left with the characters of my own making.”

The book has been nearly a decade in the making, during which time Tishani has, of course, done a number of other things, including journalism, dancing with the iconic Chandralekha and writing poetry. Naturally, some influences from these other experiences have seeped into the novel — particularly, it appears, in the central character of Ba, Babo’s grandmother, a wise and almost mystical figure in the book.

“I’ve always maintained that Chandralekha was the biggest influence in my life,” she said. “Ba isn’t a portrait of Chandralekha, but does have elements of her. Her house, especially, was my inspiration for Ba’s home in Ganga Bazaar — a place to discover stuff, to heal.”

The book is also an exploration of Tishani’s own experiences of growing up as a ‘hybrid’. “It came out of my own need to answer the question — where do I come from?” she said. “Now, being from many places is much more accepted, but growing up, I was quite perplexed by it.”

Unsurprisingly, the question and answer session that followed focussed quite a bit on the blurring of lines between fact and fiction.

“As a writer, you’re interested in telling stories, and real life has great stories,” said Tishani. “You’re a magpie, stealing all these memories, yours and other people’s, for your nest… the blurring happens quite organically.”

So what’s next for the writer, dancer and poet? More multi-tasking, it appears. “I find wearing multiple hats liberating,” she laughed. “Writing a novel can feel like you’re teetering on the edge of despair, so I’m happy to be writing poetry again, and to be doing a dance performance at the end of the year!”

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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!”

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July 14, 2010 · 7:29 pm

Stand up and be counted: The Great Indian Census of 2010

Photo: S.S. Kumar

I’ve finally done it; I am now officially part of the mammoth national undertaking that is the Indian Census of 2010. I’ve been counted. And all it took was a month of missed visits and phone calls to and from my friendly neighbourhood census officer, frayed nerves and mounting stress on both sides and a grand finale worthy of a Hollywood summer blockbuster to get it done by deadline (July 15).

Here’s the thing. Everyone from our Prime Minister down has been sitting around debating what should be covered as part of the census — let’s call it the Caste Counting conundrum — and the deep philosophical implications thereof (“If caste is not covered in the census, does it mean it will no longer exist?”). But no one is talking about how ridiculous the task is logistically; I mean, how the heck does one go about counting one billion plus people?

Well, I got a bit of a glimpse into the process and let me tell you, it ain’t pretty. This is an undertaking of the Indian government, so naturally there is absolutely no system of any sort in place. The grand plan? Get together a bunch of hapless men and women, give them each a big, black carrybag with the big, broad census sheets attached to big, broad boards  and then send them forth on foot on our crazy streets… at the same time everyday. (Just to make things more fun, they decide to get started at the height of our hideously hot and humid Chennai summer. )

Now what this means is that Mrs. A, my census lady, came to my apartment at the same time every afternoon for nearly a week and I was blissfully unaware of it. A parcel delivery guy comes once and if you’re not home, he leaves you a note, a number and an address you can contact him at. But I only come to know that my country’s trying to take my attendance when the sweet 70-something year old mami next door finally catches hold of me as I come home late one evening and anxiously passes on the message that Mrs. A’s been to my flat four times and wants me to call her on her cell. She gives me the number written in her neat, slightly shaky handwriting on a torn-off piece of paper, which, of course, I promptly lose.

About a week later, I meet Census Lady in person when she rings the doorbell just as I’m dashing out in the afternoon for a work assignment (I’d just happened to stop by to pick something up on the way). I am, as always, cutting it perilously fine. As in, I literally have every second of the next thirty minutes accounted for, and there’s no leeway for census officers who pop up out of nowhere. Unsurprisingly, our first meeting is not a success. She blocks my path and threatens to null and void my existence on the national census if I don’t give her the info she needs; I lose my cool and tell her I’ll lose my job if she doesn’t move out of my way right now. She points out she has a job to do too, and I calm down a bit and promise I will give her the details, will come to her office if need be,  and give her my cell number as a peace offering. She drops the attitude and apologises for getting snippy; it’s just that she’d already come by five or six times on foot, and not found us there: “Please don’t take it the wrong way, meddam.”  I tell her it’s just me and the husband here and we both work, so there’ll never be anyone home at this time, can’t she come in the morning? (This breathlessly as I run down the stairs – no electricity). She just looks at me stoically as we pause near my car, and says what is to become a familiar litany in the weeks that follow: “I am in office till 2 p.m., after that I’m coming for taking census.” I give up and jump into the vehicle; if I don’t hurry, I won’t have a job to be at the following afternoon.

That heralds the beginning of a strange new phone friendship between me and Mrs. A. She calls every now and again in the afternoon to say she’s at my door. Her faith is touching, really; clearly she believes if she rings a bell often enough, the door will magically open one of these afternoons. Either that or she’s not particularly impressed with my professionalism and doeesn’t think I’ll be holding on to this job for long. Each time I re-iterate with growing desperation and guilt that no, no, I’m not home, I’ll come to your office one of these days, I promise. But that day never seems to come; something seems to crop up every morning and I can’t make it. It reaches a point when I’m haunted by Mrs. A’s sad face in my dreams at night. “I’m coming to your house on foot, meddam… 10 times I’ve come.”

I do manage to make the time to go in search of her office one morning, only to end up getting lost. Forget finding Venkataratnam Nagar Ext, Ist street; no one seems to have even heard of the darn place. After driving around in circles for half an hour, I call her, only to hear her sniffly voice on the other end tell me that she’s sick and on leave that day. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat; I turn around meekly and head to work.

As per government regulation, she normally doesn’t work Saturdays, but that weekend, presumably because she’s now feeling a similar sense of desperation, she turns up at my flat. Needless to say, both the husband and I are working that particular Saturday and no one’s home. By now,  I’m starting to feel quite miserable every time ‘Census Lady’ flashes on my cellphone.

Determined to put an end to this continuing torture, I finally track down the phantom government office on the phantom street (turns out it’s nestled somewhere in the heart of Kasturba Nagar… who knew?) on the morning of July 14 (one day to deadline. It’s now or never.) In a quiet, shady cul-de-sac in the middle of the residential neighbourhood stands the nondescript building with an Ambassador out front bearing a ‘Govt of India’ license plate (some things never change, I think fondly). I’m feeling rather cheerful as I bound up the stairs; it’s almost over now. I enter expecting a scene of utter chaos… they are, after all, counting a million or so households, but all I find are four elderly men and women silently sitting behind their computer screens, and nothing much else. One of them, Kindly Old Man No. 1, tells me, to my disbelief, that Mrs. A is ‘on leave’ and my bubbly mood fizzles out completely. A sense of being in some sort of neverending nightmare comes over me; was I not meant to be part of the 2010 census? Was it all some sort of elaborate joke? Kindly Old Man No. 2 seems to sense my desperation and asks me which street I live on, clearly wanting to help. But he sadly shakes his head when I tell him. “I’m doing only fusst main road, ma.” A couple of calls later, and we uncover the final cruel twist to the story; today was the one day Mrs. A decided to break the rules and go to take census before coming to office.

Close to tears now, I call Mrs. A, and tell her in a wavering voice that I’m in her office while she, apparently, is one street away from my home. Desparate times call for desparate measures, and Mrs. A takes the situation firmly in hand. “Come to the corner of the main road by the hospital. I will wait there… maroon sari,” she tells me somewhat cryptically. Grasping at straws now, I follow the instructions obediently and make my way there in record time. I park and look around furtively, feeling for all the world like I’m trapped in some B-grade Tamil spy movie… but no maroon sari. And then, suddenly, the trees across the street seem to part and the sari appears in my field of vision, as autos and cyclists whiz by. I feel like dramatic music ought to be swelling in the background. I lean forward to open the car door and signal to her, but Mrs. A seems to recall my car and comes straight towards me with a smile. I’ve never been this happy to see  a maroon nylon sari, sensibly oiled plait and big, black census bag before in my life; we’re virtually like long-lost friends being reunited after decades apart. “Sorry meddam, I’ve really taken up your time and troubled you,” she says as she gets into the car. “No, no, I’m sorry,” I say, beaming like an idiot.

The actual census-taking process is over ridiculously fast — we cover the number of rooms in my house, whether we have a radio or internet connection, our birthdays  etc. at record speed. She apologises again, saying she’d have just gotten the details over the phone except that I have to sign the form. You don’t have to apologise, I tell her.

She says with a sigh as she puts the forms away, “If everyone who missed the census visit took the trouble to come and give me the information like you, my job would be a lot easier.”

And just like that it’s all worth it. As I watch, she hefts the bag on her shoulder and walks over to some hawkers nearby, obviously asking for directions, the noon-day sun beating down on her maroon sari and her sensible plait. The sheer enormity of the task she and all those men and women in the office I’d visited had dawns on me. It’s a thankless job, and I’m just glad that I did my bit to help out.

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July 4, 2010 · 6:42 pm

Highway to Heaven: The Gang of Biker Vadhyars

It’s a sleepy Sunday afternoon in Chennai and we’re in our car, making our way back home after lunch through the sparse traffic. I’m twiddling with the radio dial, he’s making desultory conversation, and both of us are already halfway into our Sunday afternoon nap mode when we suddenly hear a throaty vroom vroom from somewhere behind us. Not good. It’s a sound familiar to any Chennai-ite and usually signals the arrival of one of those greasy-haired, too-tight-jeans-wearing bikers who gets his kicks by flouting road rules to such an extent that auto drivers seem positively staid by comparison. And if there’s one, there’ll be more; they invariably travel in packs.

“Uh-oh,” I begin, “it’s one of those crazy biker gan–”

Before the words have left my mouth, he’s streaked past us in a blur, a flash of pristine white. It takes my somnolent brain a minute to process that there’s something rather different about this biker. It isn’t his attitude; no, he’s loudly signalling his fellow bikers across the three lanes, zipping in and out between vehicles, and being quite as obnoxious as the worst of them. But this one’s hair is pulled back in a tightly-coiled kudmi, not a tendril out of place (I spend a moment admiring the sheer staying power of that knot). And no jeans, tight or otherwise or t-shirt with lewd slogan in sight. No, this guy flies by with his panchakacham flapping briskly in the wind, his poonal streaming devil-may-care somewhere past his left ear and his angavastram bellowing behind him like some sort of weird Tam-Bram version of Batman’s cape.

“Do you see what I see?” I ask the husband falteringly.

Before he can answer, the scene takes on an even more surreal feel. Vadhyar Biker No. 1 has now been joined by two others in equally complete priestly garb (though their kudmi-tying skills aren’t quite on par — definitely some frizz happening with one) and they all three zoom into our field of vision, gesturing, hooting, and generally behaving as if Lalitha Sahasranamam is the last thing on their minds . Dear God, I think. It’s a whole gang of them.

“If you mean the Hell’s Angels of Mylapore, then yes,” he says, sounding as shaken as I feel.

By this point, the Gang of Biker Vadhyars, led by he of the perfect kudmi, have congregated at one point for a U-turn, and when we last see them, are high-fiving each other and laughing fit to fall off their bikes. No religious ceremony will never be the same to me again, I think dazedly, as we continue our journey in stunned silence. The next time I see three vadhyars sitting together at some solemn occasion like a shraddham, I’m not going to be able to get the image of them doing wheelies out of my head. 

Okay, so our society is changing fast. In the US, I once saw a vadhyar arrive at my aunt’s house in jeans and a t-shirt, change into veshti etc. to conduct the poojai in her fireplace and then zoom off again in his Toyota Camry. We got to change with the times, I get it. Take the vadhyar at my friend’s recent engagement, who stayed plugged in to his MP3 player (ear phones dangling stylishly off one ear) the whole time. That I can understand — he’s only human, he needs to listen to music during work, yada yada. We all do it.

But this? Even typing ‘Hell’s Angels’ in the same sentence as ‘vadhyar’ feels faintly blasphemous. And yet, those three were the veritable embodiment of biker ‘tude.  Then a small voice in my head says, why not? Just because a guy’s day job involves piety and prayer doesn’t mean he can’t be a bad-ass biker by night (or in this case, by afternoon). We all need a way to unwind. Yoga or meditation seem a little more apt, perhaps, but hey, who am I to judge? Maybe guys with a direct line to God are the only ones who should to be zipping around at those speeds on our roads anyway.

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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?

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