Weeping Murder

15/12/2012

IT IS impossible to talk about Talaash without talking about its ending, a curveball that follows in the footsteps of Sujay Ghosh’s Kahaani in providing truly gamechanging plot twists for a strong female character. Or so it proved on social media over the weekend, as status updates, not always complimentary, by shocked moviegoers infested timelines. They were inevitably followed by irate return tweets or comments, cursing the shocked moviegoers for spoiling the end for them. Joy Bhattacharjya, quizmaster and fount of trivia, recounted on Facebook the story that you always tipped the cabbie well while going to watch Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in London’s West End, for fear that he would yell out the murderer’s name while driving away.
Reema Kagti’s climax, while not much less shocking than Christie’s, does not have the same impact. I burst out laughing, I’m afraid, though in hindsight it wasn’t that bad. And it is the ending that shapes one’s impression of this otherwise decent film, driven as it is by plot. Of course, this isn’t a simple whodunnit. What begins as a routine police procedural transforms into a ponderous look at loss, or at least what passes for a ponderous look in mainstream Bollywood. For a director who is part of a movement pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, Kagti plays it surprisingly safe, relying on exposition, flashbacks and over-the-top outbursts to tell her story, with too few of those poetic moments that make a great film.
Aamir Khan plays Inspector Surjan Singh Shekhawat, a tightly wound policeman who’s been handed a difficult high-profile case of the mysterious death of actor Armaan Kapoor (Vivan Bhatena), who has managed to “off” himself without the customary drug overdose. As Shekhawat plods on, trying to find the murderer, we discover he is fighting inner demons, blaming himself for negligence leading to the death of his child. These two arcs work in parallel, as Shekhawat seeks to unravel the mystery as he slowly unravels himself. It works to an extent in a grungy, neo-noir way, but the writing lets it down. Neither arc is compelling enough to stand on its own, and there is little interplay between the two until the climax. While that does make the end more dramatic, it means that until the end does finally come, the audience is trying to decipher what the film is fundamentally about.

Talaash has enough tension to start with, but spends too much time struggling to describe Shekhawat’s demons

The pacing plays an important role in this. I do not subscribe to the general reaction that the second half dragged, as there is nothing I like more than a slow-burn drama paid off with a thrilling conclusion (I just wish the thrilling conclusion was something, well, better). But even The Killing, the glacially slow Danish TV series — remade in the US — that deals with the process of grief against the backdrop of a murder, understood the need for a strong plot with enough twists (the problem with the American remake was the plethora of such twists) to keep the audience engaged.Talaash has the requisite amount of tension to start with, but spends too much time struggling to describe Shekhawat’s demons. It doesn’t help that neither Aamir nor Rani step out of their comfort zone, and that Kareena plays a streetwalker with such little believability that you expect her to break into Zoobie Doobie at any time.
Oh, but Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Is there anything the man cannot do?
Ajachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
ajachi@tehelka.com

Dumb Gets Dumber

Ajachi Chakrabarti

13/12/2012

**Khiladi 786**
**DIRECTOR:** Ashish R Mohan
**STARRING:** Akshay Kumar, Asin Thottumkal, Mithun Chakraborty, Himesh Reshammiya, Raj Babbar

BOLLYWOOD REVIEWERS have for long given genuinely terrible films a fig leaf by calling them mindless entertainment. Leave your brain at home, they say, and you will enjoy this film; a statement as ridiculous as a restaurant reviewer asking you to leave your stomach at home to enjoy the food. Bollywood has accepted the compromise and begun to create films that cater to that easy out. Of course, these films do on occasion become successful, especially if there is enough star power to draw audiences. Which is fine, as people are free to do what they wish with their money, but for someone who gets paid to judge films on their merits to not call these films terrible is providing a disservice to their readers.
By all yardsticks, Khiladi 786 is a terrible film. As a commercial film, as a slapstick comedy, as a soundtrack (Hookah Bar? Really? No, really?), it is genuinely bad. That’s not a surprise when you consider that an actor in a central role, the singer of most songs, the music composer, the genius who came up with the story, and a co-producer are all Himesh Reshammiya, Bollywood’s resident backpfeifengesicht. That delightful German word, translated as a face you have an innate urge to punch, is an apt description for his voice (no, voices can’t be punched, but admit it, you want to), which means one ends up contemplating violence against him and Kumar, who his terrible songs are picturised upon.

As a commercial film, as a slapstick comedy, as a soundtrack (Hookah Bar? Really?), Khiladi 786 is genuinely bad

The film is the eighth instalment of the Khiladi series — Bollywood’s largest franchise, with the films having nothing in common apart from the fact that they have the word ‘Khiladi’ in their title and star Akshay Kumar as a badass. Reinforcing the idea that there is somebody for each of us in this world (and implying that it is preferable that that somebody is an Indian), Khiladi 786conspires to tie into holy matrimony 72, yes, 72 Singh (Kumar), a badass, if not entirely legally kosher, catcher of smugglers on the Punjab border, and Indu Tendulkar (Asin), the badass sister of Mumbai mafia boss Tatya Tukaram Tendulkar (Chakraborty). It is by no means a star-crossed love affair; the two are brought together by the incompetent wedding broker Mansukh (Reshammiya), who convinces the two families to lie to each other and pretend to be respectable policemen, secure in the knowledge that once the wedding is over, the film will end and his character would’ve disappeared into the oblivion of its creator’s mind — in this case, his own. Of course, he is not as postmodern as all that, and his general strategy is to simply wing it and hope for the best. Thankfully for him, 72 and Indu end up falling in love and live happily ever after.
But, despite its terrible premise, plot, acting, directing and music, it is very hard to actively hate this film. God knows it tries hard enough, with its racism, misogyny and, worse, factual inaccuracy. But perhaps it is the delightful idea of giving characters numbers as names (the Singh clan is made up of 70, 71, 72 and 74; 73 having been lost in a fair). Perhaps, it is the wink-and-nudge embracing of the ridiculousness of the film by itself, or the throwaway meta moments and some genuine zaniness, byproducts of throwing the kitchen sink to make the audience laugh. Perhaps, it was just Chakraborty’s ridiculous Bong-accented Marathi bhau. Yes, it was quite terrible. Yes, it was mindless. But was I entertained? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Ajachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
ajachi@tehelka.com

Dumb gets dumber

Ajachi Chakrabarti

08/12/2012

Film: Khiladi 786
Director: Ashish R Mohan
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Asin Thottumkal, Mithun Chakraborty, Himesh Reshammiya, Raj Babbar
Bollywood reviewers have for long given genuinely terrible films a fig leaf by calling them mindless entertainment. Leave your brain at home, they say, and you will enjoy this film; a statement as ridiculous as a restaurant reviewer asking you to leave your stomach at home to enjoy the food. Bollywood has accepted the compromise and begun to create films that cater to that easy out. Of course, these films do on occasion become successful, especially if there is enough star power to draw audiences. Which is fine, as people are free to do what they wish with their money, but for someone who gets paid to judge films on their merits to not call these films terrible is providing a disservice to their readers.
By all yardsticks, Khiladi 786 is a terrible film. As a commercial film, as a slapstick comedy, as a soundtrack (Hookah Bar? Really? No, really?), it is genuinely bad. That’s not a surprise when you consider that an actor in a central role, the singer of most songs, the music composer, the genius who came up with the story, and a co-producer are all Himesh Reshammiya, Bollywood’s resident back pfei fengesicht. That delightful German word, translated as a face you have an innate urge to punch, is an apt description for his voice (no, voices can’t be punched, but admit it, you want to), which means one ends up contemplating violence against him and Kumar, who his terrible songs are picturised upon.
Reinforcing the idea that there is somebody for each of us in this world (and implying that it is preferable that that somebody is an Indian), the eighth installment of the Khiladi series — Bollywood’s largest franchise, with the films having nothing in common apart from the fact that they have the word ‘Khiladi’ in their title and star Akshay Kumar as a badass — conspires to tie into holy matrimony. 72, yes, 72 Singh (Kumar), a badass, if not entirely legally kosher, catcher of smugglers on the Punjab border, and Indu Tendulkar (Asin), the badass sister of Mumbai mafia boss Tatya Tukaram Tendulkar (Chakraborty). It is by no means a star-crossed love aff air; the two are brought together by the incompetent wedding broker Mansukh (Reshammiya), who convinces the two families to lie to each other and pretend to be respectable policemen, secure in the knowledge that once the wedding is over, the film will end and his character would’ve disappeared into the oblivion of its creator’s mind — in this case, his own. Of course, he is not as postmodern as all that, and his general strategy is to simply wing it and hope for the best. Thankfully for him, 72 and Indu end up falling in love and live happily ever after.
But, despite its terrible premise, plot, acting, directing and music, it is very hard to actively hate this film. God knows it tries hard enough, with its racism, misogyny and, worse, factual inaccuracy. But perhaps it is the delightful idea of giving characters numbers as names (the Singh clan is made up of 70, 71, 72 and 74; 73 having been lost in a fair). Perhaps it is the wink-and-nudge embracing of the ridiculousness of the film by itself, or the throwaway meta moments and some genuine zaniness, by-products of th r owing the kitchen sink to make the audience laugh. Perhaps it was just Chakraborty’s ridiculous Bong-accented Marathi bhau. Yes, it was terrible. Yes, it was mindless. But was I entertained? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Delhi Underbelly

Ajachi Chakrabarti

30/11/2012

**Chronicling the city** Mayank Austen Soofi **Photo:** Vijay Pandey

THE YELLOW Line of the Delhi Metro is a fascinating journey connecting multiple Delhis separated by space and time. Moving north from the high rises of Gurgaon through the glitz of South Delhi, then passing under the corridors of power of Lutyen’s capitol into the labyrinthine streets of the old city, it is a journey that takes you back centuries.
Mayank Austen Soofi’s latest book came out of many trips along this route: from Green Park, close to his home in the posh Hauz Khas Village, to New Delhi station, the point of disembarking for GB Road, Delhi’s red light district. The author of four ‘alternative guidebooks to Delhi’ writes about the lives and loves of the city’s prostitutes in Nobody Can Love You More. Like many other old Delhi institutions, however, the district is a decaying relic of Mughal and British times, where sophisticated courtesans have been replaced by Nepali call girls struggling to eke out a living. As Delhi goes elsewhere for its nocturnal fix, the area has become a fiefdom for police to harass its inhabitants at will.
It is a fascinating subject: artists, writers and photographers have been documenting daily life in GB Road, Kamathipura and Sonagachi for decades. These places make for touching stories of desperation, pain, love and community; of children growing up and old whores being forced into retirement. Soofi’s book has all of these, with the many stories of ‘teen sau number’, a kotha on the street, and its inhabitants.
Soofi, who entered the house as an English teacher for the children, is drawn to the human stories of Sushma, an ageing prostitute facing impending retirement with serenity; of Sabir Bhai, the philosopher maalik who trusts no one, least of all the girls who live and work in his house; of Rajkumari, the bed-ridden religious madam next door whose marriage to a Nigerian led to her being ostracised from an otherwise classless social structure; of the painfully self-aware children of the brothel who’d like a better future for themselves. A common thread tying all the stories is a disconnect with ‘society’, a world they left behind in order to survive and know they cannot rejoin. “GB Road is a quicksand,” says Sabir, and the people Soofi talks to are often surprised he would leave south Delhi to come talk to them.

book_cover — **Nobody Can Love You More**
*Mayank Austen Soofi*
Penguin
**240 pp; Rs 399**

ACCESS IS the primary obstacle for a book of this type, and Soofi is forthright about his struggles in getting his subjects to talk to him. Outside ‘teen sau number’, he is rebuffed by prostitutes, pimps, musicians and maaliks, and Sabir Bhai’s brothel often becomes a refuge from the world outside. His failure to get more human stories diminishes the book somewhat, and eventually makes the narrative tedious.
The major problem with the book is the continuous presence of the narrator at the centre of the story. There is no denying that Soofi knows the city, that he understands the dynamics, desires and distresses of the inhabitants of GB Road, but there is always the sense that perhaps this book is not about them. Like Suketu Mehta, Soofi nominates himself as the ambassador of the chattering classes to the underbelly of the city they live in but barely understand. That is well and good, but again, as with Mehta, the intersections between the two worlds in the book serve only to highlight his progressive credentials; how, while the rest of rich Delhi is wrapped up in its own world, he is going out among the great unwashed. Such a characterisation may be a bit unfair to someone who has spent years exploring all aspects of the city, but by ditching the reporter’s distance, he denies these powerful stories the chance to stand on their own.
Ajachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
ajachi@tehelka.com

Coming to a screen near you

Aradhna Wal

30/11/2012

As the Video Wednesday II festival celebrates 20 years of video art, Aradhna Wal traces the medium from its early days to its tech-savvy present

**Moving with time** Stills from Archana Hande’s *Panorama*
Photo Courtesy: Gallery Espace

IN THE 1990s, Nalini Malani, Vivan Sundaram and Ranbir Kaleka began experimenting beyond the traditional parameters of art. They incorporated moving images and television sets into a form, now known as mixed media, which has grown so diverse that whittling it down to Video Wednesday II, a new video art project, puts the motion picture back in focus.

Moving with time Neha Choksi’s Minds To Lose

A series of animated shorts play on loop, projected onto the main wall at New Delhi’s Gallery Espace. Divided over three storeys, the false walls and black box rooms turn the gallery into a maze. Turn one corner to a beautifully eerie animated feature on Nagaland; walk into a room for a series of archival photographs intercut with the moon’s surface; tucked under the stairs are videos exploring humanity. “Video allows a flattening. Unlike a biennale or a museum, we’ve got established names and newcomers playing on the same surface. There is no separation in terms of size and how spectacular a work is,” says Gayatri Sinha, the curator, who used only themes to group by. Sundaram’s Wigwam Tune shares space with upcoming artist Shaheen Ahmed’s Refuse/ Resist. The genial older artist builds a wall of thick books representing constructs we live with — love, life, the city — till he collapses. Ahmed stands in counterpose, sullen and defiant, shaving her head as images of conventional beauty play in the backdrop.

asd — **Moving with time** (From top) Vishal C Dar’s *Fire,* Sarnath Banerjee’s *Sophistication is Fragile* and Atul Bhalla’s *Alaap to the River*

The surreal journey through the festival suggests shifts from the 1990s to now, from the performative to the animated. An early example, Nalini Malani’s seminal response to the 2002 Gujarat riots — Unity in Diversity— used Nehru’s phrase for a work that morphs a Raja Ravi Varma painting, showing how women are primary victims of genocide. “That’s performance. A plot or a reference to earlier works is subverted to show something new,” explains Sinha. Shuddhabrata Sengupta, of the Raqs Media Collective, agrees. “With any new medium, there is a process of discovery. Artists turn the camera onto themselves and become the subject,” he says. The ‘self as subject’ is still alive but evolving. Sonia Khurana explores the neurosis of the body image and the beauty myth, changing clothes frantically in Closet. Khurana could represent that middle generation of practitioners who straddle early performance and newer techniques, such as reportage and commentary.
Sundaram cites Raqs and Amar Kanwar, documentary filmmakers who segued into art, as heralders of a new documentary-based narrative. Raqs’ The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet explores cosmonauts and old letters and photographs from the 1857 Revolt. Visually, it is not very arresting. But, as the images slide and the voiceover deconstructs the work it accompanies, it becomes strangely hypnotic. “The documentary mode produces a sense of curiosity. It invites the viewer to get inside our heads, to see what we see,” says Sengupta. Animation creates a confluence of craftsmanship and technical skills. Steeped in memory, identity and mythology, Aditi Chitre’s Journey to Nagaland, a feature requiring hundreds of drawings, harkens back to spooky classic cartoons.
Artist Vishal C Dar believes if his video goes viral, giving millions ownership over their copy, that is a marker of success. BM Kamath argues the original DVD is protected by a Certificate of Authenticity, bringing the work back into the sphere of traditional ownership. “Art is seen as object-based in India, something that can be owned, traded, displayed,” says Sinha, explaining why buyers are not receptive to video art. As Sengupta says politely, “The most enlightened collectors also buy video art.” Is that the medium’s greatest strength? As it redefines art in form and content, it may find its highest expression in being unfettered by the market.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com

‘In a riot, two sides clash. This was a massacre’

Aradhna Wal

27/11/2012

FORGOTTEN CITIZENS 1984, SEEKING JUSTICE, a travelling photography exhibition initiated by senior advocate HS Phoolka, commemorated 28 years of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Arpana Caur, 58, artist and one of the organisers, tells Aradhna Wal about the need for public intervention in cases of marginalisation of minorities and how art must record history to prevent atrocities from happening again.
EDITED EXCERPTS

The project is called Forgotten Citizens Seeking Justice. What is being recalled?
I knew of this senior advocate, HS Phoolka, who had been fighting nearly 100 cases related to the 1984 Sikh riots for 28 years. Two years ago, I met him at an environment conference. This exhibition came about when he realised, with only four cases left, that he had only been dealing with words and that there was no visual impact. People gave up out of exhaustion and lack of initiative. Eyewitnesses died. So Phoolkaji called some of us and said that we need to draw public attention to this. He, together with the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, Lok Raj Sangathan and a handful of young volunteers, put together the exhibition.
How can art agitate for justice?
The photographers who captured the riots are eyewitnesses. Ram Rahman was there in Trilokpuri and Sondeep Shankar worked for The Telegraph then. Phoolkaji had 30 images with him already. Ram visited Trilokpuri, especially Block 32 where 400 men — the poorest of the poor carpenters, rickshawallas — had been killed. He had an image of a mother holding the finger of her son. The rioters had cut off the finger to remove the ring after burning the body. Phoolkaji felt that a travelling exhibition was needed to remind people that this happened, so that it doesn’t happen again. It seemed appropriate to start with Jallianwala Bagh.

‘The exhibition has caused people in different cities to break down. This isn’t driven by anger; it’s a plea for justice’

**The dead wait** Bodies of slain Sikhs lie unclaimed at the New Delhi Railway Station
Photo: Ashok Vahie

What has dominated your memories of the 1984 riots?
I have vivid memories of living with my mother in a rented house in Niti Bagh. Our landlord was a Supreme Court lawyer and a member of the Rajya Sabha. During the riots, he approached the court and said that a prominent sardarni (my mother) was his tenant; hence his house was in danger. The court ordered us to vacate in six months. We were without a home, and had to stay in a friend’s drawing room for six months.
We were two women helpless in front of a powerful man. That’s when you realise how much of a minority you are. From a friend’s balcony I could see the smoke rising from the burnt shops in South Extension in Delhi. I knew a man, all of 5 feet, nothing with a squeaky voice, who used to give me rides to the studio on his motorbike. He and his children were killed. By the time we got to his place to save his wife, she had lost her mind. I worked in the relief camps later, and can’t even describe the suffering I saw there. You can’t call these riots. In a riot, two sides clash. This was a plain and simple massacre.

**Mob fury** A bus driver is dragged out and beaten by a mob
Photo: Ashok Vahie

The campaign includes a petition to the government for proper investigation and legal action. Has there been a response to that?
Art here is used as a tool for recording memories. Teesta Setalvad’s activism for the Gujarat riots, using art and photography, has been an eye-opener. The judgement set a precedent and bolstered Phoolkaji’s initiative. If there is protest, if there is media support, then maybe something can happen. The exhibition has caused people in different cities to break down. This isn’t driven by anger; it’s a plea for justice. As for the legal response, only time will tell.

‘Rahman had an image of a mother holding the finger of her son. The rioters had cut it off to remove the ring after burning the body’

What has been your own response as a Sikh?
I, like all Sikhs in 1984, felt marginalised. Your sense of belonging gets destroyed. The men who killed Mrs Gandhi deserved punishment, but not the innocent poor on the streets. Why wasn’t the Army called in on time? Sikhs have always been a large part of the Indian Army and sacrificed so much for it because they saw themselves as Indians first. Such marginalisation creates a feeling of insecurity. All these tarkhans, who earned Rs 100-200 a day, lost their lives. They were the easy victims. The rich people in South Delhi were only looted. But the poor lost their lives. And that is sick.

**Mute witness** A Sikh resident of Delhi is burnt to death
Photo: Sandeep Shankar

**A slice of pain** A mother holds her dead son’s finger
Photo: Ram Rahman

In Rwanda, they say forgetting a past atrocity is the best way to move on. As a culture we memorialise and archive our collective tragedies. What is the wisdom of either course?
I saw an exhibition on the Rwanda genocide in Germany. A white artist had done a lot of work on it. The site he chose was a gas chamber where Jews were killed. It is important to remember. People are helpless in front of mobs. But if there is media awareness, if there is justice, perhaps it won’t happen again. Otherwise, our country is a tinderbox waiting to be lit up.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com

Making Sound Waves

Ajachi Chakrabarti

27/11/2012

Neptune Chapotin plies a mouth harp like his mythical namesake wielded a trident and he’s determined that the unassuming instrument doesn’t get drowned out, says Ajachi Chakrabarti
NEPTUNE CHAPOTIN’s parents met, like so many others did in 1969, on a journey for self-discovery on a psychedelically painted bus from London to India. He got on at London, she at Paris, they fell in love in Turkey and got married in Varanasi. They made several trips to India, and in 1984, when Neptune was about to be born, his mother insisted that her third child would only be born in India. They flew to Goa for the birth, stayed for the season, and went back to California, where he would grow up and live, until 1999, when he and his mother bought a one-way ticket to India.
Growing up with counterculture parents — his mother insists she isn’t a hippie, calling it a label rather than a state of mind — Neptune and his two older sisters were home schooled and spent childhood summers at Camp Winnarainbow, a circus and performing arts camp run by Wavy Gravy, the 1960s icon who served as the official clown of the Grateful Dead. He learnt unicycling there, which he now teaches as a camp counsellor. He also teaches the mouth harp, the current passion of his life.
With a conspiratorial glint in his eye, Neptune, 28, digs into a bag and pulls out several keyhole shaped instruments with single metallic strips through them. He puts one of them to his mouth and strums the strip, producing a magical droning sound. The waiters and the people at the next table stop in their tracks to watch the crazy firang, who has interrupted their afternoon drinking with the soundtrack of bad Bollywood music. A waiter does a little jig, while the manager gives a beatific smile. “This one’s from Hungary, this is from Siberia, this is from Kyrgyzstan…” He shows his harps from all over the world, collected over his travels and performances. All of them sound different, a unique sound for each culture.

**Harping on and on** Neptune Chapotin performs
Photos: Artur Striker

The mouth harp, or Jew’s harp (“It has as much to do with Jews as it is a harp,” he says) is a part of traditional music all over the world. But did it evolve independently or travel? “Yes and no,” he says. “The question is: did it originate in one country and spread around the world, or is it such a simple concept that the same thing was invented around the world?” In India, the harp shows up in Assam as the gogona, where it is an integral part of Bihu, as well as in Rajasthan (morchang) and Tamil Nadu (morsing).
NEPTUNE’S OBSESSION with the instrument has led to a number of performances around the world, and journeys to find the makers. His collection sprouted a business called World Harps, which buys and sells harps from all over the world at the Saturday night market in Arpora, Goa. “I create my own market,” he says dramatically. “If someone is curious, I play it for them and teach them how to play in 30 seconds. The odds of someone wanting to take one home once they learn to play are high enough for me to continue selling.” He now wants to organise India’s first international mouth harp festival in Goa next year.
“My mother was very surprised when my two sisters went to university,” he says. “She couldn’t see the point of a degree and said we should choose what we want to do and do it.” Neptune never finished high school and decided he wanted to study art. He went to Kerala and studied temple mural painting for five years. “I don’t have any degree to my name. But I do more different things than I could have done with one. There’s always something to do,” he says, pulling out a leather mouth harp case he designed. “I’m always on the edge of running out of money. But I know that I have enough skill sets that if I’m not doing one thing, I can always do something else. Life will always move on.”
Ajachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
ajachi@tehelka.com

‘The Satyam crisis was one of corporate India's finest moments’

Ajachi Chakrabarti

27/11/2012

Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju’s 2009 revelation that he had for years been overstating profits in a massive accounting scam sent shockwaves throughout Indian industry, and took the country’s fourth largest outsourcing firm to the brink of destruction. Zafar Anjum’s new book, The Resurgence of Satyam, is the story of how the government and industry came together to save over 50,000 jobs and the country’s reputation overseas. In an interview with Ajachi Chakrabarti, Anjum says we must wait for the next scandal in order to know if the establishment has learnt any lessons from the Satyam saga.
The media has called Ramalinga Raju a messiah, a visionary, an old-style businessman who adapted to the new economy and a simple crook. What is your assessment of the man?
I find him a very interesting person with shades of grey. From everyone I talked to, right from the top executives to simple employees, I got the sense that this man was held in great respect and some people even saw him as a God, as somebody who gave them a job and a life. The philanthropic work he was doing in the villages of Andhra Pradesh as well as innovations like the EMRI ambulance service also gave him a sort of halo as a messiah and do-gooder. Nobody had anything bad to speak of him. So that’s why everybody was so shocked when he revealed what he had been doing for the last eight years. My sense of him was that he was very intelligent and a great entrepreneur with great vision, but he had this darkness inside him, which he had very successfully hidden for all these years.
Do you subscribe to his version that he made a small lapse, which compounded over the years, or do you think he had planned this over all those years?
I feel that he must have started out with good intentions, and as the IT industry was making large profits, as other companies started doing really well, and as his company was unable to show similar results, he did this because it was very important for him to get good value for the shares he held in the company. For that, he had to show very good results, and that is when he started fudging the numbers. He has admitted that it started small, but the hole kept getting bigger and bigger, so the lie had to be magnified as the company rode the wave of success. On the way, he probably thought that he could cover it up by buying out the two companies (Maytas Infrastructure and Maytas Properties), but when that did not work out, he realised there was no way out (but to confess). I believe, and many people I spoke to believe, that if the merger had gone off and alarm bells not sounded, nobody would have known anything and he would have successfully covered it up.
Do you think the Indian media deliberately ignored Raju’s scam, and was this symptomatic of a general blind spot that the media affords corporate India to get away with murder for the sake of projecting a certain image of India Inc?
Yeah, I believe that with the kind of journalism that the media has done in the political and social space, the same kind of focus has not gone into the business field. It is happening now, with the Radia tapes and other disclosures, but even these might be happening because of some vested interests. A dispassionate attitude towards covering business practices is missing from the media, and they are not unearthing scams like their counterparts in the West. There is a very cosy relationship between business journalists and business houses, and the distance that one should observe is not present.
Are we better prepared today to detect such scams in the future, rather than inchoately dealing with crises when they come up?
I think it depends on the company’s culture. The Satyam scam made all businesspeople in India aware that they need to have better corporate governance, ensure compliance with all rules and regulations and put checks and balances in place. This is what Mahindra did when they took over Satyam.
But what about the regulators? Self regulation is well and good, but are the regulators better equipped to detect corruption now?
I don’t know. They will always say that they have learnt lessons from Satyam and will do whatever needs to be done, but their efficacy ultimately depends on them. I can’t speak on their behalf. Unless and until we stumble upon another scandal, we don’t know.
Of course, your book deals with how Satyam pulled together and survived, something you attribute to a certain ‘Spirit of Satyam’. In a nutshell, what is this spirit, and how does it differentiate the company from others?
The spirit of Satyam is more of a metaphor, I would say. It came from a canvas picture that I had seen in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. Two or three days after Raju’s confession, I saw a photo of Satyam employees putting their handprints on the canvas and writing messages (in support of) the company. The canvas had a phrase in big letters: “Spirit of Satyam”. The image stayed with me; at that time, nobody knew what was going to happen to the company. When I met all these people, I got the sense that there was a lot of commitment and devotion among these employees for the company. Even though many employees applied on online job portals, a lot of them said they did not want to jump ship, that they were going to stick together. That is why, on the day the scandal broke, all the regional leaders of Satyam issued a joint statement that they were with the company and had to take it forward. A lot of regular employees were working in client spaces and premises, not in the company headquarters, and irrespective of whatever happened to the company, they believed that they had to keep on working and delivering services. When I am alluding to this spirit of Satyam, I am talking about all these qualities.
Would you say that the creator of this spirit was Raju himself?
I would. He was like a prophet, you know; he had his own theories and philosophy of management. He had this thing called The Satyam Way, a 250-page book that used to be distributed to the employees, which enumerated the qualities of a good manager and how Satyam would do business. He was committed to the company, and from Day One, he was hiring and nurturing people. He had a big leadership school, he had brought in people from abroad to train the next generation of leaders. So all these things helped put in place this spirit of Satyam.
Even with this spirit of Satyam, the company couldn’t have survived without the extraordinary support from the government, could it? Was such support by the government for an independent corporation that had perpetrated such a scam justified?
Yeah, I think so, because if the government had not stepped in, the company would definitely have imploded. And it was not the case of just one company; it was about the whole Indian IT industry and how it was going to be perceived abroad. People abroad would have thought that if one Indian company is such a big fraud, what about the others? You know how much outsourcing the IT industry provides business and employment to India. I applaud the government’s intervention since it did not spend any money from its pocket. They did not bail it out, but helped it stay on course and not implode. It was a question of more than 50,000 people losing their jobs.
Why did you call the aftermath of this crisis “corporate India’s finest moment”?
Nowhere else in the world have we seen this kind of example when a company goes to the brink of destruction and comes back in a heartbeat. This is also a fine case of public-private partnership, and they came together to save such a company, which was at that time India’s fourth largest outsourcing firm. The kind of doom and gloom its impending destruction created and the way it was salvaged was noticed around the world, and that is why this was one of corporate India’s finest moments.
Ajachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
ajachi@tehelka.com

Can’t put a finger on it

Aradhna Wal

20/11/2012

Performance art may exist in a moment, but Inder Salim tries to pin it down, says Aradhna Wal

Art of unlearning Inder Salim — **Art of unlearning** Inder Salim
Photo: Arun Sehrawat

IN 2002, Inder Salim cut off his finger and threw it in the Yamuna to protest the pollution and slow death of the river. When that reputation precedes, it’s almost fair to assume the man is a kook. However, for this 47-year-old performance artist from Kashmir, everything carries meaning. He deliberated for months, before the actual act materialised as a sincere, if dramatic, ritual. Life for Salim, down to his name, is a carefully constructed performance. “I’ve forgotten what my original name was. What does it matter,” he says breezily.
Dressed in an oversized black Kashmiri kurta, his jeans discarded on the floor, flowers in his hair and his buttonhole, Salim leans back against the wall. “I started performance art in the 1990s after I failed as a painter. I couldn’t sell a thing. Soon, I couldn’t even afford paint,” he reminisces. Now, he leads his collective Harkat: The School/Unschool of Performance, which is holding a meeting at the Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon. Currently participating in the Sarai Reader 09 exhibition, the Delhi-based artist works with a number of performance artists to enact, display and discuss their creation. His proposal for Sarai was to document performance art through Harkat’s revolving door. This week, Ranjit Singh from Patna lamented MF Husain’s death in exile, marking his chest, forehead and knee with dirt collected from different parts of India. Earlier, artists accompanied Salim to the dhobi community on the banks of Yamuna. As some interacted with the washermen, Salim climbed into vats of washing and bleaching fluids, to literally immerse himself in thesubstance of their lives. Both performer and observer, he plans to pen down these varied contributions to Harkat.
‘School/Unschool’ — unlearning preconceptions to better understand art — is integral to his work and he freely merges ideas and dismantles structures. He says, “It is a shift in the art world, where rules of aesthetics are being broken and different forms are coming together. I’m trying to write down what is created when these different ideas meet. Let’s see how it goes.” That undercurrent of anxiety perhaps haunts all artists.
Salim keeps mementoes of every performance, pays special attention to pictures taken and is now trying to use words to impart them an afterlife. Capturing something as temporary as performance art could be an exercise in futility. Sarai Reader 09 curator Shuddhabrata Sengupta says, “It may be a paradox, but it is a productive one. Performance art underscores the relationship between memory and the ephemeral. The trace a recording holds may be valuable, as something to look back on as a memento of a moment of intensity and value.”

The Sweet Nothingness

Ajachi Chakrabarti

20/11/2012

Jab Tak Hai Jaan
DIRECTOR
YASH CHOPRA

STARRING
Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma, Anupam Kher
By Ajachi Chakrabarti
SHAH RUKH KHAN isn’t the only person to suffer from amnesia in Jab Tak Hai Jaan. As the layers of melodrama pile up, interspersed with shots of Khan’s quivering lips and Katrina Kaif staring into nothingness, the humble viewer who had braved Delhi’s Baghdad-like streets and smog to make it to the Diwali release could be excused for losing track of what’s going on, what happened half an hour ago and wondering when, and whether, the whole thing would ever end.
JTHJ is really two movies piled into one. There’s 2012 Shah Rukh Khan playing a bomb squad maverick right out of The Hurt Locker, defusing IEDs without donning any protective gear in Ladakh (chosen more for its scenic beauty than reputation as a war zone). And then there’s 2002 Khan, a London immigrant playing Jack Dawson to charm rich NRI Katrina Kaif before tragedy strikes, à la Titanic. The iceberg here is the curiously knighted ‘Sir Jesus’, as Kaif prays for Khan’s survival after a motorcycle accident and promises to never see him again to sweeten the deal. Khan gets pissed with the deal, and decides to embrace death by joining the bomb squad. Unfortunately, he gets good at it, and is soon called ‘The Man Who Cannot Die’.
Anushka Sharma enters the scene at this point, reads Khan’s diary and is sufficiently moved by his emotional story to want to shoot a documentary with him. Sharma, who earns all the acting chops that can possibly be handed out in such a film, convinces Khan to come back to London to confirm his story with the network executives, where he naturally gets hit by a car again, this time with attendant coma and amnesia. Katrina re- enters the story, leaving what little storyline was left in her wake, and there follows such an interminable sequence of will-he-will-she-which-she, that when the end did finally come, only the filthy state of the floor outside the hall kept me from kissing it in relief.
There are, admittedly, things to like in the film. The locales, in typical Yash Chopra fashion, are stunning, and there is some raw emotion in at least the first iteration of the epic romance. But there’s plenty of ham and even more sugar, and the film rapidly degenerates into the Shah Rukh Khan experience. If that floats your boat, you’re welcome to it.
Ajachi Chakrabarti is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
ajachi@tehelka.com