Live and Learn

Borscht

2011-01-15T15:20:00.000-08:00

Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon's "Memories of Borscht" piqued in my interest in the Borscht. How beautifully he writes of a simple beet soup and the impossibility of recreating something and so fulfilling in the sad abundance of America!

An eventful century or so ago, the writer’s paternal ancestors left what was then Galicia and settled in Bosnia. They brought with them a few beehives, an iron plow, and a recipe for perfect borscht. There was no written document; they carried the recipe within themselves. In the summers of the writer’s childhood, his grandmother and a committee of aunts would start early in the morning, chopping various vegetables, beets included, then boiling them mercilessly on a woodstove. The Hemon borscht contained whatever was available in the garden at the time. The amounts and the proportions changed with the cook and there was always at least one mystery ingredient. Whatever the variation, no bad borscht was produced. In the days after the writer came to Chicago, he sought out decent borscht, but what he found was merely thin beet soup. When he tried making borscht for himself, it was always missing at least one ingredient, not including the mystery one. There is nothing as pathetic as solitary borscht. The crucial ingredient of a perfect borscht is a large, hungry family, surviving together.

I was glad to taste the Clover FoodTruck's version of it this week. Wonder what Hemon would have thought of it! Borscht produced in a food truck by a former Mackenzie consultant :-)

Irani Restaurants That Survived

2010-10-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

Busybee (Behram Contractor) writes of Irani restaurants in 1992.

Yesterday evening, as the shadows lengthened across the Azad Maidan, I sat in the cricket tent of the 100-year-old Baronet Club and talked to Merwan Irani, the portly proprieter of the Sassanian Restaurant at Dhobi Talao, about his raisin-infested puddings.

It is a matter of regret for me that I have not visited the Sassanian in a long time. For that matter I have not been as frequent a visitor of Irani restaurants as I have been in the past. Of course, a number of them have passed into history, taken over by the ubiquitous Kamats. But some still exist, though in modified forms.

The Asiatic at Churchgate, where I used to extend the evening over a cup of tea and a plate of three mutton samosas and green chutney, has gone. First AlItalia took a slice of it, then the Asiatic Department Store the rest. But across the road the Stadium Restaurant is still there, though half its menu is now Chinese.

The Stadium is a restaurant I particularly frequented, on weekday mornings for two saucers of kheema and pau, and on Sunday afternoons for a plateful of mutton curry and rice before rushing home to hear Cricket with Vijay Merchant on the radio ("a very good afternoon to all my listeners"). Now I have shifted home and Sunday lunch venue.

Further down the road, the Fountain restaurant, run by the Sohaili brothers, has also changed hands and character. In the old days, they used to serve standard Irani fare, tea, bun maska, a somewhat salty omlette and a lot of friendly talk over marble-table tops.

At the head of Gogha street, was Ideal famous for its baked custards. It was a large cavern of an Irani, where once different communities were served in different shades of cups. (gulabi for the Muslims, yellow for the Hindus, and flower-patterned for the Parsis ), and on its walls and pillars were mirrors that gave distorted reflections of the customers. When the Alice Building burnt down, it burnt down with it.

At Dhobi Talao, fortunately, the city's two main Iranis have survived, and more or less in their original form. Kyani with its phudina tea and cream cakes, though I do not know if the crime reporters gather there nightly to pool their stories and phone them in to their offices. And Bastani, with a proud collection of bakery products that still sends aromatic waves across the main Girgaum Road. Next door to Bastani, also surviving is Brabourne. The Iranis used to love to name their restaurants after British viceroys and governors, with a few George IV, V and VI thrown in. My friend Durante, used to go every evening to the Brabourne to have a mara-mari, a combination of tea and coffee, though I understand it can also be combination of lemon and soda.

And, of course, down First Marine Street, is the Sassanian, famous for its puddings. Merwan Irani used to preside over the place and his son does now. I am happy some traditions have been maintained. Also, the quality of the puddings.

Cafe Amethyst, Jeypore Colony

2010-10-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

New Uses for Beautiful Old Houses
About Amethyst, the lifestyle shop
Profile of Owner Kiran Rao
Surprise Guests at Amethyst

S.Muthiah on Sunithi Narayan

2010-09-22T08:52:00.001-07:00

where can I find another madras guide who is as knowledgable and enthusiastic as her?

A loss to tourism Monday, May 21, 2001 By S.Muthiah

A MAJOR loss to tourism in Tamil Nadu, perhaps even in the South, has been the recent passing away of Sunithi Narayanan, the best tourist guide in the State and certainly the most knowledgeable one in the South on Hindu philosophy, traditions, temples and temple art. She many have been a traditional Mylapore maami to all appearances, but she enthralled the most knowledgeable and sophisticated of foreign travellers with her narration of the stories the stones and faith told in Mamallapuram and Kancheepuram, Madurai and Thanjavur.

The first woman, and the first non-graduate, to receive a guide's licence from the Government of India's Department of Tourism, 70- year old Sunithi had been a tourist guide for nearly half a century and was still active in the profession she loved when she passed away. She may have spoken English with a Victorian correctness and her later acquired German may have been precise, but that precision of speech was what endeared her to the scholarly groups that sought her help. It was in appreciation of her ability to convey the knowledge they had sought in India that over 200 travellers from Switzerland and Germany, France and Belgium had gathered at a dinner one evening in Switzerland in 1985 to fete her. Then, for six weeks it was not the travel agency that had organised the felicitation but the scores who had come to Madras as travellers but had gone back as friends, who took her around Western Europe.

Sunithi Narayanan always acknowledged that her success was due to her early training and the interest it kindled in her when she joined the Tourism Department's training course in the late 1940s. It was the scholars of dance and music and culture, of art and history and literature who briefed us those days who got us interested in learning more, she used to say, recalling the lectures by Rukmini Devi Arundale, K. R. Srinivasan, K. R. Venkatraman and Rangaswamy Aiyengar. The other thing that made her a success was her ever-willingness to learn all her life. When I used to meet her at numerous lectures on art and architecture, history and culture, she would always say, "I'm still a student; there's always something new to learn at these talks which I can offer my clients."

All that knowledge led to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inviting her to give a series of lectures on Indian art and culture. The highlight was her talk on 'The evolution of Art in Granite'. These lectures were also ones she gave to numerous tourism students in Madras; she was always willing to share her knowledge. And a part of the sharing process was the book 'Discover Sublime India' that she and fellow tourist guide Revathi Rangaswami wrote a few years ago. In it are the answers to the questions the knowledgeable tourist most asks about India. Almost all of them were a learning experience for me too. The pity of it is that the book did not get the wide distribution it deserved, but it's still in print and warrants a place on more bookshelves than it is on.

While art and archaeology are what Sunithi Narayanan was most associated with, they were only aspects of her passion for history. And it was that passion that led her to pioneer walking tours in Madras and other cities of Tamil Nadu. Her walks in the Central Station area of Park Town, in George Town, on First Line Beach or Rajaji Salai, in Mylapore, Madurai and Kancheepuram were delightful experiences, all who went on them swore.

If she had groups during Navarathri, she would take them to homes to enjoy kolu. If a bus broke down, she would take her groups on an exploration of the nearest village and organise bullock cart rides. Will we ever have another guide in Madras as full of life as her, as knowledgeable as Sunithi Narayanan?

O,madras!

2010-09-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2003/02/10/stories/2003021000050300.htm

THE CHENNAI Fest did not quite take off - though everyone connected with it promises to do better next year. However, what should have been part of that Fest, and which for one reason or another was not, was the Mylapore Festival which certainly attracted considerable attention and which could have been an even greater success if only there had been greater cooperation from officialdom. Perhaps next year, the Police, the Corporation, the HR & CE, the tourism authorities and the department of Art and Culture, not to mention the shopkeepers, will prove more cooperative and make a week-long festival a much longer and even more active one.

The Mylapore Festival, with its food and crafts stalls, its variety of performances and exhibitions, its kolam contest on the streets and college of Arts portrait studio on a kerbside, certainly was a pointer to how space and `no traffic' zones, particularly in heritage areas, could be promoted, especially during weekends of a Festival period, to offer healthy entertainment, insights into heritage and culture, and bring the family out of the benumbing world of TV.

The Mylapore Times, which got the Festival going last year and greatly improved on it this year, is to be congratulated for showing the way which its sister publications in other parts of the city might well follow. It certainly demonstrated that small institutions can dream big - and succeed too. It did it again by organising a walking tour of Mylapore during the festival, which has had participants clamouring for more. In Delhi and Bombay, walking tours of heritage areas have become regular and successful ventures. The Mylapore Times, after its first experience, feels that there's not only opportunity for regular walking tours of Mylapore but also of San Thome, Triplicane, George Town, Park Town etc.

The first attempt at a heritage walking tour that I can remember was by the late Sunithi Narayanan, in whose death a year or so ago Tamil Nadu lost its best tourist guide by far. She would often take foreign visitors on walks through the crowded byroads of George Town to give them a feel of "the real city". In more recent times, V. Sriram has been taking groups on walks in Mylapore, Triplicane and George Town, but focussing on the city's musical and dance heritage and the homes of those who contributed to those riches. All the tour leaders have stories like Vincent D'Souza's to report about the warmth and hospitality of people everywhere. During the Mylapore walk, for instance, the head of a Marwari family opened out his 100-year-old home to the group and hosted them with unexpected but welcome coffee and snacks. And at the St. Thomas' English Church and Bishop's House in San Thome, priests in residence enthusiastically played guest guides.

With the slowly growing awareness of heritage, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Tamil Nadu Chapter has been, apart from Madras walks, organising tours further afield. In Dr. S. Suresh, an archaeologist, it has a tour guide who enriches every such heritage tour with his knowledge. INTACH's latest tours have been the Nayak tour in the Arcots and the Roman Trail from the Malabar Coast to the Coromandel Coast. Travel may have been by bus, but at every site it was a walking tour. So successful was the latter that a second Roman tour has been organised for February 21-26. And Suresh is looking forward to repeating his longer Chola, Mahratta and Nayak tours in the Thanjavur and Madurai areas.

Says Suresh, "The moment we get 8-12 people firmly committed for any heritage tour, I make the necessary arrangements". And to make that commitment, or for more information, Dr. Suresh can be contacted at 24918479 or through 28266878.

No Diwali Here

2010-09-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

From OutlookIndia, by Pushpa Iyengar

This Deepavali as I was marooned in a sea of firecrackers, one louder than the other that I could not hear myself think, I thought longingly of the two villages -- Kollukudipatti and Vettangudi -- not too far from Madurai, where residents have sworn off firecrackers for the last 25 years because they do not want to disturb the migratory birds visiting Vettangudi sanctuary, which is close to these villages.

But first about Chennai where not only the noise levels were louder and the smoke levels were higher than last year but the three days of Diwali generated a thousand tonnes of garbage. Just walking down the road or through parks was enough to encounter the shower of pieces of paper that carpeted areas everywhere when the firecracker they covered went off. It does not help when a “role model” like Soundarya Rajnikanth, currently producing Sultan, an animation film featuring her megastar father, boasts that Rajnikanth gets festivities going in his house by setting of a firecracker that booms for several long minutes as each of its 10000 bits explode.

But there were people who opted for less noisy crackers and even got together for a joint celebration which meant one-fourth the quantity of crackers were lit. Unfortunately with prices of less polluting firecrackers going skywards like the cracker itself that emitted more light and less sound, people invested in cheaper ones that emitted only loud noise that scared household pets and made them dart under beds.

For all the education and awareness in cities, Chennai’s denizens have a lot to learn from villagers near the Vettangadi bird sanctuary which gets 20 different varieties of migratory birds including flamingos and pelicans from different parts of the world at this time of the year. The birds mate and reproduce in the months of October and November and villagers don’t want to be killjoys. There’s a bit of superstition too: “We believe that if a large number of birds come, then we’ll have good rains and consequently have plentiful crops.” This year though they have kept off firecrackers, the number of birds has come down and even the rainfall has been bad.

Another village shuns Deepavali

While some went overboard and created a Deepavali buzz, a remote hamlet in Thanjavur district called Thuraiyundarkottai kept its annual date with tradition -- no clothes, sweets or firecrackers.

This is the village’s way of remembering the drought 30 years ago that had virtually bankrupted its people. When Deepavali came around that year, the people barely had the means to eat one meal a day. But the insensitive affluent families in the village joyously celebrated Deepavali. Seeing the plight of their kids who were going hungry while someone else was literally burning up money, the villagers swore they would never celebrate Deepavali.

Even when there was a economic up turn in their condition, the villagers kept their pledge. Girls who marry into the village are told of the vow and young men who marry daughters from the village are told they can forget about “thalai Deepavali” (the first Deepavali after a couple marries is celebrated in big way). The compensation, however, is that Pongal is celebrated with pomp and show.

T.N.Shanbag by Ranjit Hoskote

2010-07-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2003/02/09/stories/2003020900620200.htm

THE timing couldn't have been improved upon. The annual Strand Book Stall sale, which has established itself as a prominent feature of Mumbai's cultural calendar over the last five years, was well under way when the honours list for 2003 was announced. So that T.N. Shanbhag, as he stood in the centre of the swirling crowds of book lovers who unfailingly save the late January-early February date, had the unique pleasure of having hundreds of delighted readers come up to offer him their congratulations. Not a few of these had first stepped into his bookshop as children, and were now shepherding their grandchildren into his presence. Shanbhag's name is among the few on this year's honours list that are beyond reproach, beyond the reach of scepticism; his Padma Shri, fully deserved, is all the more important in that such an honour has never before gone to that crucial but often overlooked actor in the drama of writing, publishing and reading: the bookseller.

T.N. Shanbhag is the founder-proprietor of the Strand Book Stall, so named because he started it, 55 years ago, quite literally as a stall in the old Strand Cinema in Colaba. The memory of those early, struggling years is preserved in the name, although the bookshop has long since moved to its present premises in the Fort. "I can't offer you coffee or music," he says, in his wry and deceptively self-deprecating manner, when someone brings up the subject of the large and fashionable bookshops that have opened in Mumbai during the last decade. "My bookshop is just a hole in the wall." It answers to this description only in the sense that the entrance to Ali Baba's cave was a hole in the wall; some sense of the cultural wealth that Shanbhag pours into Mumbai can be gauged from the success of his annual sale, which he holds at the spacious Sunderbai Hall in South Mumbai.

Large as this venue is, it proves too small to hold the thousands of readers who fill it for the 20 days of the sale; the stocks, replenished every day, disappear into the carry-baskets of perfectly ordinary citizens who, even in times of economic crisis, are prepared to invest in the transmission of culture. As at the great festivals that punctuate India's ritual calendar, distinctions of class, persuasion, gender and region break down completely here, and even the privilege of education does not count for more than the enthusiasm for learning. Ever the loquacious raconteur, Shanbhag recalls with amazement and affection an ageing couple from the Gujarat hinterland who brought their life's savings with them, to buy their grandchildren a multi-volume encyclopaedia, which they then carried away in gunny-sacks. The poignant story offers an oblique insight into the workings of a country where literacy in English translates as a guarantee of advancement.

Those prophets of doom who periodically announce the death of the reading habit should look in at this secular version of the Kumbh Mela. They might be persuaded to change their opinion; if they could get a foot in the door, that is, and shove their way through the surging crowds to reach the books. Those who risk death-by-stampede are rewarded with visions of the finest volumes on art, architecture, design, religion and philosophy published in recent times. The feast of temptations laid out on the tables running the length of the hall is aimed as much at the eye and the hand, as at the mind; you can delight in the elegant Modern Library classics, the crisp Thames and Hudson volumes, the dignified Phaidon editions, the refined Dover reprints and the burnished Shambhala titles. For this writer, it has been a special treat, over the last five years, to watch readers savouring the delight of marbled end-papers, running a finger over mediaeval calligraphy or Renaissance drawings, losing themselves in the foliage of a suite of Pahari miniatures, or simply abandoning themselves to the deep green or burgundy of a hardbound volume, its title lettered along the spine in discreet gold.

And here and there, among the heaped books, lie the discoveries that account for the real magic of the book-hunt, the secret pleasures and unshareable excitements of the reading life: long-lost biographies of eccentrics and madmen; the hopelessly politically incorrect but uproariously funny novels of a lost Edwardian age; folios from long-crumbled royal ateliers; the defiant confessions of magus and shaman; idiosyncratic studies of geographically remote areas and forbidden territories of the mind.

Shanbhag often says that his chief pleasure as a bookseller derives precisely from the experience of watching people come to life in the healing and redeeming presence of books. He shares in their joy as they forget, however momentarily, the overcrowded trains and the choked underpasses, and are transported to the elsewheres of the wandering imagination. Strand may not be able to compete with some of Mumbai's new bookshops when it comes to floor space and the attendant frills of a music shop and café, but it has something more important on its side: the Strand culture, which Shanbhag regards it as his mission to maintain.

Just as vital to him as the business side of the operation, the Strand culture is easily defined. As regulars at the shop off Pherozeshah Mehta Road in the Fort will testify, it is articulated in the warmth and unobtrusive attentiveness with which you are treated, the unmetered browsing time you get, and finally, the celebrated discounts that are offered on every book, from the slightly yellowing study of Tiepolo or the exquisite catalogue of the treasures of Topkapi Palace secreted on the mezzanine to the latest Booker Prize-winning novel in the display window. This is why Strand remains the only bookshop in Mumbai that a book-lover would regard, not simply as a place to buy books, but as a centre of pilgrimage.

Raviraj lending Library

2010-04-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

When I get my copy of New Yorker in the mail, I linger over the cartoons and put off reading those well-researched pieces for later. The fiction I generally ignore but that week’s issue had a story by Salman Rushdie and so I dove directly into those pages. The plot, set in my hometown Chennai, featured the real-life tsunami that carried away fishermen and boys who had gathered to play cricket at the beach one fateful dawn, six years ago. Reading this fictional account in Boston, I wept over the real tragedy for the very first time. The story seems like an extract from a larger work. I plan to put in a request for the upcoming novel through the public library network. So when the book arrives, some months from now, the hardcover will be waiting for me at the nearest local branch.

In my Chennai childhood, I borrowed books from a rental store for paperbacks. Its cobalt-blue bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. No new books ever sat on those brightly-painted wooden ledges. What was on offer was, at times, beyond dog-eared. That the pages of cheap print held together, at all, was a testimony to the bookbinder’s skill. Our school library kept classics and encyclopedias locked up like jewels. Providing children “story books” was not a pressing concern for state libraries either. So were plain lucky to have this lending library in our locality. An MBA will tell you that this is an example of a small-margin, high-volume business. To me that meant an unending supply of books which I could borrow for a small fee, a treasure trove

Extreme Recycling

Back then if you had asked me who the owner was, I would’ve pointed to a man who looked like a college lecture but he was only a senior employee. The barefoot man behind the register who chatted amiably with customers was the sole proprietor. Without appearing to be overly-vigilant, this former waste paper dealer kept an eye on everything around him. Apparently, the city’s wealthy discard reading material by the kilo along with a stack of month-old newspapers. He set aside these books and magazines figuring that they were more than just used paper. Soon, book-loving clients who couldn’t afford to buy novels began renting titles from this pile. The chance inventory clamored for a new home. Past the stores that sold bridal saris, he found the ideal spot for his new business.

The first middle-schoolers went there storefront with indulgent, book-loving relatives. Others like me moved in small packs. Clearly, the staff had instructions to shoo away lingerers who could not put down the membership deposit after repeated visits. Because there was no reading room, we squatted right by the bookshelves to sample the fare. We found the comic books to our taste and saved up the sum. Soon enough, we were borrowing books just like the grown-ups. If we chose well, we could circulate our picks among trustworthy friends to maximize returns.

Anything by Enid Blyton was a safe bet. From the adventures of British children we went to American teen detective fiction. Typically, gender or personal preference divided us into two camps. You really couldn’t hope to exchange a Nancy Drew for a volume of Hardy Boys. How disappointing to find out later that both were churned out by a factory of ghost writers! The spine-chilling Three Investigators, with a cameo by Alfred Hitchcock, commanded a crossover audience. Mostly, we subsisted on run-of-the-mill fare. Still, by the time we finished high school, we were compulsive, if indiscriminate, readers. College and higher studies took each of us to a different place.

Back in my hometown on a visit, I went searching for a bit of that old life. On a busy commercial street, I strolled past the multi-storied sari shops, all air-conditioned now, with attractive window displays. My feet took me to the store with cobalt-blue shelves. The proprietor was still behind the counter. Behind the broad-rimmed glasses, I saw no flicker of recognition. Hesitantly, I began to browse. Then I remembered. I had never claimed my one-time membership fee of Rs.10 (a quarter in dollar-terms). Why, I still belonged there.

But the truth is I have been away too long . Still, unlike the rich uncle, who shuddered theatrically on watching me read a severely-used book, I choose to marvel at this collection as an example of extreme recycling. In its heyday, this place served an assortment of members: men and women, young and old, those who read exclusively in Tamil and those who read in English. That was enough. If this grubby facility hadn't existed, books may never have been a part of my life.

Unknown Bestsellers

“Any particular title you want, Madam?” asked a voice, cutting into my reverie. It was the owner, with whom I’d haggled over the rental of a book many a time. My mind went blank. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Manohar Malgoankar’s The Devil’s Wind and asked for other books by that author of princely sagas. “But this is his best book, Madam,” he declares indignantly. No literature major who had done a dissertation on this topic could have sounded more convincing. English titles by Indian authors used to be housed upstairs. Instinctively, I turn my head towards the flight of stairs. “Upstairs, all sold Madam,” he said woefully. This could well be the only Malgoankar he had anymore.

We accessed that wing, unconnected to the main entrance, through a tricky staircase. Stray cats took shelter from the relentless sun, right by the landing. Urchin-like boys shadowed us to make sure we didn’t make off with books without stopping at the front desk. Past the tailors’ stores, they followed us as if they had just remembered an important errand in the crowded streets below. Occasionally, they did catch a pilferer. “A person, who goes to school, should know better than to steal,” the owner would tell the offender. Or they should be able to plan raids better, I would think.

The owner’s educated sons will not inherit the business. So, unlike the competition, the man hasn’t computerized operations. “Nobody reads, Madam,” he tells me with a shrug. Which may be true, but surely this spirited entrepreneur could have put up more of a fight. Then again, the age of electronic readers is almost upon us. Selling the paperbacks may have been a smart move, really. Why does he bother to run the place at all, I wonder? Just then a patron wanders in to ask for the latest issue of a Tamil magazine. It is checked out; the alternatives don’t interest her. Setting down her grocery bags, she began chatting with the owner about this and that. Moving to the topic of grown children, they bemoan the habits of this generation at some length.

Dusk is falling fast. In this newly-prosperous city, where people presumably buy all the books they want to read, traffic gets impossibly chaotic during rush hour. I should be leaving but near the exit, I see a shelf marked UNKNOWN BESTSELLERS. The phrase, at once absurd and ambitious, makes me linger. If you discount its strangeness, don't editors of literary magazines like New Yorker try to do the same thing -- acquaint readers with undiscovered talent? So how does the owner make the call, I wonder. At the moment, he is deeply engrossed in conversation. I might have to wait a while to get to the bottom of that mystery. I have a feeling the library won’t be there the next time I visit -- some textile retailer could easily annex the space. This is Chennai’s Saks Fifth Avenue after all.

Outside, the honks are getting louder. The crush of evening shoppers will descend on the avenue any minute now. That very thought fills me with panic. In that instant, my curiosity about the quirky book category all but vanishes. Hailing a passing auto-rickshaw, I head home. En route is Nalli’s, where supermodel Padma Lakshmi supposedly shops for silk saris. She is also in town -- visiting family, according to a gushing report in The Hindu. I keep my eyes peeled for Rushdie’s svelte ex-wife but catch no glimpse of her.

It is just not my lucky day.

Forever in M.S.Blue

2010-04-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

by Vikram Doctor

MUMBAI:
Vandyke Brown, Titian Red, MS Blue... one of the unexpected achievements of MS Subbulakshmi, the great Carnatic singer, who passed away on Saturday in Chennai, was in being one of the few people to have a colour named after her, and certainly, the only singer. MS Blue was the name given to a distinctive shade of blue, inky yet iridescent and shot through with black and green highlights, that was used in saris woven specially for her by Kancheepuram Muthu Chattiyar, a fan who was also a sari merchant.

There was perhaps an element of business sense mingled with his devotion, because as soon as ‘MS’ started wearing the saris, they became a rage and Chattiyar was besieged by south Indian ladies, who simply had to have an “MS Blue” sari. By restricting his supply, Chattiyar ensured that for m any years a sari in the correct MS Blue shade was a coveted item. We associate fashion trends with fashion designers and film stars, yet Subbulakshmi was setting style long before them. For a singer – and one from as conservative a field as Carnatic music – to make such an impact in visual areas as colour and fashion is an indication of Subbulakshmi’s celebrity status. This term might seem odd for her, since in her modesty, her devotion to her music and, above all, in her refusal to cash in on her talent (most of her fees were given to charity), she seems light years from the money-chasing celebrities we are used to now.

Yet Subbulakshmi was a celebrity and one as consciously created as any other. To acknowledge this does not detract for a moment from her musical achievement. Subbulakshmi had a voice and talent that only come once in a generation, if at all. Yet other geniuses of the Indian arts have failed to achieve her international success, nor managed to set trends within India. “With most Carnatic musicians, unless you are a music lover, you do not have a strong visual association with their name,” says Mani Ayer, the ex-head of Ogilvy & Mather ad agency. “But when you think of Subbulakshmi you can instantly see her face.”

The large eyes, the red tikka mark on her forehead, the diamond earrings and double nose-rings, the circlet of jasmines in her hair, all form a visual signature as strong as any brand. Two men were responsible for this. Subbulakshmi’s husband, T Sadasivam, has a mixed reputation with her devotees, with shades of Svengali for what is said to be his total control over her. Yet this overlooks the fact that this ‘control’ wasn’t exercised for personal gains, but to further her reputation. As advertising manager for the Ananda Vikatan magazine, Mr Sadasivam had the necessary marketing skills. With him in charge of her career and image, she could focus on her music.

The other contributor to the Subbulakshmi image was more exotic. Ellis R Dungan was a Hollywood-trained cinematographer who came to India in 1935 at the invitation of Mani Lal Tandon, a college friend at the University of Southern California, whose family had Bollywood links. The idea was for Dungan to help Tandon with a film for six months, but when that fell through, Dungan started looking for other projects and ended up with the budding Tamil film industry. Six months turned into 15 years during which Dungan directed 17 feature films in Tamil and Hindi. Subbulakshmi’s entry into Tamil films was thanks to Sadasivam who, in 1937, got her to act in her first film, Savitri, to raise money for Kalki, the magazine he was to start with R ‘Kalki’ Krishnamurthy. Dungan’s first Tamil film Sathi Leelavathi (1936) was based on a serial in Ananda Vikatan and through this connection he had met Sadasivam. He agreed to direct Subbulakshmi in Sakunthalathai (1940) and Meera (1945), her last and most famous film, which helped fix her image as a bhakti singer.

Dungan is credited with identifying her saintly beauty and finding out how best to present it. He even went to the extent of making a plaster cast of her face, which he studied carefully to decide what lighting would suit her best. “With Subbulakshmi you had everything: great music, real beauty, a saintly personality, the careful presented details like the red tikka she always had,” adds Mani Ayer. “Perhaps subconsciously, her husband really knew how to market her.”

Subbulakshmi’s musical genius may have passed beyond recovery, but like the ‘MS Blue’ saris, which can still be ordered in Chennai shops, the lessons of her image remain for artists to learn from.

A Collection of Books Well-Past Its prime

2010-03-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

In my Madras childhood, I borrowed books from a rental store for paperbacks. Its cobalt-blue bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. No new books sat on those brightly-painted wooden ledges. What was on offer was, at times, beyond dog-eared. That the pages of cheap print held together, at all, was a testimony to the local bookbinder’s skill. Our museum-like school library kept books locked up like precious jewels. Providing children access to "story books" was not a pressing concern for state libraries either. So, the local lending library was a godsent despite its many obvious limitations.

Extreme Recycling

Back then if you had asked me who the owner of the place was, I would’ve pointed to someone who looked like a lecturer, but he was just a senior employee. The barefoot man behind the cash register who oversaw operations and chatted with customers was the sole proprietor. He used to be a wastepaper dealer. In the absence of formal book donation programs, Chennai’s wealthy book-buyers apparently discard reading material, by the kilo, along with old newspapers. But books were more than just used paper, and so he began setting them aside. Some customers, avid readers who could not afford to buy novels, rented titles from this growing pile. The chance inventory clamored for a new home. Past the stores that sold bridal saris, the entrepreneur found the ideal spot for his new business.

The first middle-schooler went to this new establishment with indulgent, book-loving relatives. Others like me ventured there in small packs. The staff had instructions to shoo away lingerers who could not put down the membership deposit after repeated visits. Because there was no reading room, we squatted by the bookshelves to sample the fare. Finding the comic books to our taste, we saved up the sum. Soon, we were borrowing books just like the grown-ups. We circulated picks among trustworthy friends to maximize returns.

Anything by Enid Blyton was a safe bet. From the adventures of British children we went to American teen detective fiction. Typically, gender or personal preference divided us into two camps. You really couldn’t hope to exchange a Nancy Drew for a volume of Hardy Boys. How disappointing to find out later that both were churned out by a factory of ghost writers! The spine-chilling Three Investigators, with a cameo by Alfred Hitchcock, commanded a crossover audience. Mostly, we subsisted on run-of-the-mill fare. Still, by the time we finished high school, we were compulsive, if indiscriminate, readers. College and higher studies took each of us to a different place.

Cobalt-Blue Shelves

Back in my hometown on a visit, I went searching for a bit of that old life. On a busy commercial street, I strolled past the multi-storied sari shops, all air-conditioned now, with attractive window displays. My feet took me to the store with cobalt-blue shelves. The proprietor was still behind the counter. Behind the broad-rimmed glasses, I saw no flicker of recognition. Hesitantly, I began to browse. Then I remembered. I had never claimed my one-time membership fee of Rs.10 (a quarter in dollar-terms). Why, I still belonged there.

Unlike the rich uncle, who shuddered theatrically on watching me read a severely-used book, I choose to marvel at this collection, as an example of extreme recycling. In its heyday, this place served an assortment of members: men and women, young and old, those who read exclusively in Tamil and those who read in English. That was quite enough.

“Any particular title you want, Madam?” someone asked. It was the owner, with whom I’d haggled over the rental of a book many a time. My mind went blank. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Manohar Malgoankar’s The Devil’s Wind and asked for other books by that author of princely sagas. “But this is his best book, Madam,” the man declares indignantly. No literature major who had done a dissertation on this topic could have sounded more convincing. English titles by Indian authors used to be housed upstairs. Instinctively, I turn my head towards the flight of stairs. “Upstairs, all sold Madam,” he said woefully. This could well be the only Malgoankar he had anymore.

Unknown Bestsellers

We used to access that wing, unconnected to the main entrance, through a tricky staircase. Stray cats took shelter there, by the landing, from the relentless sun. Urchin-like boys shadowed us to make sure we didn’t make off with books without stopping at the front desk. Past the tailors’ stores, they followed us as if they had just remembered an important errand in the bazaar below. Occasionally, they did catch a pilferer. “A person, who goes to school, should know better than to steal,” the owner would tell the offender. Or they should be able to plan raids better, I would think.

The owner’s educated sons will not inherit the business. Unlike the competition, the man hasn’t computerized operations. “Nobody reads, Madam,” he tells me with a shrug. Which may be true, but surely this spirited entrepreneur could have put up more of a fight. Then again, the age of electronic readers is almost upon us. Selling the paperbacks may have been a smart move, really. Why does he bother to run the place at all ? Just then a patron wanders in to ask for the latest issue of a Tamil magazine. It is checked out; the alternatives don’t interest her. Setting down her grocery bags, she began chatting with the owner about this and that. Moving to the topic of grown children, they bemoan the habits of this generation at some length.

Dusk is falling fast. In this newly-prosperous city, where people presumably buy all the books they want to read, traffic gets impossibly chaotic during rush hour. I should be leaving but near the exit, I see a shelf marked UNKNOWN BESTSELLERS. The phrase, at once absurd and ambitious, makes me linger. If you discount its strangeness, don't editors of literary magazines try to do the same thing -- acquaint readers with undiscovered talent? So how does the owner make the call, I wonder. At the moment, he is deeply engrossed in conversation. I might have to wait a while to find out.

Outside, the honks are getting louder. The crush of evening shoppers will descend on the avenue any minute now. That very thought fills me with panic. In that instant, my curiosity about the quirky book category all but vanishes. Hailing a passing auto-rickshaw, I tamely head home. I don't expect the library to be around much longer. Some texile retailer will annex that space sooner or later. So I don't suppose I will ever get to the bottom of that mystery.

S.Muthiah on The Thousand Lights Mosque

2009-10-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

S.Muthiah on The Thousand Lights Mosque Area

ACROSS FROM the Victoria Technical Institute and all the way along Mount Road to Thousand Lights were once mansions in acres of garden which have now given way to commercial development. These were the homes of rajahs and zamindars of the northernmost reaches of the Madras Presidency, what is today northern Andhra Pradesh and southern Orissa. They preferred to live closer to the seat of imperial power. Among those with homes on this stretch — and about whom, as I mentioned last week, I know little - were Bobbili, Kirlampudi and Jatprole with Jeypore further down and to the rear of the place of worship that is my focus today.

Of these homes, only Jeypore's survives. Given a new lease of life by a kinswoman, it is now known as `Amethyst'. Simple restoration for imaginative re-use shows how old buildings, heritage or otherwise, can be revitalised.

The fate of the other gracious homes that were on this stretch has not been as fortunate, but has certainly benefited the new developers. Huge automobile workshops, brightly lit automobile showrooms and a host of shops occupy the space. Amongst those ensconced here are the T.V. Sundaram Motors workshops spread over five acres, bought in 1945 at a lakh an acre. It was then the Rajah of Bobbili's Gopala Bagh and by it were Kirlampudi House and Kesava Bagh. I wish there was more information than merely names about this whole area, in which still survive once popular shops Dawn Stores and Nanking Shoes. Dawn was where Madras' expat population used to shop for tinned food and preserves before Amma Naana and the Food Worlds came along. And Nanking is where they still make shoes to customer measure. Modern commercial Madras has, however, dwarfed shops like these that were very much part of the ethos of the city 50 years ago.

Dating to at least a century before is what is popularly called the Thousand Lights Mosque. In its Assembly hall were once lit a thousand oil lamps by the Shias assembling during Muharram. The mosque has long been a landmark on what came to be known as the Great Choultry Plain, the area on either side of Mount Road. The plain is believed to derive its name from the `Woodlundy Choultry' shown in the records of 1721 as occupying the triangular wedge formed by White's Road and Mount Road. A similar wedge that Peter's Road and Mount Road form was where the Thousand Lights Assembly Hall was built about 1810 by a member of the Nawab Wallajah's family. Across from it was a well-known 19th Century Madras locality, Mackay's Gardens. This was the first garden house built on the Choultry Plain and had been raised by an erstwhile Mayor, George Mackay, in 1785. The name remained long after the property was acquired for his grandson Azim by the Nawab Wallajah in 1798 and renamed Azim Bagh. This acquisition resulted in the area developing as a Muslim locality and the names of several members of the extended Wallajah family were later lent to the numerous lanes that followed residential and commercial development on either side of the stretch of Graeme's Road.

To meet the religious needs of this growing Mackay's Gardens population, a member of the Wallajah family, Ghulam Asadullah Doula donated a further 80 grounds to the Assembly Hall (Ashoorkhana) that he helped rebuild. And on the gifted land facing the hall was raised a mosque sometime around 1820 for around Rs.1 lakh. This mosque was rebuilt around 1900 and renovated in 1936 by the Khaleeli Shirazi family, that eminent Madras-Bangalore family of Persian descent whose story deserves to be told to the wider public one day.

When the c.1900 mosque was assessed in the 1970s as needing major renovation as well as expansion, it was decided to build a new mosque. And in 1981, after construction was completed in a year, there came up the stylised new mosque seen today with the Abu Dhabi influence seen in the modernistic, onion-shaped domes and 63-foot tall twin minarets, with stairways inside, that face Mecca. The new mosque that can accommodate 1000 worshippers at a time was built at a cost of about Rs. 8 lakhs according to a blueprint supplied by the donor, Alhaj Ali Muhammad, an Abu Dhabi businessman. The architect was K.M. Asadullah Basha.

The striking features of the mosque are its five domes, four 16ft. high domes at the corners and a 30 ft. high, 20 ft. diameter central dome taking the height of the building to 52 feet. Another feature of the mosque is the green ceramic tile-panels that run around its inside and outside walls. The Arabic and Persian scripts used for the Koranic verses featured on the panels have been baked into the tiles.

Another feature of the mosque is the space provided for women worshippers on a special mezzanine floor, accessed from an exterior staircase and recessed behind a screen of wooden slats. A 20 ft. by 12 ft. tank, 4 ½ feet deep, for the faithful to wash before prayers, a garden, a library and a guesthouse are also part of the complex.

The modern mosque and the Ashoorkhana that stylistically belong to another age even after restoration, provide contrasting but striking architectural styles. It is a landmark that becomes vibrantly alive, particularly during Muharram.

From the TIME website

2008-12-19T11:38:00.001-08:00

THE FINANCIAL EXPERT (I 78 pp.)—R. K. Narayan — Michigan State College Press ($3).

India has fascinated many Western writers, but whether they celebrated the white man's burden, like Kipling, or deplored the excesses of imperialism, like E. M. Forster, they were usually outsiders observing from a distance. In recent years, the Indians have been raising novelists of their own, such as G. V. (for Govindas Vishnoodas) Desani, author of the high-comic All About H. Hatterr (TIME, June 18, 1951). Now comes R. K. (for Rasi-puram Krishnaswami) Narayan, a gently satirical fellow and a writer of substance. At 45, Narayan has published half a dozen novels and scores of stories, forming a miniature comedie humaine of modern India.

The Financial Expert traces the rise & fall of Margayya, a proud, overimaginative moneylender who keeps bank each day under a banyan tree. Margayya makes a good living from small loans, but he is not satisfied; he dreams of real wealth. The local priest advises Margayya to woo the gods with a special rite: mix the ashes of a red lotus with milk drawn from a smoke-colored cow. Sure enough, not long after, Margayya meets Dr. Pal, a sociologist who has written a book called Bed-Life, or the Science of Marital Happiness. The first chapters make Margayya blush, but they also make him want to read on. Then the idea hits him: he publishes Dr. Pal's manuscript under the discreet title, Domestic Harmony.

Sales are sensational; Margayya is rich, but still he does not rest content. With his new wealth, he goes into banking on a big scale, offering depositors 20% on their money. The town comes knocking, thrusting its money into his hands.

Now Margayya is vastly rich: the money lies stacked in piles throughout his house. He becomes a specialist on the subject of interest on capital, which seems to him "the greatest wonder of creation, [combining] the mystery of birth and multiplication." All goes well, except that his only son, once a charming little fellow, now becomes sullen and spoiled. Egged on by the worthless Dr. Pal, the boy tries to get more & more money from Margayya; when Margayya resists, Dr. Pal spreads a rumor that Margayya is a fraud. In a matter of hours, the bank is bankrupt.

But Margayya still keeps his bounce. When he .cannot persuade his son to take up the old spot under the banyan tree, he decides to go back to the tree himself and start all over again.

Novelist Narayan tells his story with an abundance of good nature. Let the philosophers of history ponder the formal gravities of the meeting of East and West, he seems to be saying. For a man with a novelist's eye, there is also plenty of warmhearted comedy in the situation.

From The Hindu

2008-12-12T11:15:00.000-08:00

Letter from a young widow to a widower

The following short essay, written in the form of a letter, appeared in a Gujarati journal in November 1864. Although anonymously published, the author was known to be Narmad (Narmadashankar Lalshankar 1833-1855), a versatile figure - poet, essayist and historian of 19th Century Gujarat. Written in the assumed persona of a 16-year-old widow and addressed to a "sheth who has recently lost his wife", the letter highlights in a provocative manner some of the contentious issues in the reform movement. Dandiyo, the journal which carried this piece was edited by Narmad.Translated and introduced by TRIDIP SUHRUD, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

What is to be done with this letter which was found on the street? The sender has not given her name, and hence it cannot be returned to her. We do not know of anyone called Jivan Sheth, so it cannot be reached to the addressee. Oh, it looks like a love letter. The norm is that one should not read love letters meant for others. But this is an open letter. Such ungracious love of the uncultured should be condemned. No, no, friends - wait: this says something good. There may be a possibility here to rectify an injustice. Let us read it aloud (Dandiyo reads it):

"My Jivan Sheth,
You, the high and mighty do not know me, a pitiful creature, but I know you well. I know it is not seemly that I, a poor woman should take the initiative and write to you as if I have known you all your life. Also it is not proper that in the very first letter I should spout wise words as if I am a member of your household. But to tell you the truth, just as the selfish are blind, the lustful are eager and the proud keen, I have become like this.

My Jivan Sheth, what has happened is very sad indeed. Your deceased wife, the Shethani was a good human being. She was not proud of her wealth and position. Although she was not literate or smart, she did understand the duties of a woman. It was not time for her to die - so many women go through pregnancies safely and give birth. But thank god she was already the mother of four or five children. There could not be a greater good fortune for her than to have you light her pyre.

Those who are left behind have to bear the sorrow. Is it not sad to see four or five young children pining for their mother? And you loved her so much that despite all your wealth, her absence makes you poor and humble. I am younger to you and hence it is not right for me to console you, but I look at you differently. Such things go on in the world. May I request you not to be overwhelmed by grief and urge you to do something soon for yourself and your children.
My Jivan Sheth, you are not old - you must be barely 32. To my eyes you appear even younger. You might hesitate now to get emotionally involved with someone again, but for the sake of your children and for your own morals, do you have any option? If not immediately, in a month or two you will take a step in that direction.

Jivan Sheth, do not get angry. I am a woman and I am proposing to you a marriage alliance. You will probably doubt my morals. But I do this as an expression of true love, and freedom that comes with education, combined with the fear that someone else might get you. I make this request to you my Krishna, like Rukmini.

My Sheth, I am a beautiful woman of 16 and I believe in the reformers. You might give up your reformist practice out of fear, but I will never give it up. When the Shethani died, apprehensive of social criticism you gave many gifts to the temples. You even allowed women to gather in your house to weep and beat their chests to express their grief. I would never have done that. If we allow these things how can we count ourselves among the reformers? Anyway, let that pass. What do you think of my proposal?

Jivan Sheth, I am not after your money. But I am eager and hopeful that I can make you and your children happy. I also hope others follow your example and give new life to women like me.
When women like me get the opportunity to start anew, much of the misfortunes of our society will disappear. Noble acts require great and courageous people to perform them. Only the great have both money and influence. Others emulate their example. Therefore do not be afraid of what people might say at this point of time. Consider the immortality you will achieve by giving a new lease of life to a widow.

My Jivan Sheth what more can I say to the wise? Losing an opportunity is like suffering a loss.
I do not consider it wise to reveal my name at this stage. But if your heart also surges with similar feelings, and you want to perform this good deed, write a letter to Dandiyo. I shall eagerly await your response."

Salutations from a beautiful, virtuous, but a widowed woman.

This series is co-ordinated by Meenakshi Mukherjee.

from the nyt

2008-11-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

A Dead Language That’s Very Much Alive
By WINNIE HU
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — The Latin class at Isaac E. Young Middle School here was reading a story the other day with a familiar ring: Boy annoys girl, girl scolds boy. Only in this version, the characters were named Sextus and Cornelia, and they argued in Latin. “I can relate, but what the heck are they saying?” said Xavier Peña, a sixth grader who started studying Latin in September.

Enrollment in Latin classes here in this Westchester County suburb has increased by nearly one-third since 2006, to 187 of the district’s 10,500 students, and the two middle schools in town are starting an ancient-cultures club in which students will explore the lives of Romans, Greeks and others.

The resurgence of a language once rejected as outdated and irrelevant is reflected across the country as Latin is embraced by a new generation of students like Xavier who seek to increase SAT scores or stand out from their friends, or simply harbor a fascination for the ancient language after reading Harry Potter’s Latin-based chanting spells.

The number of students in the United States taking the National Latin Exam has risen steadily to more than 134,000 students in each of the past two years, from 124,000 in 2003 and 101,000 in 1998, with large increases in remote parts of the country like New Mexico, Alaska and Vermont. The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Latin, meanwhile, has nearly doubled over the past 10 years, to 8,654 in 2007. While Spanish and French still dominate student schedules — and Chinese and Arabic are trendier choices — Latin has quietly flourished in many high-performing suburbs, like New Rochelle, where Latin’s virtues are sung by superintendents and principals who took it in their day. In neighboring Pelham, the 2,750-student district just hired a second full-time Latin teacher after a four-year search, learning that scarce Latin teachers have become more sought-after than ever.

On Long Island, the Jericho district is offering an Advanced Placement course in Latin for the first time this year after its Latin enrollment rose to 120 students, a 35 percent increase since 2002. In nearby Great Neck, 36 fifth graders signed up last year for before- and after-school Latin classes that were started by a 2008 graduate who has moved on to study classics at Stanford (that student’s brother and a friend will continue to lead the Latin classes this year).
Latin is also thriving in New York City, where it is currently taught in about three dozen schools , including Brooklyn Latin, a high school in East Williamsburg that started in 2006. Four years of Latin, and two of Spanish, are required at the new high school, where Latin phrases adorn the walls and words like discipuli (students), magistri (teachers) and latrina (bathroom) are sprinkled into everyday conversation.

“It’s the language of scholars and educated people,” said Jason Griffiths, headmaster of Brooklyn Latin. “It’s the language of people who are successful. I think it’s a draw, and that’s certainly what we sell.”

Adam D. Blistein, executive director of the American Philological Association at the University of Pennsylvania, which represents more than 3,000 members, including classics professors and Latin teachers, said that more high schools were recognizing the benefits of Latin. It builds vocabulary and grammar for higher SAT scores, appeals to college admissions officers as a sign of critical-thinking skills and fosters true intellectual passion, he said.

“Goethe is better in German, Flaubert is better in French and Virgil is better in Latin,” Dr. Blistein said. “If you stick with it, the lollipop comes at the end when you get to read the original. In many cases, it’s what whets their appetite.”

Latin was once required at many public and parochial schools, but fell into disfavor during the 1960s when students rebelled against traditional classroom teachings and even the Roman Catholic Church moved away from Latin as the official language of Mass. Interest in Latin was revived somewhat in the 1970s and began picking up in the 1980s with the back-to-basics movement in many schools, according to Latin scholars, but really took off in the last few years as a language long seen as a stodgy ivory tower secret infiltrated popular culture.

Harry Potter books use Latin words for names and spells, and at least two have been translated into Latin (“Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis”), as have several by Dr. Seuss (“Cattus Petasatus”). Movies like “Gladiator” and “Troy” have also lent glamour to the ancient world.
“Sometimes you need to know Latin to understand that part,” said Adrian McCullough, 10, a sixth grader in New Rochelle who plans to reread the Harry Potter books now that he is learning Latin.

Marty Abbott, education director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said it was possible that Latin would edge out German as the third most popular language taught in schools, behind Spanish and French, when the preliminary results of an enrollment survey are released next year. In the last survey, covering enrollment in 2000, Latin placed fourth. “In people’s minds, it’s coming back,” she said. “But it’s always been there. It’s just that we continue to see interest in it.”

Ms. Abbott, a former Latin teacher, said that today’s Latin classes appeal to more students because they have evolved from “dry grammar and tortuous translations” to livelier lessons that focus on culture, history and the daily life of the Romans. In addition, she said, Latin teachers and students have promoted the language outside the classroom through clubs, poetry competitions and mock chariot races.

In Scarsdale, N.Y., where Latin enrollment rose by 14 percent to 80 this year, the high school sponsors a Roman banquet on the Ides of March during which students come wearing tunics and wreaths in their hair. Seniors serve bread, olives, roasted chicken and grapes to younger students, and all of them break bread with their hands. Dr. Marion Polsky, the Latin teacher, said that former students still send her postcards written in Latin and that at least three have gone on to become Latin teachers.

Here in New Rochelle, the district introduced a Latin class for sixth graders last year and is now adding a second Latin class for seventh graders. Richard Organisciak, the superintendent, said the district had spent $273,000 since 2006 to promote foreign languages including Latin. Last month, the district also started a dual-language English-Italian kindergarten and a Greek class at the high school; it is considering offering Chinese next fall.

The high school principal, Don Conetta, said he had encouraged more students to study Latin, though he acknowledged that he was hardly “a stellar student” himself in Latin and came to
appreciate its value only later in life. “If my Latin teachers could hear me now,” he said. “I took three years in high school, and four semesters in college, and I can’t remember the first line of Cicero’s orations.”

Students like Ciera Gardner, a sophomore, started Latin three years ago with two friends who have since dropped out because of the workload. But Ciera, an aspiring actress, said that she had persisted because Latin would look good on her college applications and that in the meantime, it had already helped her decipher unfamiliar words while reading scripts. “It’s different,” she said. “Everyone says ‘I take Spanish’ or ‘I take Italian,’ but it’s cool to say ‘I take Latin.’ ”

Max Gordon, another sophomore, said that he had learned more about grammar in Latin class than in English class. And he occasionally debates the finer points of grammar with his mother, Kit Fitzgerald, a video artist who studied Latin, while washing dishes after dinner.
“In some ways, it’s really frustrating,” he said. “I’ll hear someone say something that isn’t grammatically correct and I’ll cringe.”

Rushdie Forever

2008-10-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

From his collection of Essays " Imaginary Homelands"

A KISS BEFORE READING
I grew up kissing books and bread.

In our house, whenever anyone dropped a book or let fall a chapati or a "slice," which was our word for a triangle of buttered leavened bread, the fallen object was required not only to be picked up but also kissed, by way of apology for the act of clumsy disrespect. I was as careless and butterfingered as any child and, accordingly, during my childhood years, I kissed a large number of "slices" and also my fair share of books.

Devout households in India often contained, and still contain, persons in the habit of kissing holy books. But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries and atlases. We kissed Enid Blyton novels and Superman comics. If I'd ever dropped the telephone directory I'd probably have kissed that, too.

All this happened before I had ever kissed a girl. In fact it would almost be true, true enough for a fiction writer, anyhow, to say that once I started kissing girls, my activities with regard to bread and books lost some of their special excitement. But one never forgets one's first loves.
Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul -- what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

It has always been a shock to me to meet people for whom books simply do not matter.

-- From "Imaginary Homelands."

My Name is Antony Gonsalves

2008-10-03T06:35:00.001-07:00

An article by Narendra Fernandes, editor of Timeout Mumbai.

I just love this piece and don't want it to vanish in the blackhole of The Internet, so copying it verbatim.

MIDWAY through Manmohan Desai’s classic 1977 film about three brothers separated at birth, a man in a top hat and a Saturday Night Fever suit leaps out of a giant Easter egg to inform the assemblage, ‘My name is Anthony Gonsalves.’

The significance of the announcement was lost under the impact of Amitabh Bachchan’s sartorial exuberance. But decades later, the memory of that moment still sends shivers down the spines of scores of ageing men scattered across Bombay and Goa. By invoking the name of his violin teacher in that tune in Amar Akbar Anthony, the composer Pyarelal had finally validated the lives of scores of Goan Catholic musicians whose working years had been illuminated by the flicker of images dancing across white screens in airless sound studios, even as acknowledgement of their talent whizzed by in the flash of small-type credit titles.

The arc of their stories – determined by the intersection of passion and pragmatism, of empire and exigency – originated in church-run schools in Portuguese Goa and darted through royal courts in Rajasthan, jazz clubs in Calcutta and army cantonments in Muree. Those lines eventually converged on Bombay’s film studios, where the Goan Catholic arrangers worked with Hindu music composers and Muslim lyricists in an era of intense creativity that would soon come to be recognised as the golden age of Hindi film song.

The Nehruvian dream could not have found a more appropriate harmonic expression.
A few months back, a friend called to tell me about a new character he’d discovered in a story published by Delhi-based Raj Comics: Anthony Gonsalves. On the page (and accessible only if you read Hindi), Anthony Gonsalves is part of the great Undead, the tribe doomed to live between the worlds. It wasn’t always like this.

In his prime, Anthony Gonsalves was a mild-mannered guitar player who had devised a magical new sound known as ‘crownmusic’. But his jealous rivals tortured him to death so that they could steal his work. Now, the magnificently muscled superhero emerges from the grave each night to prevent the desperate from committing suicide and to rid the world of evil, informed of imminent misfortune by his pet crow.

Repeated calls to Raj Comics failed to disgorge the phone number of Tarunkumar Wahi, the creator of the series, so I was unable to establish how the comic-book character had come to get his name. But I couldn’t help thinking how the predicament of the leotard-clad figure was not unlike that of the real Anthony Gonsalves, whose home in the sleepy Goan village of Majorda I had visited only weeks earlier: both had attempted to connect disparate worlds and both had been left with the gnawing dissatisfaction of a mission unfinished.

Thirty years after he quit the film industry in 1965 to avail of a travelling grant from Syracuse University in upstate New York, Anthony Gonsalves continues to arouse the curiosity of his contemporaries. He departed at the height of his popularity and, even after he returned from America a decade later, never swung his baton again. In fact, he scarcely bothered to let his former colleagues know that he was back. As I met with musicians in Bombay and Goa in an attempt to piece together a portrait of their lives and work in the studios, many of them insisted that he was still in America – if indeed he was still alive.

The 77 year old maestro offered no explanations for his seclusion. His speech was slow and his thoughts sometimes incoherent, as if confirming rumours that he’d suffered a nervous breakdown in America when he realised that he wouldn’t be able to make a living as a composer in a country whose music colleges turn out thousands of aspiring composers every year. But in moments of clarity (which formed most of the three hours we chatted), Gonsalves pulled out photographs and yellowing newspaper clippings to take me back to the time in the mid-1960s when he’d attempted to merge the symphonies of his Goan heritage with the Hindustani melodies and rhythms he had come to discover in the film studios.

In this, Gonsalves’ ambition outstripped that of his contemporaries. Goan musicians had been sought after by film composers since the ’40s, when A.B. Alburquerque and Peter Dorado teamed up with a Sikh saxophone player named Ram Singh to form the ARP Party – an acronym that in those uneasy years also stood for Air Raid Police. The source of their appeal lay across a yawning musical chasm: while Indian classical music has a melodic basis, western classical music – in which Goans had been rigorously trained in parish schools established by the Portuguese who had ruled their home state since 1510 – has a harmonic foundation. To wit, all the performers at an Indian classical music concert reiterate the same melodic line, but western classical ensembles play different notes of related pitches.

When Hindi film music entered a period of rapid evolution during the Second World War, composers realised that the small groups they’d previously used could not effectively convey the drama unfolding on screen. So they formed large orchestras that ranged dholaks and sitars along with banks of violins, swathes of trumpets and a Hawaiian guitar or two. Since not many musicians from other communities knew how to play saxophones or clarinets, Goans came to form the bulk of the orchestras.

But they also had another, rather more influential role. Until then, composers would rehearse their groups (which usually had fewer than 10 musicians) until they’d memorised their parts before leading them into recording sessions. But if the members of an orchestra were to play in unison and the tone colour of their instruments was to be employed most effectively, they needed to read the notes off scores, with each musician’s role clearly laid out. Few Hindi film composers, most of whom were trained in the Hindustani classical tradition, knew how to score music for the new ensembles. That task was performed by a Goan ‘arranger’.

Typically, the work proceeded thus. The producer would organise a ‘sitting’ (as the Goans came to call the baithaks) at which the composer (most often a Hindu), the lyricist (usually an Urdu-speaking Muslim) and the arranger would flop down on comfortable cushions to listen to the director narrate the plot. When the director indicated the point at which a song was necessary, the composer would hum out a melody or pick it out on his harmonium. It was the arranger’s task to note down these fragments, which the composer would later piece together into an entire song.

But even then, the composer would craft only the verse and the chorus. The arranger was responsible for fashioning the melodic bridges, for shaping the parts for individual instruments and often even wrote the background music. The arranger wasn’t merely a secretary. As I discovered while researching a previous essay, the Goans drew on their bicultural heritage to give Bollywood music its promiscuous charm, slipping in slivers of Dixieland stomp, Portuguese fados, Ellingtonesque doodles, cha cha cha, Mozart and Bach themes. Long before fusion music became fashionable, it was being performed every day in Bombay’s film studios.

But Anthony Gonsalves wanted to push the envelope even further. He wanted to compose raga-based symphonies that could be performed in the world’s leading concert halls. He travelled to Bombay in 1943, already a seasoned musician at 16. He had been recognised as a child prodigy and appointed choir master at a local church at age 12. He found his first job in the city as a violinist in the group of the composer Naushad in 1943. His talent was overwhelmingly apparent and he soon graduated to doing arrangements for composers around the city. He was also a highly prized teacher.

Every Sunday, his apartment at Sushila Sadan on Bandra’s Linking Road was thrown open to eager students, two of whom – R.D. Burman and Pyarelal – would become significant composers themselves. Unlike many of his Goan peers, whose western-trained ears couldn’t quite wrap themselves around the sinuous lines of Hindustani tunes (though they could play them well enough from a score), Gonsalves developed a deep passion for raga-based music. ‘It struck me very hard in my heart and my mind,’ he explained. ‘Melodically and rhythmically it is so rich.’

When other musicians went off for a smoke between takes, he’d engage in jugalbandi call-and-answer jam sessions with the flautist Pannalal Ghosh. He sought out Pandit Ram Narayan, Pandit Shyam Sunder and Ustad Inam Ali Khan to deepen his knowledge of the tradition. Soon, he was trying to find ways to meld the two systems. After a hard day in the studios, he would spend his nights committing to paper the fantasies in his head. It wasn’t easy. ‘A raga isn’t like a ladder, on which you take one step at time,’ he told me. ‘It’s like a path up the mountain. It winds more and there are unusual intervals between stages.’

He gave his creations names like Sonatina Indiana, Concerto in Raag Sarang and Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in Todi Taat. In April 1958, his dream took voice for the first time. Gonsalves founded (and funded) the Indian Symphony Orchestra, a group of 110 musicians assembled specifically to perform his compositions. ‘I paid my own money to put up this concert because I wanted to show the richness of our country’s music,’ Gonsalves explained. Featuring playback singers Lata Mangeshkar and Manna Dey as soloists, the works were performed in the quadrangle of St. Xavier’s College to an eager audience. ‘It wasn’t fusion,’ Gonsalves insisted. ‘I just took ragas and scored them for an orchestra and choir.’

Other concerts followed. But by many accounts, the experiments were hailed with less enthusiasm than Gonsalves had anticipated. The composer Vanraj Bhatia, who was in the audience, remembers the performance as being ambitious but ‘a little filmi.’ Nonetheless, the events boosted Gonsalves’ reputation sufficiently to earn him a fellowship to New York a few years later. He was vague about what he did in the US, but a proud certificate on the wall of his Goa house attests that he is a member of the American Society of Composers, Publishers and Authors. He claims he returned to India because his family needed him, but his chronology of events seemed confused. He shrugged off questions about why he didn’t return to the film industry and about how he kept himself occupied since.

It was time to leave.

Compared to the journey of other Goan musicians, Anthony Gonsalves’ story is unusual, not just for his singular devotion to Hindustani music but also for the brevity of his route to the studios. Even before they found their niche in the Hindi film industry, music had always proved a dependable avenue for Goans to make a living. Though some people have retrospectively developed what the writer Fredrick Noronha describes as ‘Lustalgia’, an inflated sense of yearning for the (often imaginary) benefits of the Lusitanian empire, the Portuguese did little to educate or employ Goans.

This necessitated a continuous stream of migration out of the emerald territory. Bombay – ruled by another European sovereign – was often a stepping stone to other territories held by the British. Goans marched into police and military bands across the subcontinent and in East Africa. Others made their way into symphony orchestras at royal courts. In an engaging article about Bombay’s early Goan musicians, the historian Teresa Albuquerque writes about Josique Menzies, a Goan musician born in the Seychelles who was employed by the Maharaja of Bikaner.
By the ’30s, Goan dance bands had been established in most major cities and hill-stations across the subcontinent. Though schooled in the western classical tradition, many of them demonstrated a strong affinity for a musical trend that was the rage across the globe: hot jazz.

To be sure, India was no stranger to African-American music. The first performance of ‘minstrelsy’ music in the subcontinent was held in 1849, when a legendary musician named William Bernard stopped in India on his way back from Australia. African-American performers followed each decade after that and by the time ragtime had metamorphosed into jazz, India’s appetite for hot music was being fed by a steady stream of records from America. Still, the Indian jazz scene didn’t really take off until the mid-30s, when the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay hired its first resident jazz outfit, a nine-piece band led by a violinist from Minnesota named Leon Abbey.

But it was the bands that succeeded him, led by a cornet player named Cricket Smith and a pianist named Teddy Weatherford, that left the deepest impression on the subcontinent: they hired local Anglo-Indian and Goan musicians – Josique Mezies, Karachi-born Mickey Correa and trumpet player Frank Fernand, among them – and helped them discover the song of their souls. ‘Jazz gave us freedom of expression,’ Frank Fernand, now in his late eighties and stricken with Parkinson’s, told me. ‘You played jazz the way you feel – morning you play differently, evening you play differently.’

When the Hindi film industry came looking for musicians who played brass and string instruments to brighten its hues, Bombay’s jazz musicians were their first targets. Soon after, as the demand for dance bands in the far-flung provinces declined with the departure of the British, more swing musicians were available to fill the rosters. The most famous of the post-Independence Goan entrants to the film industry was Sebastian D’Souza, who had led the house band at Stiffle’s hotel in Lahore and managed outfits in Muree and other towns in what later became Pakistan.

After an initial struggle in Bombay, D’Souza found himself doing arrangements for the duo of Shankar and Jaikishan, striking up a collaboration that lasted more than two decades. ‘He expanded the palette of colours for the film orchestras,’ the composer Vanraj Bhatia said. ‘Shankar-Jaikishan wouldn’t have their signature style if it hadn’t been for Sebastian’s genius.’

But the figure from that period who really intrigued the jazz obsessive in me was a kinky-haired hornman who went by the stage name Chic Chocolate. Chic – who was born Antonio Xavier Vaz in Aldona in 1916 – died in 1967, two years before I was born. But his legacy lives on through the dynasty that he founded: his three daughters – Yvonne, Ursula and Kittu – each married a jazz musician, and my interest in the genre burst into life at their concerts. My curiosity about the man who was known as the Louis Armstrong of India reached fever pitch a year ago, when I came to realise that he’d actually cut several 78 RPM records in the ’40s and ’50s.

I made a frenzied flurry of phone-calls to his family to try to obtain copies of the songs, which are probably the first original jazz tunes ever recorded in India. As it turned out, they had only one. Still, they graciously let me leaf through their photo albums and their memories of the man his contemporaries credited not only with looking like a ‘Negro’, but also playing like one. (I later found a stash of Chic Chocolate records through fellow obsessives at the Society of Indian Record Collectors. His prowess, I was delighted to discover, had not been overstated.)

Like all his Goan contemporaries, Chic learned music at his local parochial school, and first earned acclaim as a child singing at ‘kheols’, street-side musical plays that are often mounted around Christmas. No one’s quite sure how he got his nickname. His wife, Martha, told me it was a contraction of his mother’s term of endearment for him – Chico, little one. His son Erwell, a drummer, told me that it was the residue of archaic ’40s slang. ‘When he was playing a really hot passage, the other musicians would say, ‘That’s really chick, man,’ Erwell said.

Either way, it’s clear that by the mid-40s – after stints in Rangoon and Mussourie – Chic had established himself as Bombay’s hottest jazz musician. He was ‘in a class by himself’, stated a review in the now-defunct Evening News of India during that period. Another newspaper article from the time describes Chic Chocolate’s outfit as ‘Bombay’s topflight band’.

By the time he was leading an 11-piece band at the Taj, Chic and his family were living in an apartment in Colaba. The flat had one bedroom, but two pianos – Chic couldn’t resist the urge to buy a second after he found that Mehboob Studio was selling one for just Rs 200. The home was always filled with music: if the five children weren’t practising their scales, the Garad record changer was dropping down a stack of records by Basie, Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and by Chic’s idol, Louis Armstrong.

Chic took his Armstrong impersonations seriously. ‘He’d watched movies like High Society, Hello Dolly and Five Pennies and tried to copy Louis Armstrong’s playing and singing as closely as possible,’ his daughter Ursula recalled. ‘He followed his every move.’ Before gigs, he’d instruct Martha to pack his case with at least half-a-dozen white handkerchiefs so that he could mop his brow in true Armstrong style.

One morning in 1964, Chic woke up his children at dawn, packed them into his black Hilman car and drove them to the Taj. They were lined up outside the lift. After a few minutes, Louis Armstrong, their father’s hero, emerged in a cloud of suitcases and sidemen. He greeted the children affectionately and departed for the airport. A few evenings before, the older children had been taken to meet with Armstrong’s singer, Jewel Brown, and she’d given them an autographed photograph of herself. They later went to see Armstrong perform at Shanmukananda Hall. But all these years later, none of them is sure whether India’s Louis Armstrong actually had a conversation with the man he’d admired so long.

Like many Goan musicians of the time, Chic Chocolate indulged his passion for jazz in the night, but his mornings were spent in the film studios, enlivening the movies with his swinging arrangements. He first grabbed the nation’s ears with his brassy work with the composer C. Ramchandra: tunes like Gore Gore (from Samadhi, 1950) and Shola Jo Bhadke (Albela, 1951) presaged by a decade the Indo-Jazz fusion encounters of the ’60s.

He also collaborated with Madan Mohan, who gave the trumpet player a photograph of himself signed, ‘To my most faithful comrade, Chick – with all my best wishes.’ The family looked forward to Madan Mohan’s visits with some amusement: his huge car would always run into problems when he tried to park in the narrow Colaba lane on which they lived. But Chic had no trouble getting Madan Mohan’s melodies to swing. The eclecticism of the influences he brought to bear never fails to surprise me. Only a few weeks ago I realised why an instrumental passage in Chic Chocolate’s arrangement of Madan Mohan’s Ae Dil Mujhe Bata De sounded so familiar: it was a phrase from the Portuguese fado Coimbra that I knew from my Amalia Rodrigues albums.
Chic’s lives as jazz man and as film musician sometimes merged. Albela actually featured Chic and his band on screen in a song sequence, dressing them in frilly Latinesque costumes. Chic capitalised on the film’s success by dressing his band in those costumes for their dance gigs too.
Chic’s career was tragically short. He died in May 1967, aged 51, his end speeded by his Goan fondness for liquor. His casket was borne to the grave by Bombay’s foremost musicians, including the accordion player Goody Servai and the drummer Francis Vaz, and his Selma trumpet was placed across his chest. Shortly after, Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat hit the screen. The bluesy song Rut Jawan Jawan featured several close-ups of the Louis Armstrong of India playing his trumpet solos from the bandstand. Whenever they missed his presence, Chic’s children would go off to Garrison theatre in the Colaba military area to commune with their father.

The Majorda sky was blue-black when my interview with Anthony Gonsalves petered to a close. I knew I had bothered the maestro too much already and that it was time for supper. As I said my goodbyes, he urged me to eat another piece of the delicious jackfruit just plucked from his garden and offered me a tantalising thought. He had a bundle of all his original scores carefully tucked away in a trunk in the next room, he said, and would like for nothing more than for them to be performed again. But thus far, no one had been willing to put up the money for a concert.

Over the last decade, the march of technology and changing tastes have displaced Goan musicians from the studio. The synthesizer, the drum machine and the digital sequencer are now in vogue. Besides changing the texture of Hindi film sounds, these devices allow the music director to be his own arranger – and play all the instruments too, if he should choose to. As in film music, so in the body politic. The privileging of individual needs over the collective good has made Nehru’s theme sound hopelessly off key. As I sped through the dusk on the back of a motorcycle taxi, my head buzzed with schemes to persuade Goan businessmen to fund an Anthony Gonsalves concert.

It wouldn’t take much, I’m convinced, to introduce his crownmusic to the inheritors of the new millennium.

* The research for this article was supported by a fellowship from the Sarai programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.