December 12, 2010 · 11:51 pm

Men & Cars: The Beemer Safari

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me : “What??”

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

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

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

“But…” I started.

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

“Oh man, a car!”

“A test drive car!”

“They must be doing a test drive!”

“With that car!”

“Oh man!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I give up,” huffed G2.

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

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

No?

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

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

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

2 Comments

Filed under Humour, Madras, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 8, 2010 · 9:20 am

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

 

Photo: R. Ravindran

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Books, Madras, People

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 6, 2010 · 1:32 pm

Interview with… Ashok Amritraj

Photo: R. Ragu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Madras, Movies, People

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 6, 2010 · 1:20 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Books, Madras, People

Tagged as , , ,

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.

1 Comment

Filed under Articles, Education, Madras, People

Tagged as , , , ,

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.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Education, Madras, People

Tagged as , , ,

November 13, 2010 · 5:03 pm

Book launch: Samit Basu’s ‘Turbulence’

It isn’t often that a book launch begins with a dramatic audio-visual presentation. Especially one that looks like a promo for a summer Hollywood blockbuster film. But then, not every novel has 17 superheroes fighting to save the world…

In spite of a delayed start, the launch of ‘Turbulence’, fantasy fiction writer Samit Basu’s ‘breakaway’ mainstream novel (his quirky version of one, anyway) at Landmark ended up being quite as lively as the book itself.

The event had Basu in conversation with author, poet and dancer Tishani Doshi, and it was refreshingly laidback, with both writers joking around (you know any conversation that begins with mildly off-colour references to the anthology of Indian erotica they both wrote for isn’t going to take itself too seriously).

That isn’t to say the packed audience didn’t get a feel for the book; both readings from the book brought to life Basu’s comic turn of phrase, and had the listeners chuckling more than once. And the chat that followed was full of information about random old superheroes (“Arm Tear Off Boy”, anybody?) that would make any geek giddy with happiness.

“After seven years of writing fantasy fiction, I decided to do the sort of novel Indian writers are supposed to, dealing with the realities of contemporary India and the questions 20 and 30-year-olds ask themselves,” says Basu, who became one of India’s youngest published authors when he came out with the first part of his GameWorld trilogy at the age of 23.

Somehow, though, his ‘big crossover book’ turned into a superhero novel, even as it covered a host of urban Indian issues – the media, politics, and terrorism, Bollywood, cricket and other ‘popular Wiki subjects’. “I realised our world is far more bizarre than any fantasy universe,” says the author, who’s also done comics, screenplays and a graphic novel. “I kept turning up the volume on the characters so they won’t be lost in the middle of it all, and in spite of myself, ended up with a superhero novel.”

‘Turbulence’ tells the story of a group of people who step off BA flight 142 from London to Delhi and find they’ve all gotten superpowers – and this is the cool part – linked to their innermost desires. A wannabe Bollywood star can now make anyone love her; an overworked mom can split herself into multiple copies; an Air Force officer can fly, and then there’s the guy who can control the weather with his stomach…

“I’m sure every superpower in this book has been done before by some insane comic book writer in 1940s America,” he says. “But I’ve done away with costumes (the good ones are all taken anyway), sidekicks and origin stories (gamma rays, radioactive spiders, etc.); I wanted this to be about a group of people dealing with real life situations.”

Except for the fact that they have superpowers, that is. Not surprisingly, the rest of Basu’s free-wheeling chat with Doshi and the audience was superhero-themed, from the sad state of Indian superheroes (“Shaktimaan? I mean, come on…”) to what superpowers he’d like, personally (“Not invisibility – I don’t think I’d use it for good.”).

And, of course, everyone wanted to know – what about a sequel? “I actually have it all planned out in my head, but I’m tired of writing series. Maybe I’ll do something completely different instead,” he says. Sounds like a plan.

DIVYA KUMAR

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Books, Humour

Tagged as , ,

November 13, 2010 · 4:49 pm

Movie Review: Legend of the Guardians – The Owls of Ga’Hoole

‘Legend of the Guardians’ is animated by the same studio that did the delightful ‘Happy Feet’, and boy, have they done it again.

Visually, this film is just a wonderful treat. Owls are naturally appealing creatures, what with those big ol’ wise eyes and the soft feathers (think Hedwig in Harry Potter), and this movie capitalises on that charm. ‘Legend…’ is filled with lovely close-ups of the huge, golden eyes of the owlets (the little babies are especially adorable) and of softly rustling white and gold or rust-coloured feathers. This movie also makes optimal use of 3D technology, beautifully capturing the smooth, swooping flight of the birds, and literally taking us along for the ride as they fly through deep canyons and blinding storms.

Now for the bad news – the storyline. Well, it’s not bad, exactly; it’s just that we’ve seen this one so many times, and done far better as well (think Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia, etc.). There’s the evil army, lead by the scarred villain (the Pure Ones and Metalbeak respectively), and its rather convoluted plan to rule owl-kind that never quite makes sense (it involves regurgitated owl pellets. Honest). There’s the avenging Guardians of Ga’Hoole, lead by the white-as-snow good guys (quite literally – the leaders are snowy owls). There’s the pure-hearted young ‘un (Soren the barn owl) who leads the way to victory along with his motley crew of friends. And of course, there’s the final battle of good vs. evil (no prizes for guessing who wins).

At one point, you feel like rolling your eyes at the inevitably of it all. But then the movie, based on the ‘Guardian of Ga’Hoole’ books by Kathryn Lasky, manages to suck you in anyway. The credit goes in large part to its darkly brooding atmosphere, especially in the first half, and its gorgeous sceneries, whether it’s the menacing, fog-ridden forest Soren and his brother are kidnapped in by the Pure Ones, or the magical, lantern-lit Great Tree of the Island of Ga’Hoole.

The colourful side characters do their bit in providing comic relief, such as Digger, the goofy burrowing owl (who supplies the requisite ‘hoo’ jokes), Twilight, the lute-playing, poetry-spouting great grey owl, and Ezylryb, the wise but eccentric fighter screech owl.
This may not be particularly original or ground-breaking storytelling, but it’s certainly an appealing bit of entertainment. Go see it for the owlets.

Genre: Fantasy / Adventure
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Hugo Weaving, Helen Mirren, Sam Neill, Jim Sturgess.
Storyline: Soren, a young Barn owl is kidnapped by an evil owl army and escapes to try and find the legendary Guardians of Ga’Hoole to save owl-kind.
Bottomline: So visually delightful that the been-there seen-that storyline doesn’t matter.

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Movies

Tagged as , , , , ,

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.”

3 Comments

Filed under Articles, Books, Madras

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 21, 2010 · 5:59 pm

How to… be a drama queen

1. Drama queens (or kings; this is certainly not restricted to the fairer sex) must live life as if all the world really were a stage, and the spotlight were perennially shining upon them. Any event at any time of the day can be cause for Drama – no happening is too trivial or small. What the rest of the world shrugs off as minor irritants, the drama queen must turn into grand Shakespearean tragedy. The milk boiled over! Oh the horror, the horror! You missed the bus! The agonising pain of it all!
2. What drama queens needs most of all is, naturally, an audience. In any emotionally charged situation, they must find a way to be the centre of attention, whether it’s warranted or not. In other words, become the bystander who bursts into hysterical sobs or faints away dramatically at the scene of an accident or crime and has to be comforted/sedated/revived, etc. (while the actual victim sits huddled sadly on the sidelines). Or the guy throwing a massive temper tantrum for having been kept waiting for 15 minutes at a government office, while about 100 others around him have been waiting in quiet resignation for the last several hours.
3. Perhaps the greatest pleasure in a drama queen’s life is the re-telling (and re-living) of these moments of great personal strife and tragedy. An audience, therefore, is once again a prerequisite, and the more incredulous, the better. Because with each telling, the tale must get more and more improbably dramatic, and the drama queen’s own role must get more and more tragic/heroic, until it loses touch with reality altogether. Being a stickler for the truth is a strict no-no.
4. That’s why drama queens must always have their own posse (P. Diddy has nothing on them) – after all, they need to have a mobile audience unit with them at all times to provide round-eyed responses to their stories and/or splash cold water on their faces when the histrionics go overboard. And what’s in it for the posse, you ask? Well, they revel in all that constant drama – It’s like being part of a real life soap opera, and the gossip never runs dry.
5. When drama queens/kings run short on ‘real’ audience members (even the posse tires at times), they can turn to the virtual. The possibilities are endless online – dramatic Facebook status updates! Cryptic tweets about (vaguely hinted at) tragic events! And to the big one, darkly emotional diary entries on the blog! And soon the Internet audience is clamouring for more. What could be more satisfying?

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Humour

Tagged as ,