ThePunchMagazineDecember2017

the www.thepunchmagazine.com
DECEMBER 2017
SUNIL
KANT
MUNJAL
HERO FOR
THE ARTS
By Suman Tarafdar

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m a g a z i n e

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Contributing Editors
Claire Colley
C P Surendran
Daisy Rockwell
Devdan Chaudhuri
Ina Puri
Lakshmi Govindrajan
Ranbir Singh Sidhu
Rachel Tanzer
Rajorshi Chakraborti
Sathya Saran
Shahnaz Bashir
Siddhartha Gigoo
Sudeep Sen
Suman Tarafdar
Publisher
Shireen Quadri
the www.thepunchmagazine.com
DECEMBER 2017
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KANT
MUNJAL
HERO FOR
THE ARTS
By Suman Tarafdar
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WWW.THEPUNCHMAGAZINE.COM, DECEMBER 2017
14
arts i interview
Hero for the Arts
The Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF),
organised in December in Goa, is a
smorgasbord of arts and culture. A
triumph of hope, this is the brainchild
of Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman,
The Hero Enterprise and Chief
Patron, Serendipity Arts Festival. In
this interview with Suman Tarafdar,
Munjal says in India, art is either
seen as elitist, or mediocre. And
several traditional arts were threatened
with extinction due to lack of
support and patronage. And this is
a perception he wants to tackle
In Search of a
Good Story
On the jury for Cinestaan India’s
Storytellers Script Contest, Anjum
Rajabali, India’s best-known screenwriter,
is hunting for well-written
scripts, based on original ideas.
Rajabali has led various writers’ rights
initiatives in India and is most notably
recognised for lobbying with other writers
and activists for amendments in
the Copyright Act in favour of writers.
He talks about the contest and the
finer nuances of writing for cinema
cinema i interview
22

28
literature i interview
A Gaze at World’s
Darkness
In We That Are Young, Preti Taneja
dwells on Shakespeare’s King Lear to
tell the story of darkness of our world.
A commentary on contemporary India,
it is the story of a country that, like the
old king, is descending into madness.
The novel, Taneja says in an interview,
is a ‘translation’ — of language
and form — of King Lear, to explore
the messy connections between the
past and present, England and India
The Long Short
music i profile
Jishnu “Short Round” Guha, 28, who
performed at NH7 Weekender Pune edition
in December 2017, is someone who’s
reconfiguring the pace of the Indian
music scene with a charming rawness in
the time of polished, practiced and prepared
newcomers. Lakshmi Govindrajan
Javeri, who attended the festival, profiles
the unlikely frontman with a moniker and
a band name that is distinctly sidekick —
Short Round — the singer-songwriter with
searing honesty of sound and words who
is here for the long haul 40
POETRY
Five poems by Edward Hirsch, eminent American
poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about
reading poetry, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love
with Poetry, and has published nine books of poems
68

festival i interview
No Child’s Play
46
The 10th edition of Bookaroo, an exciting
annual ritual for children and their parents
which puts together an eclectic bouquet of
activities for the children of all ages wherever
it is organised, wound up in November in New
Delhi, but the spirit of book love that India’s
first children’s festival inspires year after
year among children lingers on. Richa Jha
gets Swati Roy, one of the founders and
inimitable driving forces behind it, talk about
the book-jamboree which continues to get
bigger, livelier and more vibrant.
Meeting Madhavan
literature i fiction
“She had been waiting for ten minutes now
and was desperately in need of some distraction.
That is why she asked the waiter to
bring her the menu-card. Of course, if her
mother were here, or had some kind of
body-camera installed on her, something
that Sandhya knew that her mother was
fully capable of, she would have been livid.”
A short story by Radhika Venkatarayan,
a qualitative researcher based in Mumbai,
who is currently working on her novel 54
POETRY
Five poems by Humphrey ‘Huck’ Astley, poet and
musician based in Oxford. His works include the
album and stage-show Alexander the Great and
the pamphlet The Gallows-Humored Melody
72

music i interview
Reimagining
Rhythms
60
Scottish composer and guitar virtuoso
Simon Thacker, who performed
at The Sacred Pushkar in December
2017, is the leader of some of the
most prescient ensembles. His
group, Simon Thacker’s Svara-Kanti,
is world’s leading Indo-Western collective.
In an interview with Shireen
Quadri at the festival, Thacker talks
about how music shapes his life
The Sound of Music
music i essay
For three years, Pushkar has seen its holy
ghats reverberate with the strains of music
in modes which evoke the ardour of piety.
For three years, The Sacred Pushkar,
organised by Teamwork Arts and presented
by Shree Cement, has celebrated a variety
of traditions, aspects that define and
redefine the word “sacred”. Shireen Quadri,
who attended the 2017 edition of the
festival, writes about the rhythms of Sufi,
gospel, acapella, folk and North Indian
and Carnatic classical music that echoed
across its lakes and ghats 74
POETRY
Eleven Poems by Riyaz Latif, author of two
collections of poetry — Hindasa Be-Khwaab Raton
Ka (2006) and Adam Taraash (2016).
Translated from Urdu by the poet
104

hospitality i essay
94
Celebrating Rare Flavours
The exclusive pop-up of Masque, the high-end
restaurant, was held at The Lodhi in Delhi in
December. Owner Aditi Dugar, co-founder and
head chef Prateek Sadhu and event curator
Raaj Sanghvi together put up a 14-course
elaborate and impressive meal. About 19
sous chefs worked in an open kitchen to whip
up gastronomical delicacies. They served rare
food in style, in a setting that was elegant
and graceful. It was quite an experience to
eat fresh seasonal wild harvests from Ladakh
and Kashmir, writes Shireen Quadri
Making a Difference
hospitality i events
The LaLiT hosted a series of events in
November-December 2017 that aligned
with its broader objective to be inclusive.
The LaLiT New Delhi hosted a ramp walk to
support acid attack survivors. The hotel
also kickstarted brunches at Alfresco at
The LaLiT New Delhi. After its launch, the
LaLiT has moved a step closer to its vision
of making the society inclusive. The hotel
has undertaken several initiatives to bring
the LGBTQI community to the mainstream.
Shireen Quadri writes a roundup 118
POETRY
Six poems by Delhi-based teacher and library movement
activist whose first collection of poems, Delhi
Love Songs, has been published by Speaking Tiger In
association with the Jehangir Sabavala Foundation
112

A SHOT OF
SUBSTANCE
p
www.thepunchmagazine.com

EDITOR’S
Note
The Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF), organised
in December in Goa, is a smorgasbord of arts
and culture. A triumph of hope, this is the
brainchild of Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, The
Hero Enterprise and Chief Patron, Serendipity Arts
Festival. In the cover interview with Suman
Tarafdar, Munjal says that in India, art is either seen
as elitist or mediocre. Several traditional arts were
threatened with extinction due to lack of support
and patronage. And this is a perception he wants to
tackle. He also feels the arts must be remunerative,
stressing that the arts must be able to retain talent
and emerge as a viable career option. In this interview,
he explains the need for corporate philanthropy
and impact investing for the arts, and why it is
vital to present India’s traditional skills in a modern
and contemporary format that is more easily acceptable
to the audience of today.
On the jury for Cinestaan India’s Storytellers
Script Contest, Anjum Rajabali, India’s best-known
screenwriter who has spent over 20 years in the film
industry, is hunting for well-written scripts, based
on original ideas. Rajabali has led various writers’
rights initiatives in India and is most notably recognised
for lobbying with other writers and activists
for amendments in the Copyright Act in favour of
writers. He talks about the contest and the finer
nuances of writing for cinema.
In her debut novel, We That Are Young, UK-based
author, academic and human rights activist Preti
Taneja dwells on Shakespeare’s King Lear to tell the
story of the darkness of our world. A commentary
on contemporary India, the novel is the story of a
country that, like the old king, is descending into
madness. We That Are Young, Taneja says in an inwww.thepunchmagazine.com
the DECEMBER 2017
SUNIL
KANT
MUNJAL
HERO FOR
THE ARTS
By Suman Tarafdar
editor@thepunchmagazine.com

depth interview with The Punch, is a “translation” —
of language and form — of Shakespeare’s King Lear,
to explore the messy connections between the past
and present, England and India — “to try to see our
world and its darkness with clear eyes”.
Jishnu “Short Round” Guha,28, who performed at
NH7 Weekender Pune edition in December 2017, is
reconfiguring the pace of the Indian music scene.
Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri profiles the singer-songwriter
with searing honesty of sound and words who
is here for the long haul.
The 10th edition of Bookaroo, an exciting annual
ritual for children and their parents wound up in
November in New Delhi, but the spirit of book love
that India’s first children’s festival inspires year after
year among children lingers on. Richa Jha gets Swati
Roy, one of the founders, talks about her vision.
Scottish composer and guitar virtuoso Simon
Thacker, who performed at The Sacred Pushkar in
December, is the leader of prescient ensembles. In an
interview with Shireen Quadri at The Sacred
Pushkar, Thacker talks about how music shapes his
life. She also writes about the festival, which brings
people from variegated hues of cultures closer.
The exclusive pop-up of Masque, the high-end
restaurant, was held at The Lodhi in Delhi recently.
About 19 sous chefs whipped up gastronomical delicacies,
writes Shireen Quadri, who also does a
roundup of some of The LaLiT’s events that aligned
with its broader objective to be inclusive.
In fiction, we feature a short story by Radhika
Venkatarayan, a qualitative researcher based in
Mumbai. In poetry, we publish poems by Edward
Hirsch, eminent American poet and critic; Humphrey
‘Huck’ Astley, poet and musician based in Oxford;
Riyaz Latif, author of two collections of poetry in
Urdu, and Delhi-based teacher and library movement
activist whose first collection of poems, Delhi
Love Songs, was published by Speaking Tiger Books in
association with the Jehangir Sabavala Foundation in
December 2017.

HERO FOR
SUMAN
TARAFDAR
sunil Kant Munjal, chairman,
the Hero enterprise and chief
patron, serendipity arts festival.
Photo: The Punch Magazine

THE ARTS
serendipity arts festival,
held in Goa in December,
is a heady smorgasbord
of arts and culture. a
brainchild of sunil Kant
munjal, the multi-disciplinary
fest aims to highlight
interconnectedness of arts
and redefine the way
people connect with arts

ARTS
We are getting used to it — the third week in Goa will be heady — a
smorgasbord of culture and style if you will. While the first edition of
the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) had set the bar extremely high, the
second edition raised the bar even further. With an increased number of venues
— this multi-disciplinary fest covers visual arts, theatre, music, dance, culinary
arts, photography, crafts and special projects. While the number of disciplines
remained the same, the number of venues actually went up to ten. Showcasing
and interweaving this diverse range of disciplines is never easy, but the festival
managed to draw in a far greater number of audiences, both local and international,
wowing them with the quality, even the dexterity of content.
A triumph of hope, this is the brainchild of Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman,
The Hero Enterprise and Chief Patron, Serendipity Arts Festival. Looking far
more relaxed as the second edition drew widespread applause, Munjal says in
India, art is either seen as elitist, or mediocre. And several of the traditional
arts were threatened with extinction due to lack of support and patronage.
And this is a perception he wants to tackle. He also feels the arts must be
remunerative, stressing that the arts must be able to retain talent and emerge
as a viable career option. In this interview, he explains the need for corporate
philanthropy and impact investing for the arts, and why it is vital to present
India’s traditional skills in a modern and contemporary format that is more
easily acceptable to the audience of today. Excerpts from the interview:
Suman Tarafdar: Serendipity Arts Festival has set an enviable benchmark.
What was your personal takeaway from it?
Sunil Kant Munjal: There were many takeaways. First, that there is room in
India for the arts to flourish and be accepted, provided it is presented in the
right format. Second, art is not an elitist activity; it can be enjoyed by all
Indians, provided the right opportunities are created and the right exposure is
given. Third, scale is important in India. People were bowled over by the quality
and diversity of Serendipity — they had never seen so much of India in one
place before.
Suman Tarafdar: What led to the formation of Serendipity as a cultural festival/platform?
Sunil Kant Munjal: I have been in several conversations about the arts in
India; art is either seen as elitist, or mediocre. Serendipity was set up to change
this perception.
Also, we felt that India’s arts, over the centuries, had somehow lost its inter-
16
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
disciplinary nature and inter-connectedness; it existed mostly in silos, like the
western system. It was also quite clear that several arts were dying or losing
their essence. As the profession is not remunerative, artists, artisans and craftsmen
are moving to cities, and giving up their skills. We feared that if the trend
continued India’s culture and heritage would eventually get lost. Most skills
related to the arts and craft in India have been passed through the ages; there
are no blue books documenting skills.
Nowhere in the world has arts and culture flourished without patronage.
Lack of patronage means that the young don’t get exposure to different
aspects of the arts to make up their minds on whether they like it or not.
So SAF was developed as a scale initiative to address the issues that I’ve just
flagged: bring back interdisciplinarity; revive dying arts through support and
proper documentation; reintroduce patronage; and inject enthusiasm in the
arts amongst the youth. Plus, our intent with SAF is also to open conversations
across fields, disciplines, experts and genres. We see Serendipity as a cultural
platform that would make art inclusive, immersive and accessible to all, and
the Serendipity Arts Festival is a cultural experiment.
Suman Tarafdar: What are the most urgent requirements that traditional arts
need to flourish in India?
Sunil Kant Munjal: The arts must be remunerative; the arts must be able to
retain talent and emerge as a viable career option. Opportunities to learn and
showcase need to increase.
Through strong communication, all involved stakeholders — citizens, corporates
and the state – must be made aware of their responsibility to make the
performing and visual arts sustainable, and turn these into a dynamic, creative
industry. Self Help Groups, co-operatives and private sourcing initiatives
need to be promoted in rural areas to upgrade traditional skills in both visual
and performing arts. This sector requires visible financial support, so corporate
philanthropy and impact investing must be actively promoted and supported.
Quality can play an important part in adding sheen to Indian art. So,
the corporate sector must be involved in providing design, logistics and other
muscle, where relevant.
Suman Tarafdar: How do you see the role of patronage in the arts?
Sunil Kant Munjal: In any era, activities like education, research, culture and
the arts can only thrive through patronage — patrons and philanthropists
need to play a crucial role.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 17

ARTS
sunil Kant Munjal,
Photo courtesy of
Serendipity Arts Festival
18
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
Besides, arts and culture is the single most important bridge between a country’s
past and its future; and if this bridge collapses, a country will struggle to
discover itself. India has had a rich tradition in art patronage — but this practice
mostly died with the demise of kingdoms and native states.
Art patronage needs to be revived and philanthropy must be fully supported
—whether at the state level, the industry level or in PPP mode. It needs
full fiscal and budgetary support, and a mechanism must make the arts attractive
to VC firms and angel investors.
Suman Tarafdar: Now that the trust has done a couple of festivals, what have
been the learnings?
Sunil Kant Munjal: It was a wonderful to develop a platform where multiple
individuals and institutions could come together.
We also learnt that it is very important to inform people well in advance
about programmes; this enables proper scheduling.
Also, festivals can create a buzz, but the real work of promoting and developing
the arts needs to happen behind the scenes. Mentoring, residency and
skilling programmes must continue throughout the year. Strong work is also
required in the area of art research — and these initiatives must be sustained
throughout the year.
Suman Tarafdar: From the responses to the festival, what have been the most
encouraging aspects and where do you see the biggest challenges?
Sunil Kant Munjal: The quality, the scale, and the styles were highly appreciated.
The experiment with interdisciplinarity released new energy. It was
especially encouraging to see the responses and the fervour of the youngsters
who came in. It gave us great satisfaction to create a truly inclusive festival with
school children, amateurs, adults, professionals, historians, curators and cultural
experts coming together and participating. The festival was also uniquely friendly
for the differently abled, with wheelchair access, sign language, Braille, etc.
Of course, no matter what we did or attempted, we couldn’t do full justice to
the rich culture of the subcontinent. For this festival to thrive and truly be contemporary,
individuals, companies, and institutions must get involved and turn
this into a mission, which serves not just national, but also international needs.
Suman Tarafdar: What kind of efforts will be needed for the revival of many
disappearing arts in India?
Sunil Kant Munjal: Art and culture preservation is something we need to
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 19

ARTS
sunil Kant Munjal.
Photo: The Punch Magazine
20
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
learn from the Western countries, or even some of the other Asian countries.
It is also vital to present India’s traditional skills in a modern and contemporary
format that is more easily acceptable to the audience of today.
To give an example, at the Serendipity Arts Festival, we undertook multiple
projects to help artisans tweak their products and designs to make them
desirable for contemporary art buyers and users. The sale of these products
was permitted to let artisans see the possibilities emerging from their skill.
Suman Tarafdar: How effective has the public sector, including government
ministries and institutions, been in aiding and preserving traditional arts?
Sunil Kant Munjal: A beginning has been made in some areas — and many
public sector agencies are working very hard; but many of the initiatives need
to be handled more efficiently.
A unified and cohesive effort is vital across ministries and government departments;
and the private sector must be made an integral part of this unification
and consolidation process.
Suman Tarafdar: In what ways will the Serendipity Arts Trust work to revive
the arts, besides the festival?
Sunil Kant Munjal: Besides organising festivals and cultural events in different
locations, we have also held exchange programmes by various artists
between India and other countries. Our idea has been to give local artists and
artisans exposure to different cultures and audiences.
We are also undertaking residency programmes in multiple arts disciplines
to strength and broaden existing skills in this area. We are also looking at
developing long-term projects aimed at creating livelihoods and helping artisans
improve their craft, and connecting them to markets.
Suman Tarafdar: You had mentioned taking the festival to other venues as
well. What is happening on that front?
Sunil Kant Munjal: We have already started hosting smaller versions and
curtain-raisers of the flagship festival in Delhi; a couple of others are being
planned in Mumbai and Bangalore. This festival belongs to everybody — and
not just a particular region. We are hoping that more Indian corporates, institutions
and state government get involved and help us create a truly global
festival of the South Asian arts. In this way, the festival can genuinely become
a bridge between India, its neighbourhood and the rest of the world.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 21

CINEMA
In search of
a good story
on the jury for cinestaan
india’s storytellers script contest,
anjum rajabali is hunting for
well-written scripts, based
on original ideas
22
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
anjum rajabali.
Photo: Cinestaan Digital
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 23

CINEMA
Anjum Rajabali, 59, is India’s best-known screenwriter. Having spent
over 20 years in the film industry, he is best known for films like
Drohkaal, Ghulam, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Raajneeti, Satyagraha and
Aarakshan. He has also led various writers’ rights initiatives in India and is most
notably recognised for lobbying with other prominent writers and activists for
amendments in the Copyright Act in favour of writers.
Rajabali is the head of Screenwriting at Whistling Woods as well as the
Honorary Head of Screenplay Writing at the Film and Television Institute of India
(FTII), a course that he founded in 2004. Rajabali also conducts coveted workshops,
seminars and conferences on screenwriting that have helped writers in
India and abroad. In mid-2014, he joined hands with Mumbai Mantra as convener
for their new initiative, the Mumbai Mantra CineRise Screenwriting
Programme — 100 Storytellers A Year — to nurture screenwriting talents in India.
As part of the Progressive Writers Group (PWG) India, Rajabali has been
striving to see improvements in writers’ rights in the Indian film industry. PWG
has been steering the Film Writers Association (FWA) since 2008, with one consistent
goal: Empower the writer. The FWA has lobbied, with writer and lyricist
Javed Akhtar, for amending the Copyright Act in favour of writers and has also
fought several cases against producers to get justice for their members.
Rajabali’s latest engagement is “Cinestaan India’s Storytellers Script
Contest”, a one-of-its-kind script writing competition. Rajabali is on the jury for
the contest, along with actor Aamir Khan, director Raju Hirani and fellow
screenwriter Juhi Chaturvedi. An initiative by Rohit Khattar’s Cinestaan Digital
Pvt. Ltd. (Cinestaan.com), it will award a prize of Rs 25 lakh to the best script.
The total cash prizes for this contest will be Rs 50 lakh. Some of the best scripts
shall be curated to be part of the Cinestaan Script Bank — a treasure trove that
studios and production houses can delve into and then directly liaise with the
writers, who often find it difficult to get their voice across.
The contest, which was launched on October 15, 2017, will remain open and
accept entries till January 15, 2018. The scripts that have been submitted will be
evaluated by the jury and the results will be announced next year. Cinestaan
Digital is focused on building cinema-related products and services for
networked audiences. One of its first offerings, cinestaan.com is an attempt to
record and recount the rich past and vibrant present of Indian cinema and it is
working to put together the most comprehensive database on Indian cinema
(www.cinestaan.com).
In this interview, Rajabali says that the plot and the character spring from
each other. “They’re inseparable from the genesis of the idea of the script, all the
way till its final draft. It is the interplay of the characters with the circumstances
that I throw their way that forms the story. Unpeeling characters as they strug-
24
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
gle with plot problems is what makes the story interesting for me,” he says.
Excerpts from an interview:
The Punch: Tell us something about the Cinestaan India’s Storytellers Script
Contest. What kinds of scripts will you keep an eye out for?
Anjum Rajabali: The Contest has been designed to get all scriptwriters to give
a script their best shot. We do believe that there is a lot of hidden writing talent
in this country. Perhaps a huge contest like this, with such attractive cash
awards, could unearth that. What we’re looking for are interestingly written
scripts, based on original ideas. There is no restriction on or preference for any
particular genre or backdrop.
The Punch: You have been at the forefront of the struggle to give screenwriting
its due. How crucial do you think is a good script or screenplay to any film?
Anjum Rajabali: A good script is imperative for any film, frankly. The primary
reason why a film fails to connect with its audience is because the script wasn’t
conceived well, or crafted competently. To use William Goldman, the celebrated
screenwriter’s line: You can make a bad film from a good script. But you can
never make a good film from a bad script!
The Punch: Who are some of the contemporary screenwriters you admire?
What aspects of their crafts fascinate you the most?
Anjum Rajabali: I like much of the work that Jaideep Sahni has done, and I
admire the work that Juhi Chaturvedi is doing. They pay very close attention to
the milieu in which their story is set, and explore their characters in detail. There
is a cultural specificity to their writing, which I find very attractive. And, they
come up with very nice lines for their characters, in so many scenes.
Apart from these two, there are many new young ones too who are doing very
interesting, fresh work. We could be looking at a future where we have a surfeit
of well-written scripts!
The Punch: In what ways can the industry empower its screenwriters? What are
some of the challenges and bottlenecks do you see along their way, especially
those trying to make a mark?
Anjum Rajabali: Well, the film industry is beginning to acknowledge the centrality
of good scripts. As a result, the filmmaking process is creating space for
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 25

CINEMA
writers to do their work satisfactorily, unlike earlier times when scripts were
being written while the film was under production.
However, writing fees remain at the low end for the average writer. While
making their budgets, filmmakers should allocate large fractions for writing
fees, keeping a buffer in case they need to hire re-writers. Then, credit allocation
has to be contractually guaranteed, which is not in the contracts of several studios
and production houses. Third, directors should understand that a script
comes with a writer’s vision, which should be considered and understood
before deciding on the changes needed. Directors should remain with the directorial
credit, and allow writers to write and take credit for that.
The Punch: Tell us about your influences in cinema and literature. Who are
some of the filmmakers you have looked up to and others whom you would
love to work with?
Anjum Rajabali: Mythology has been an abiding love in my life. And, I guess,
it has had a lasting influence on me not just as a writer, but as a human being as
well. In literature, as a child, I was hugely influenced by Charles Dickens’ novels.
Later, Shakespeare, Ibsen, John le Carre. Some of the Indian filmmakers
whose work I have liked are Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak, the
early work of Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Ratnam and Rajkumar
Santoshi. From the current directors, I’d like to write for Vishal Bhardwaj,
Anurag Basu, Abhishek Chaubey, Navdeep Singh.
The Punch: As a screenwriter, what is your own approach to a story? What
could be your recipe for a perfect script?
Anjum Rajabali: For me, the plot and the character sort of spring from each
other. They’re inseparable from the genesis of the idea of the script, all the way
till its final draft. It is the interplay of the characters with the circumstances that
I throw their way that forms the story. Unpeeling characters as they struggle
with plot problems is what makes the story interesting for me.
There’s no recipe, and can’t be, for a perfect script, I’m afraid. Writing a good
script, by itself, is a daunting task, full of back and forth movements. And, even
after it’s done and liked, the writer can only see flaws in it!
The Punch: How do you look at the Copyright Act now? Could you talk about
the changes you would want to see in the act for it to nurture screen writers.
Anjum Rajabali: The Copyright Act was amended in 2012, and now it makes a
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
lot of sense for screenwriters. Copyright is protected as soon as it is created.
Rights in it are assigned specific to the contract. Moreover, the right to receive
royalty is guaranteed and inalienable. It was a good amendment for everyone,
so I don’t think it should now be tinkered with, for a while.
The Punch: What will be your advice to a budding scriptwriter?
Anjum Rajabali: Start by acknowledging that writing a script is going to be a difficult
journey. It is going to demand patience, frustration tolerance, and a lot of
hard work that also involves much rewriting. So, be prepared for it, and do not
give up when the going gets hard. Two, write from the heart. Write what you
know (or can know) and believe in. Do not take up a plot which you are not interested
in! No amount of money or an attractive alliance is going to improve your
script. Only your interest will. And, third, pitch and defend your work with conviction.
It’s very easy to want to please the director or producer or star. If that is the
only reason you’re altering the script, you may be looking at bad work. Changes
are good, but provided the writer is convinced that it’ll improve the script.
The Punch: Do we have enough institutions in India to impart right training
and help screenwriters grow? What role do you think institutions like FTII and
NFDC could play?
Anjum Rajabali: No, unfortunately we haven’t taken training in filmmaking
seriously enough. And, within that, screenwriting has been the most neglected
discipline. FTII and Whistling Woods International (WWI) have good
courses that teach screenwriting, but we need more. FTII has begun a series
of 20-day courses in screenwriting, which is a good beginning. WWI does
large screenwriting masterclasses regularly. That’s encouraging too. Now,
Mr Ramesh Sippy is starting a film school in Mumbai University, and I
believe that SRFTI too is considering a specialised course in screenwriting.
We also do not have enough teachers of the subject, since screenwriting wasn’t
seen as a subject of study for a long time. But, I think good people are getting
attracted to its teaching, even if on a part-time basis, and soon we should
have a good number of learning opportunities for aspiring writers.
The Punch: What are some of the projects you are currently working on?
Anjum Rajabali: Well, there’s Salute that I’ve written, which Mahesh Mathai is
to direct. It is based on the life of Rakesh Sharma, India’s only cosmonaut. Then,
there are a couple of web series that I’m currently working on.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 27

LITERATURE
A gaze at wor
in We That Are Young,
preti taneja ‘translates’
the language and form
of shakespeare’s King
Lear to explore the messy
connections between the
past and present, england
and india
28
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
ld’s darkness
preti taneja.
Photo: Rory O’Bryen
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 29

LITERATURE
WE THAT ARE
YOUNG
By Preti Taneja,
Penguin Random
House India,
pp. 560, Rs 599
In her debut novel, We That Are Young, UKbased
author, academic and human rights
activist Preti Taneja dwells on
Shakespeare’s King Lear to tell the story of the
darkness of our world. A commentary on
contemporary India, the novel is the story of a
country that, like the old king, is descending
into madness. Jivan Singh, bastard son,
returns to Delhi after fifteen years of exile to
find a city on fire with protests and in the grip
of drought. On the same day, Devraj, father of
Jivan’s childhood playmates, founder of
India’s most important company, announces
his retirement, demanding daughterly love in
exchange for shares. Sita, his youngest child,
refuses to play, turning her back on the marriage
he has arranged. Her sisters Gargi and
Radha must take over the Company and
cement their father’s legacy. As they struggle
to make their names, a family and an empire
begin to unravel, careening from Delhi mansions
to luxury hotels, from city slums to the
streets of Kashmir, from palace to wayside.
Taneja was born in England to Indian parents
and spent most of her childhood holidays
in New Delhi. She has worked as a
human rights reporter and filmmaker in Iraq,
Jordan, Rwanda, and Kosovo. A fellow at
Warwick University, her 2014 novella,
Kumkum Malhotra, won the Gatehouse Press
New Fictions Prize. She is also the editor of
Visual Verse and was selected as an
AHRC/BBC Radio 3 New Generation
Thinker for 2014. We That Are Young, Taneja
says, is a “translation” — of language and
form — of Shakespeare’s King Lear, to explore
the messy connections between the past and
present, England and India — “to try to see
our world and its darkness with clear eyes”.
Excerpts from an interview:
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
The Punch: In We That Are Young, your homage to Shakespeare’s King Lear,
you delve into the inner worlds of the contemporary corporate India. In
many ways, the corporate India of today — with its insidious entrails of patriarchy,
misogyny, blind adherence to tradition and corruption — provides for
a perfect setting for such a retelling. How conscious were you of such parallels
when you set out to work on this novel?
Preti Taneja: We That Are Young wasn’t written to pay tribute to, or affirm
Shakespeare’s ‘genius’ so it’s not homage as such. If I had to say what it is —
I’d call it translation — of language and form — to get into the messy connections
between the past and present, England and India — to try to see our
world and its darkness with clear eyes. Strictly speaking, it is political appropriation
— I was very aware of the thematic parallels between the play and
the Indian setting and, because Shakespeare’s works were a key tool in the
British Empire’s ‘civilising’ arsenal, used King Lear as a way of interrogating
the violent and traumatic legacies of colonialism in the country of my parents’
birth by the country of mine. It also gave me the chance to explore some
of the inequalities that exist in the India I wanted to write about — which
stem from what gets justified as ‘tradition’, ‘values’ ‘our culture’ and so on,
but is just subjugation of women and ‘others’ to support the dominant status
quo.
The Punch: A retelling of such a nature, especially one with India as its setting,
is a feat in itself, considering it’s a country with its own set of complexities
and contradictions. Tell us about the process of distilling the realities of
the country — with bewildering diversity — in the novel.
Preti Taneja: I spent a lot of time in India, and a lot of time reading it, as I was
growing up. In 2012, I researched the book, listening and observing people
from all walks of life in Delhi, Goa, Amritsar and Kashmir — the real places
where the story is set. I had some extraordinary experiences, including
attending luxury car shows in Delhi and tasting wazwan being cooked in the
hidden courtyards of Srinagar, over box fires. Those scenes didn’t make it
into the book, but they all became part of the world I was creating. I’ve
attended Jantar Mantar protests with women from disadvantaged backgrounds;
I’ve spent time with mothers in Delhi slums whose children have
died in orphanages while they were trying to earn enough to eat each day.
I’ve heard boasts from leading businessmen about all they have and what
they do to maintain their wealth — things that seem too fantastic for ‘serious’
fiction — but which happen, and have serious ramifications for thousands of
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 31

LITERATURE
lives. I found that everyone, no matter their background, was eager to explain
things to me about India, everyone loves telling their own story and giving
their opinions. The most important part of my research was listening, then
writing, and rewriting and rewriting …
The Punch: You tell the story in five sections, with each section having a separate
narrator and standing out for their distinct style, language and tropes.
Tell us about the final structure of the novel, the process of whittling down to
five main sections and the decision for each of them to have a voice of their
own.
Preti Taneja: The first line of the novel, ‘It’s not about land, it’s about money’
was in my head for a long time. It came as a response to Jane Smiley’s focus
on land in A Thousand Acres which re-visions the Lear story in a familyowned
farm in 1980s Iowa, America. At the end of that novel, the farm is sold
to the ironically named ‘Heartland Corporation.’ My opening makes Smiley’s
ending, her predicted future, explicit. I am paying homage to her realist work
— while moving into new formal territory. My first line gave me the idea for
the title of the book, and the title inspired the structure. The five characters
are based on the five young people in Shakespeare’s play and the epigraph of
the Kabir poem, with its ‘family of five’ brought Shakespeare as synecdoche
for England, and old India together. The different voices are a key part of the
ethics of the book and its attempt to represent the disconnection humans live
with, and the difficulty of trying to decide on truth based on subjective experiences.
The Punch: Talking of the structure, it is also of interest to see how you have
conceived the opening section and the final sixth section, called ‘We That Are
Young’. The opening section, told from the point of view of Jivan, the son of
Ranjit, who is the right hand man of Devraj Bapuji, the Lear figure. Having
been sent to America with his mother, he is returning for the first time, reconnecting
with the old life he has barely been in touch for the past 15 years. This
marks his attempt to reclaim his place in the company. How did you conceive
of the opening section? How crucial was this return to the story?
Preti Taneja: Beginning with Jivan’s return was very important. His limited
idea of India, the expectation that he will return as conquering hero, more
modern than those he left, is a way of critiquing the nostalgic, patronising
idea of a ‘teeming’ India full of ‘colour’ and smells and noise and so on,
where funny little brown men are only too happy to serve and ‘exotic’
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INTERVIEW
women keep their almond-shaped eyes cast low. I grew up seeing that India
in the mainstream British media, and it appears in books — including by elite
Indian and diaspora writers working in English in the late 20th Century. In
no way does that match my experience of the place. Jivan sees poverty — but
he’s comforted by it because it makes him feel culturally superior. Those
sterotypical scenes of cows in the road and so on, which he registers as if
watching sepia film through the tinted windows of the car, are present in the
novel to deconstruct Empire nostalgia and those racist tropes. Meanwhile,
Jivan has struggled to be accepted as more than a second class citizen in
America, because of the colour of his skin — so, though he knows he’s still
perceived as an outsider in both places, he’d rather claim some of the wealth
and prosperity he can see in India: he wants his skin to fit, and he wants to
find a sense of family again even while he retains his sense that America is
better to compete with his Indian peers for power.
The Punch: Also, tell us about the final section. It is a section that restores the
reader’s sense of objectivity after the alternative takes on Devraj and his legacy
narrated by Gargi, Radha, Jeet and Sita. What did you want to achieve in
the final section?
Preti Taneja: We That Are Young’s conceptual underpinnings lie to an extent
in the work of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, whose work on language,
intertextuality, concepts of the self and how they can be expressed in
the novel form, and space and time as represented in literature influenced my
formal decisions about structure, voice and perspective. We That Are Young is
not realist fiction, nor was it ever meant to be. That kind of fiction is predicated
on a Judeo-Christian linear understanding of time and mortality inappropriate
to the India of the book. With the marriage of the epic tragedy of
Lear and the Hindu epic tales – as well as its form and time structure, the
clues are all there to understand the book as dystopian fairytale – the best of
which are rooted in a world we intimately know. I didn’t want the book to
answer all questions, tie up all loose ends and absolve a reader’s ethical mind
from engaging in the problems of the world beyond entertainment. Instead it
works with a grotesque realism, a carnivalesque that employs many voices
and linguistic and cultural registers to show the impossibility of ‘knowing’
any kind of fixed truth. That’s what I wanted for the final section, and in an
earlier draft I actually had merged the voices far more, depending on their
difference from each other being clear enough so that the reader would follow
whose point of view it was. But in the final edit, that proved unworkable
— the main idea was to get those different characters speaking in proximity
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017
33

LITERATURE
preti taneja. Photo:
Louise Haywood-Schiefer
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
on the page so readers could hear and see the tonal shifts having been
immersed in each section. Readers will encounter English, movie-style and
modern Hindi, Hinglish, there is Sanskrit, there is Urdu, there is Napurthali.
Which of course, is made up — Napurthala, and the slum Dhimbala don’t
exist — Napurthala is an imagined ‘state’ whose fairytale existence undercuts
any claim to straight realism that readers might think the book makes.
Dhimbala is the nine circles of hell. For it to work there must be truth in the
emotional currents and relationships, there must be recognisable notes. The
places and people in We That Are Young are symbolic — their purpose is subversive,
and they must speak across cultures. What the book describes is
extreme but so real, and so possible in the USA, in India – in so many places.
We can do so much more if we trust ourselves as hybrid writers and readers
than when we get stuck trying to define work into constructed literary categories.
If we can avoid that, then things get really exciting.
The Punch: How does your academic and advocacy and human rights work
inform your writing, especially in this novel? Did you want this novel to present
a critique of today’s consumerist culture and, at the same time, wanted to
make a fervent appeal to those who will inherit this world and its culture to
be more attuned to its depravities?
Preti Taneja: Everything I’ve done to date — from research and advocacy
with Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Sweden or in refugee camps, to the time I
spent researching creative and critical responses to King Lear as part of my
PhD, has informed the book somehow. It might manifest in a scene description,
an idea of character or a line — certainly I would not have set the Jeet
section, which takes place in the basti, if I hadn’t worked extensively in such
places, alongside people living with extreme dignity, in extreme poverty, or
disenfranchised by conflict. In answer to the second and third parts of your
questions — yes, and yes — but also to be attuned to what we can do about
those depravities. It is a hopeful book, after all – the hope lies just beyond the
text, in the reader’s hands.
The Punch: Out of the three sisters — Gargi, Radha and Sita — were there
moments when you, as a writer, felt more empathetic to either one of them,
connected more with?
Preti Taneja: There are three ‘types’ women are allowed to be in mainstream
cultural narratives (which are based on epics and fairytales): crone, whore
and saint. Each sister in the novel critiques and escapes those types even
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 35

LITERATURE
while she’s constricted by society to embody them. And each possessed me
in turn as I was writing. Gargi leant me her determination to keep going.
Radha was heartbreaking to write, because her trauma is so extreme compared
with what the other characters suffer. We all know a Gargi, a Radha
and a campaigning Sita, (whose ecofeminism is in line with Cordelia’s acts of
resistance as well as her eponymous character in the Ramayana.) But Radha
devastated me… if the #metoo campaign had begun when I was writing then
(maybe) she could have been saved.
The Punch: The novel also blends India’s contemporary narrative with its
imperial history. Tell us about the ways the novel reflects on the subcontinent’s
continued fetish and ornamentation of its ruling classes and the messy
issues of inheritance.
Preti Taneja: One of the aspects of Lear that fits so well with the Indian context
is the idea of accession. When Lear gives up his Kingdom, is he still a
King? His central question in the play — ‘who is it that can tell me who I am?’
asks us to think about what we ‘value’ in our idea of ourselves. And that
accession chimes with what happened in the name of the new India in 1947
— that problem of acceding power is intricately connected to what happened
next in Kashmir. What constitutes true nobility goes beyond wealth or status,
or bloodlines. We all have it, no matter where we are born. It’s in our actions
towards others that it shows (or not).
The Punch: In the novel, you have, moving beyond the populist post-colonial
writing, drew upon the narrative tradition of, for instance, Ramayana and
Mahabharata. How crucial were the parallels with ancient Indian texts?
Preti Taneja: I studied Sanskrit language and the epic texts, including
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the Gita and Upanisads for my undergraduate degree
in Theology. So I come to those classical texts as a scholar of translation, language
and philosophy, including concepts such as dharma, kama and artha.
It was brilliant and necessary given the setting to be able to bring that to bear
on King Lear — which contains appeals to different ideologies from rational
atheism, to belief in fate, fortune’s wheel, pagan gods, and Christian ideas of
sacrifice and redemption. Epics offer space for strange permutations of time
and place, for mythical story-telling and for thinking about morality — the
book brings cultural landscapes into conversation in ways that readers
understand because we are always navigating many worlds.
The Punch: And, talking of ancient texts, in the novel, there are constant ref-
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INTERVIEW
erences to some constructs. For instance, Dharma, the idea of a moral
quandary that hardly achieves resolution, perhaps as much in the novel as in
the ancient Indian texts. Were you interested in exploring this quandary,
rooting the story in a certain ambiguity to implicate your characters in each
other’s actions?
Preti Taneja: Yes, that’s one of the most important themes of the novel. The
Indian texts and ideas, as Gurcharan Das puts it — the problem of ‘how to
be good’ — which the Gita explores, is the complementary force to
Shakespeare’s tragic vision in We That Are Young. The key prophecy the Fool
makes in King Lear, of the way the world could be — with its strange future
anterior perspective, found its parallel in a verse from the Gita — ‘Never was
a time that I did not exist….’ Lear asks whether each of us gets what we
deserve according to our actions. Dharma is the Hindu way of thinking about
such questions, but it also has the potential, as a concept to be co-opted by
fundamentalists (such as Jeet) to maintain inequality and keep certain people
on top of the pile. It had to go into the book.
The Punch: The novel also stands out for its exploration of Kashmir, releasing
close on the heels of Arundhati Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness, which also evokes the place. How crucial was to keep Kashmir at
the heart of the trauma of war and forced migration?
Preti Taneja: I’ve always been fascinated by the power play of Partition, horrified
by the human cost of it. Dover is where the all the mess that follows the
division of Lear’s kingdom converges to be reckoned with, and that was
always Kashmir in my mind. The UK education system, which I grew up in,
keeps the population ignorant of colonialism and its devastations, and of the
real human tragedy the Kashmiri people continue to suffer, while in India the
Hindu nationalist narrative overwhelms. I’ve worked in the UN archives on
documents pertaining to Partition and to Kashmir and read papers from the
1930s to 1990s that were once highly classified, about it — many from heads
of state. Clearly, there are many moments when more could have been done
— the political will didn’t exist, though and the blind nationalism of all sides
has allowed decades of suffering. I read Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night when
it first came out, and became determined to go to Srinagar myself. The first
draft of We That Are Young was finished in 2013 as Vishal Bhardwaj was just
beginning work on Haider, (which is also set in Kashmir though it is based on
Hamlet.) I had no idea Arundhati Roy was working on a new novel or what
its themes would be, until I read it in July 2017 with my hands over my eyes!
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 37

LITERATURE
Thank god I had handed in my own manuscript by then. She has a beautiful
mind. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness could not have been written by anyone
else.
The Punch: The novel, in large parts, takes place mostly behind closed doors.
What did you set out to achieve through each of these internalised areas?
Some reviewers have pointed out that each of these spaces — The Company
hotels, The Farm, the slums, Kashmir — all are drawn up from narratives foreign
to their histories. Were you conscious of this? If yes, what were your
objectives?
Preti Taneja: If that means that those spaces are seen through the eyes of
those who are unfamiliar to them — absolutely it was a choice I made. First,
it mimics the experience of watching a Shakespeare play today. Second, my
characters are post-colonial subjects as we all are (even if we are born white
in the UK and go for a curry on a Friday night or use the word ‘pukka’ as
slang). So they speak with both an Englishness and Indian-ness. I want to ask:
what we can ever really know about a particular history or place or an
‘other’? All we have is taught history, family stories, our own perspective, the
language that we’ve inherited and that we adapt for ourselves. As for the
interiority of the novel’s spaces — that’s a choice about how to depict what a
sense of spatial freedom and freedom of movement does to our consciousness.
Social spaces are stratified by wealth: they are also gendered: women
are kept ‘safe’ and wealth is a kind of entrapment for that. For Jeet, his selfimposed
exile in the nine circles of hell with the pit at the heart — is where
his privileged status as a ‘Naph’ or holy man means he can eventually take
control in a way those whose freedom of movement is curtailed never can.
The Punch: As someone born to Indian parents, what is your own idea of
India? How do you see the country reconciling its various contradictions
emerging after Independence and globalistion?
Preti Taneja: My parents’ move to the UK in the late 60s meant I grew up
with the language to think in two worlds, and to express a new one that
belongs to neither Britain or to India. I’ve always embraced that sense of
being a citizen of the world that I think second and third generation immigrants
embody, and for me that is the best part of not feeling ‘at home’ in my
country of birth or my parents’ country of origin. I think the idea of India as
a place of unsolvable contradictions is an orientalist construct that allows
people to shrug and say — that’s just India. It’s not — it’s a severe example
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INTERVIEW
of inequality that’s the result of decades of plunder and greed — and which
exists in Western democracies as well, it’s just more hidden — or outsourced
to India. To reconcile inequality, you need political will, and ideology that’s
not based in divisions of religion, gender, race or language. Countless examples
of the abrogation of minority rights around the world show us that. It’s
up to the young voters of India to decide our collective future and the power
they have is immense, on a world scale, not just a national one. A writer’s role
is different – to tell the stories that can critique that power, perhaps.
The Punch: Tell us about your literary influences and how they have evolved
over the years. Besides Shakespeare, who are some of the writers that you
revisited for this novel?
Preti Taneja: We That Are Young is a tissue of deliberate (mis) quotations; it
is intertextual with a lot of different writing across ages and cultures. That is
a formal choice I made to say something about literature and its potential to
form us — so if you hear echoes of The Wizard of Oz, Beckett, Dante or Jane
Smiley, Brett Easton Ellis or Martin Amis, Tagore or Allama Iqbal in the
novel, that’s because of your own reading — which has something to do
with where you are from, and who you are. If you don’t catch those echoes,
you won’t miss anything, you might just enjoy the book on the level of a
Bollywood saga and of course that’s fine too — the book collapses ‘low’ and
‘high’ cultural references for political purpose, and sets itself up to be understood
as if watching life on a screen. All of Nanu’s prophecies are bastardised
from texts including Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus, which was a
seminal book for my research in 2012. My first draft was finished when
Doniger’s book was subject to a court case in India for blasphemy and
recalled and pulped. Freedom of expression is one of the things I care most
about and it became even more important to get the book out. There’s a
whole tradition of writing as witness and resistance that I have drawn on,
beginning with The Other Side of Silence, Urvashi Butalia’s classic exploration
of ‘honour’ killings during Partition, which I read when it came out. I’d also
include poets such as Claudia Rankine, and Imtiaz Dharker who delight
readers while expressing a 360 political perspective of humanity that
includes a solid dose of absurdity. We That Are Young owes a lot to all
of them.
The Punch: What are you working on next?
Preti Taneja: I can’t go on, I’ll go on. A new novel… I think.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 39

MUSIC
LAKSHMI
GOVINDRAJAN
JAVERI
Jishnu Guha.
Photo courtesy of Short Round
Jishnu Guha is an unlikely frontm
name that is distinctly sidekick:
who is reconfiguring the pac
40
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

PROFILE
THE LONG
SHORT
an with a moniker and a band
hort round. But he is someone
e of the indian music scene.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 41

MUSIC
“If you could use a change of pace
And be excused from the rat race
Just take a look at what’s on view.
Lace ’em up, walk around
I guarantee you can’t wear ’em down
You’re gonna need a quality shoe.”
— Quality Shoe from Ragpicker’s Dream album, Mark Knopfler.
Everything about Jishnu “Short Round” Guha underlines a change of
pace. He has over a hundred unreleased songs penned in his black
books over the years. In this age of digitisation and all things virtual,
he’s decidedly analogue. The artwork for his songs are stylishly serif, exuding
a tastefulness far beyond his years. He identifies as a songwriter; whose soulful
singing and deft guitar-playing are merely convenient tools for his balladeering.
He’s reconfiguring the pace of the Indian music scene with a charming
rawness in the time of polished, practiced and prepared newcomers. He’s
refreshingly old school and he’s only 28.
With all the makings of the “quality shoe”, Jishnu Guha is an unlikely frontman
with a moniker and a band name that is distinctly sidekick: Short Round.
When he took to the stage in December, on the second day of the recentlyconcluded
NH7 Weekender Pune edition, the crowds were still trickling in.
The relentless Pune sun was coming down on the early birds when Short
Round opened the Insider Stage, a platform meant for fresh, new music. By
the end of his set, one’s penchant for the underdog would’ve expected a
packed arena raring for encores. Jishnu though, closed his set to a moderately
filled space, where the audience that initially came to take refuge from the sun
had no idea what hit them. Not with inexplicable theatrics or showmanship,
but with unexpectedly searing honesty of sound and words, Short Round
showed that it was here for the long haul.
Songs that seemed easy-listening but were by no means frivolous, were the
hallmark of the Short Round set, and it was no surprise that the audience took
to them. Not just for their sonic accessibility but also their ability to relate to
the words and the emotions behind them. In 40 minutes, Jishnu Guha and his
band of raconteurs, defined the very purpose of multi-artiste music festivals:
discovering new music beyond the top-billed acts.
There stood a man with the lyrical quality of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell,
and Bob Dylan, with the guitarist-singer vibe like Mark Knopfler and the vocal
earnestness of Jeff Buckley, looking like he’s having the time of his life.
Spanning joy and melancholy, regret and hope, “Short Round”was vocalising
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PROFILE
our changing states of mind. “For all the gravitas, the nickname is quite unremarkable.
The moniker was something I got when I was in a college fraternity.
I wore a hat back then that was reminiscent of the character Short Round from
Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. And that name just stuck. When I was
looking for a musical epithet, Short Round instantly came to mind. I am Short
Round, and to an extent, Short Round (the band) is me,” says Jishnu.
While his emergence in India as Short Round the musician happened just in
2016, Jishnu has been around music since as long as he can remember. His
William Shakespeare-worshipping English teacher mum was also begrudgingly
a piano teacher, whereas his corporate maven father was a keen collector of
music, ranging from Elvis Presley to Queen and Dire Straits. Some of his earliest
memories of visiting his maternal grandparents in Kolkata include listening to
his granddad play classical pieces on the piano. Even as his family’s taste in
music formed a definitive part of his childhood’s soundtrack, Jishnu defiantly
stayed away from his mother’s literary pursuits. “I did what all kids do: rebel
against your parents. I may have read a William Faulkner or Hemingway for fun,
but I decided I wasn’t having any of Shakespeare. I was happier with my comic
books. It wasn’t until I watched a production of a Shakespeare play when I
realised he wasn’t meant to be read but to be experienced,” Jishnu says with a
chuckle, trying to pin down what may have inspired his flair for language and
writing. He attributes his “artsy-fartsy mindset” to his later years in Portsmouth.
Jishnu’s travels have played a big role in shaping the musician that he is today,
honing his skills not just as a songwriter but as a frontman. Back in the 1990s, he
spent a year in Kazakhstan, when his father’s work took him there. One day, his
father came home with The Beatles’ Blue and Red albums, as well as Brothers in
Arms. It was a matter of time before he announced to his family his desire to learn
how to play the guitar. “I found a random local guy who barely spoke English to
teach me how to play. Since we couldn’t communicate properly, he pretty much
just pointed to the fretboard and said:‘Put finger here. This is G’.He ended up
teaching me Let It Be, Obladi Oblada and Back in the USSR (how ironic!) That was
when I got the bug!” Jishnu recalls.
From Kazakhstan, life took Jishnu to the US and the UK where he pursued
courses in media and communication. His time as a busker on the streets of
Portsmouth, enriched him musically. After applying to every place from
McDonald’s to a Bose store, Jishnu realised how difficult the paperwork relating
to his work permit would make his job prospects. Not one to wallow in his
situation, Jishnu knew that he’s never going to be content if he didn’t try to see
outside his line. Always fascinated by the life of buskers, he recognised that to
get a permit to be a busker in Portsmouth would be far easier than to be one in
a city as massive as London. It all came down to finding a way to sustain a liv-
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 43

MUSIC
Jishnu Guha
at Bacardi nH7
weekender in
pune.
Photo: Jay Javeri
44
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

PROFILE
ing through doing the one thing he was passionate about. “You quickly learn
as a busker that if someone were to stop in their tracks, it is usually for a massive
advertisement that has caught their attention or for some major shopping
discounts they’ve discovered. If you need to attract people to your music, you
need to learn how to project it. Nobody owes you on the streets, there’s no
agenda, so by that logic, earning money by singing on the streets has some very
high stakes. The entire onus is on you. So, when someone does stop for your
music, the high that you get is irreplaceable. I played so much of my own music
and covers of Zero too. I probably owe them some £30 for all those times I
played Not My Kinda Girl,” he laughs.
By the time he came back to India in 2014-15, his friends and early collaborators
had moved on to different pastures. Adil Kurwa (bassist) was dabbling with
The Koniac Net, The Colour Compound, and Last Remaining Light, Aditya
Ashok (drummer) had Ox7gen and The Colour Compound, and Rahul Pais was
a composer with The Jamroom. Jishnu always wanted to be in a band, and the
band he wanted to put together already had other commitments. So began the
Short Round experiment, where Jishnu the singer-songwriter formed the core of
the music with his favourite people stepping in whenever they could. “The first
EP DesperateTimes worked out more easily because a lot of the songs were
already written by me and I needed these guys to just help me see them through.
The second EP With Friends Like These was consciously more collaborative. So I
have fellow musicians like Siddharth Basrur (Last Remaining Light), Saurabh
Roy (The Lightyears Explode), Anna Holmquist (singer from Chicago), and
Rahul Pais amongst them. I wanted to play with as many people as I could
because I really liked the idea of a band and this was the closest I could get to it.”
When Short Round performed at NH7 Weekender, Pune, Jishnu was joined
by Kurwa on bass, Jeremy D’Souza on drums and Rohan Rajadhyaksha (Spud
in the Box) on keys, along with singer-songwriters Mali and Fat Yellow Moon.
For someone who has spent a great deal of time on the road, Jishnu is deeply
rooted in his friendships. Friends like Kurwa, Pais and Ashok have seen Jishnu
over the course of a decade when they were in their first band together: SOS;
when he was still a riff-happy shredder who had yet to discover his singersongwriter
side. There’s a great deal of music that Pais and Jishnu have written
that may find its way in future Short Round projects. The songwriting process
is a continuous and an organic one for Jishnu, who keeps his music close and
his friends closer. “Some songs are created in just a few minutes; some others
are written and revisited years later. I think like a songwriter, not a producer.
All I have is a song I can play by myself…”
Who knows where Short Round will take Jishnu… he’s just a simple man trying
to make his way in the universe.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 45

NO CH
FESTIVAL
RICHA JHA
the 10th edition of
Bookaroo wound up
in november but the
spirit of book love that
india’s first children’s
festival inspires year
after year among
children lingers on.
meeting swati roy,
one of the founders
and inimitable driving
forces behind it
swati roy.
Photo courtesy of Bookaroo
46
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
ILD’S PLAY
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 47

FESTIVAL
The tenth edition of Bookaroo wound up in the last week of November
2017, but the spirit of book love that India’s first children’s festival
inspires year after year among children lingers on. Swati Roy, one of
the founders and inimitable driving forces behind it, along with co-founders
Jo Williams and M Venkatesh, has been instrumental in changing the reading
landscape for Delhi’s children. They make an indomitable team determined
to get children closer to books, stories and book-inspired art and craft. But to
understand Roy’s love for children’s books, we need to rewind further back
in time to 2003 when she, along with colleague Venkatesh, set up Eureka
Bookstore as an independent venture in Delhi’s Alaknanda.
At a time when the city sorely lacked (still does) indie bookshops for children’s
books, this was a bold decision that only mavericks with a belief and passion to
make the best of the Indian and international books accessible to children can
undertake. While Eureka continued to be an indoor cozy nook for books, the
thought of making books more accessible to a wider cross-section of the city children
began taking shape in their minds. With Jo Williams sharing this same
vision, the first edition of Bookaroo was organised in 2008 at the beautiful
Anandgram. Since then, the last weekend of every November has morphed into
a most bookful and creatively charged time for the city children.
Over the years, the founders have consistently kept expanding the scope of
this literature festival both within Delhi and outside. Bookaroo is now an annual
fixture in nine cities within India (including Srinagar, Pune, Jaipur and Goa).
By launching the Kuching, Malaysia chapter of Bookaroo in 2015, the team made
it the only truly international children’s festival in the world. Not surprising,
therefore, was it bagging the International Excellence Award in Literary Festivals
at this year’s London Book Fair, making it the first and only children’s literary
festival in the world to have achieved this distinction.
It’s been far from easy for Roy, Venkatesh and Williams, though. From a constant
struggle for financial support year after year, city after city, to frightful lastminute
sponsorship and venue cancellations, they have braved it all. And yet,
they charge on with their unfailing zeal of bringing children and books together,
and of making books alive for them. It also speaks volumes about the deep synergistic
strength they and Bookaroo draw from one other.
Bookaroo becomes an exciting annual ritual for children and their parents in
every city that the organisers bring into its fold. It offers an eclectic bouquet of
activities for the children of all ages, all carefully planned and executed with
gusto to foster a love for words, stories and illustrations. All the sessions are
interactive, encouraging the children to participate with enthusiasm. This time at
the Delhi festival, Bookaroo brought together over 60 speakers — a merry bunch
of Indian and international award-winning authors, illustrators, poets and story
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
tellers. Each event exuded, as always, an unmistakable celebration of books in
some form. And that remains the festival’s most defining raison d’etre, year upon
year. In an age when it is next to impossible for parents to keep their children
away from gadgets, Bookaroo continues to get bigger, livelier and more vibrant.
In this interview, Roy talks about the making of this book-jamboree.
Richa Jha: What is the first thought that comes to your mind on the morning
of any Bookaroo event? And the first at the end of each?
Swati Roy: In the morning, it is trepidation and nervousness — did we forget
something? At the end of the first day, there is a sense of relief. A ritual at
the end of the first day is also a rapid check of all the things for the next day
— this comprises taking feedback from volunteers and subtly finding out
from speakers if anything did not work that day. And finally, at the end of
the second day, it is a feeling of satisfaction. Nothing else.
Richa Jha: What was going through your mind while receiving the
International Excellence Award in Literary Festivals at the London Book Fair
earlier this year?
Swati Roy: To be honest, the mind was a total blank at the moment of receiving
the award as we were not expecting it. Later as it sunk in, the feeling was
that of a validation and affirmation of our efforts over all these years.
Richa Jha: Between Jo, Venkatesh and you, how do you divide responsibilities
for Bookaroo?
Swati Roy: Though all three of us know each person’s jobs, broadly, Jo and I
handle programming. I handle Bookaroo in the City (the outreach arm) additionally.
Venkatesh handles sponsorships, partnerships and media relations.
Richa Jha: How has the Bookaroo journey over the last decade shaped you
into what you are today?
Swati Roy: It has given me more confidence and made me more sensitive to
children’s choices.
Richa Jha: If you were to rewind to 2008, is there anything you would do differently
with Bookaroo?
Swati Roy: Not a thing.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 49

FESTIVAL
Richa Jha: Over the years, Bookaroo has continued to be as inclusive and
wide-reaching as it can get by making it accessible to children from all backgrounds
and needs. However, as someone who has been visiting it every year,
I have noticed that some of the parents are not too comfortable with this being
a free mingling space. Where do you think we, as a society, are going wrong?
Swati Roy: There is a saying — the more things change, the more they remain
the same. Perhaps this is why despite the changes that are espoused some
things remain the same. However, as an organizer, we have always kept the
event inclusive. In this endeavour, we have been supported by speakers, publishers
and arts councils. So, in Bookaroo, one can expect to see more acceptance
and ease of interaction in the event. Our task is made easier by the fact
that children, in any case, are oblivious to differences.
Richa Jha: The children’s literary urban landscape seems to have changed
over this past decade, thanks in a big way also to the pioneering foundations
laid by Bookaroo. There are now several events similar in essence that happen
on a regular basis in different parts of our cities. Why do you think the
appeal of Bookaroo remains unfading?
Swati Roy: We are very happy that there are so many events. The more the
events the greater the awareness about all the good work that is happening
in the field of children’s books. As for Bookaroo, we are constantly innovating,
listening to the child, being aware that every child has a different need,
and keeping ourselves abreast of developments in the world of children’s literature.
We combine all these to curate a programme that has novelty and
appeals to a wide range of children.
Richa Jha: I know you have as astounding memory. What tends to stay on more
deeply etched in your mind — the happy, pleasant things or the unsavoury ones?
Swati Roy: Always the happy ones. We believe that if there are more happy
memories, the not-so-happy can be converted more easily. Having said that,
thanks to the sharp memory, one uses each of those unsavoury memories as
a learning to make our processes better.
Richa Jha: Any funny memories?
Swati Roy: There are times when I am asked by parents to connect them with
the participating speakers, especially the international ones, so that they can
50
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
take photographs with them. As I get ready to pose, I am made to click those
photographs instead! And this has happened not just once!
Richa Jha: In your experience, who are some of the Indian and international
children’s writers or illustrators who are ever popular with the children who
frequent Bookaroo?
Swati Roy: We do not like to choose one over another. All are special as each
is invested in the idea of children’s literature in their own way.
Richa Jha: Some of the speakers who have been participating in the fair regularly
and have in some way helped shape the festival’s character?
Swati Roy: Actually each one who has ever participated has shaped Bookaroo.
Bookaroo is like an ever-growing rainbow. Each speaker adds a colour to this
spectrum. And you never know which colour is which child’s favourite one.
Richa Jha: Are some activities more popular with the children than the others?
Swati Roy: As I said above, each child is different and there is a book for each
one. It is up to us to connect them to it. Sometimes, they do it through comics,
sometimes art (which again could be caricature, traditional Indian art forms,
water colours), sometimes through oral storytelling, sometimes through
poetry, sometimes through craft. Therefore, we cannot attach any weightage
to any of the sessions. Our job is to offer an array and let the child choose.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 51

FESTIVAL
Richa Jha: What is it like from a financial point of view to keep a festival like
this going year after year, and at the same time expanding to other cities both
within the country and outside? I have heard you talk about the fairy godparents
who always appear from somewhere at the last minute and gently
help keep it afloat. Tell us more about this.
Swati Roy: Getting funding for a children’s literature festival is very difficult. This
is the bottom line. If one does not have the resilience to outlast the rejections, one
cannot go on. The hassle is, there are lovers of books and literature but they are
not necessarily the ones with money. While we continue our eternal wait for a
fairy godmother who loves children’s books and has the wherewithal to support
a festival such as ours, we plough through our struggle with fragmented support
from the corporate world. That, combined with the support from the publishing
industry and the arts councils, has helped Bookaroo reach where it has.
Richa Jha: What are some of those things on your wishlist that you’d love to
do if you were to get more support?
Swati Roy: I would love to have a more robust Bookaroo in the City (BiC).
BiC is our outreach programme where we take speakers into schools, hospitals,
orphanages, care homes, special needs centres and remedial homes.
While the need is indisputable, there are no takers to sponsor this. Our wishlist
includes a wide variety of programmes delivered through various modes
and vehicles. The second big wish is to set up a permanent children’s centre.
Richa Jha: Amen to both! Tell us about Bookaroo’s overseas journey? How is
it different from the editions in India?
Swati Roy: Children are universal and the hunger for stories remains the
same. There is really no difference. The only thing that comes to mind is the
different languages we have to take into consideration in our programme
when we travel. In any case, one of the things Bookaroo aims to do is to make
cross-cultural connections.
Richa Jha: Any plans to expand the festival’s bandwidth?
Swati Roy: Yes, there are a few ideas we want to pursue in 2018. Inshaallah,
with the help from the fairy godmother!
Richa Jha: Venkatesh and you have made a concerted effort to revive the library
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
culture in the city. Tell us something about the bottlenecks or the successes.
Swati Roy: There is a need; definitely. While libraries are shutting in other
parts of the world, in India the culture never took off very vigorously. So,
having entered the arena at a late stage, the new-age library in any city
should now serve as a community hub. Yes, as a reading room and a circulating
library, most certainly, but also be a social space for children, young
adults to hang out and have events — some spontaneous, some curated. Our
dream space is one which is created by local communities — with children’s
input — be it donated books, art, talks. This is the wish list that we are working
on but there are several bottlenecks. Taking cognizance of the need and
curating/populating is only part of the setting up of a library; maintaining
and marketing (popularising) is a very important component of a successful
library movement. This requires funding and intent which are the basic bottlenecks
that we face.
Richa Jha: Eureka Bookstore, the much-loved book space for children, is
sorely missed in Delhi. If someone keen to open a similar bookstore were to
come to you seeking advice, what are you most likely to say?
Swati Roy: It is difficult. Real estate cost is the biggest bane of running a retail space
in Delhi. However, if one has a space of their own, then the success depends hugely
on location. Say, if the location too is right then the only advice one can give is to keep
it as open and welcoming as possible. While the commercial transaction is necessary
for a retail space to survive, creating warmth and a welcoming ambience is imperative
for a children’s bookstore. That is how one can hear what the child wants.
Richa Jha: What tears you up more at the end of each Bookaroo?
Swati Roy: Wish I had got a few books signed by the participating speakers
and taken some pictures with them as memories. I always forget to do that.
Richa Jha: Five words that describe Swati Roy the best.
Swati Roy: Optimist, emotional, workaholic, tenacious, methodical.
Richa Jha: If you were up on a billboard, what would the tagline say? Meet
Swati Roy, the …
Swati Roy: Eternal dreamer.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 53

LITERATURE
54
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

FICTION
Meeting Madhavan
RADHIKA
VENKATARAYAN
She had been waiting for ten minutes now
and was desperately in need of some distraction.
That is why she asked the waiter
to bring her the menu-card. Of course, if her
mother were here, or had some kind of bodycamera
installed on her, something that
Sandhya knew that her mother was fully capable
of, she would have been livid.
“You don’t convince a potential suitor about
your marriageability while stuffing your face with
greasy food,” Amma would have pointed out.
But she didn’t care and as she went through
the menu of deep fried snacks served with spicy
chutneys, causing her bleak mood to immediately
transform. So engrossed was she in this little
gastronomical dream-state that she did not notice
a shadow that fell over her table. It wasn’t until a
somewhat amused male voice said, “Hi Sandy,”
that she had been startled into looking up.
She immediately knew it was him, because
she remembered his gigantic ears from the photograph
that she had by now seen a hundred
times. The trouble was that once she had seen
his huge ears, she was unable to un-see it. There
were probably a number of things about him
that was interesting, but inside her head he had
now been reduced to a caricature of sorts; the
guy with the gigantic Gandhi-esque ears. He
didn’t sit down immediately, hovered over her
and thereby making her feel uncomfortable.
Sandhya was sitting cross-legged on her chair,
and as was habit, made herself smaller than
what she was. She had rehearsed this scene
many times in her head and even had a ready
speech, but none in which she imagined that she
would have to talk while staring at his waist.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017
55

LITERATURE
She giggled. If only Amma’s cameras were on her, it would be a potentially
interesting situation. She shifted around, trying to make more room for herself
and in the process the menu-card on her lap fell down.As did the stainless
steel glass of water kept on the table. Clang! Guests on the other tables
stopped their conversations and looked at them. Having so many pairs of
unkindly eyes on her was embarrassing, but she glowered back. Meanwhile
Madhavan had bent down to pick up the menu and the tumbler, which
seemed to have rolled a few tables away. Congratulations, you klutz,
Sandhya said to herself.
“I am so sorry, I am so sorry,” she apologised to the general air around her.
It was ingrained in her. To apologize when she was at fault. And when she
wasn’t.
After what seemed like an eternity, Madhavan emerged, with the menucard
and the tumbler. He grinned at her and she mustered a half-smile. Don’t
seem too friendly. But don’t seem too cold. Amma her warned her.
“Have you been waiting for too long,” he asked her as he settled into the
seat. Before she could answer, they were interrupted by a shrill Bollywood
chartbuster, about a girl and her pigeon. It was Madhavan’s phone and he
excused himself to answer it.
As Sandhya saw him, away at some distance talking over the phone,
she got her first good look of him. He wasn’t as tall as he had initially
seemed to her. He had a generous mop of hair on his head. At least
Amma will be pleased that a potential son-in-law might finally break the
family tradition of men with receding hairlines. He was dressed in distressed
denim jeans and a Manchester United T-Shirt. She did not really care for fanboys,
especially when it trickled into their sartorial choices.
“I am sorry that I got a little late. You know traffic...” he offered in manner
of explanation. Though in its incompleteness, it explained nothing to her. He
was done with his call and was back, sitting in the chair across her.
Correction. Not sitting, but slouched lazily.
Sandhya nodded. Because that is what Amma would want her to do. Nod.
Not necessarily in agreement. But a benign nod that signified, I understand
your incomplete sentences. At any rate, that I am happy with the incomplete
sentences.
“Have you decided what you want,” he asked pointing at the menu-card
that she had held on to since the time Madhavan had rescued it for her. In her
assessment of him she had completely forgotten about this. She looked at the
menu-card again; clearly she needed some coffee and possibly a lot of food as
well. A few pieces of bonda stuffed with spicy potatoes, a plate of upma
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

FICTION
topped with ghee and one tumbler of kaapi with twice the sugar that she
would normally take. Yes, that would be perfect.
“I will just have tea.”
“You don’t want to eat anything” Sandhya asked, alarm already setting in
her heart. What kind of future could she have with a man who drank tea? Just
tea.
“Na…everything here seems so oily and unhealthy. You know tea is better
for health.”
Sandhya nodded again. But she was pretty certain some kind of tea cartel
was responsible for its sudden positive press in the media. I mean, how could
tea be better than coffee. Tea did nothing for her. On the other hand, coffee
made her feel fearless. What was appropriate etiquette? she wondered. Was
she expected to drink tea too? Would he find it charming if she made an independent
decision and ordered what she wanted? Didn’t all potential suitors
claim they wished to marry girls who were independent, whatever that was
supposed to mean. But then again what sort of person would want to marry
a girl who was a glutton? Or marry a girl with ill-aligned planets?
In her head Sandhya was running through the questions that she imagined
Madhavan would ask her. Why do you want to get married? What about
living in another city? In another country? Future? Children? Something.
Anything. But Madhavan was busy texting. Perhaps she should ask him
something, Sandhya thought.
“So you were going to meet a friend, yes? How did that go,” she asked initiating
polite but pointless chitchat.
He stretched his arms instead of answering her question right away. That
is when she got a whiff of his perfume. He didn’t smell like all the other Tamil
boys she knew. There was the fragrance of musk, lemon and something else
that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“Yes, I did. She is my friend from school. Sumi is my chellam.”
Chellam, Sandhya thought. Meaning, dearest. My most loved. Darling.
Why did he offer this piece of information to her?
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
She considered his question carefully. It was a predictable one and in all
the possible scenarios that went through her head in the run-up to this meeting,
this question made it to every list. She knew the answer to this. How
could she not? But in that moment, her mind drew a blank and she did not
remember one thing from her carefully rehearsed answers.
“I work in advertising and I hate my job,” was what she finally said. What
a stellar thing to say. How was this going to help anyone in his or her mate
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 57

LITERATURE
selection?
Thankfully, he seemed to find this amusing and laughed.
“I have those days too. But they usually go away.”
The tea arrived and Sandhya grabbed the steel glass wanting to warm and
dry her clammy hands with the heat. This meeting was already so awkward,
and they had just begun.
With the arrival of the tea, Madhavan too put his phone away. At least
something warranted his complete attention.
“You know what, you are very different from what I imagined you would
be like,” he said.
“How so?” she asked, her voice sounding more cheerful and less nervous
now, greatly aided by the four spoons of sugar that she had generously
added into her tea.
“I am not sure, da,” he said and the usage of da made her cringe. First
Sandy. Then Chellam. Now Da. What was the word for it, overfamiliar? She
did not like that. She liked distanced men, ones like her Appa and her brother,
the kind who would address everyone formally and retreat into their corners
at the first opportunity.
“I am not too sure. You seem like such a chammatu Ponnu,” he added after
some thought.
Chammatu Ponnu, aka the good girl. What every Indian girl aspires to be,
or at least that is what families will have you believe. However, Sandhya
knew by now, Chammatu Ponnu, was usually shorthand for, you really are
a dork, rather unattractive and unremarkable. It was clear that Madhavan
saw her as altogether too plain. This was not news to her, in fact, she was
used to it by now. It was her plain clothes; her mass-produced salwar sets tailored
by unimaginative craftsmen. It was the unfashionable way that she tied
her hair and the dot on her forehead that she refused to lose.
The sweetness of the tea was now beginning to make Sandhya sick and
she wished she had ordered coffee instead. Coffee could withstand the
onslaught of sugar, but tea was too insipid and watered down. At the
very least, she should have at least ordered one deep fried snack.
“So why do you want to get married?” Madhavan asked next, once again
a question that was part of her set-list.
She recalled this one advertisement that she wrote copy for. It was for a
brand of cooking oil and the cheesy tagline that Sandhya had come up with
after forty straight hours in office was, home is someone you come back to. It
had this image of a woman, waiting for husband with a hot meal while he
toiled at work. Her client, as oily as the products he made, had immediately
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FICTION
approved of her endorsement of the privilege of patriarchy. Needless to say,
the advertisement evoked severe backlash on social media and inspired think
pieces by angry women. Her follower count on Twitter reached a respectable
triple digit when someone discovered that she was somehow involved with
this copy. Perhaps she could offer this award-winning copy as a response to
Madhavan’s question.
“To get my parents off my back, I suppose.”
Wait, did she just say that out loud?
“What about love and shared adventures, that is the most important thing
for me. I want to fall in love, don’t you?”
Mr Bollywood was rather cheesy; in fact he should be the one writing copy
for ads. Also, if one were seeking love, why do so by meeting parents-whetted
girls, after checking for the alignment of planets? She asked him just that
and he looked wounded at her question and also uncomfortable. Perhaps tea
works as a truth serum.
“We are not that modern a family, you know. My parents have expectations.”
What did that even mean? Didn’t all parents have expectations? That was
the cornerstone of parenting. She did not get a chance to ask him more
because the Bollywood song was back and he once again excused himself to
answer it.
While he was away, Sandhya replayed the meeting in her head. Play.
Rewind. Pause. Was he not interested in her? Was it her have-amind-of-its-own
hair? Couldn’t be, she had shampooed and forced
it into submission by getting it blown dried at a salon yesterday. Was it her
ill luck?
He returned in a bit and said, “I have to leave now, as something has come
up.”
Sandhya got up and Madhavan opened his wallet to pay. Normally she
would have volunteered to pay her share, but if she was not getting a husband,
she should at the very least get a free cup of tea, she concluded.
But as they walked out, a feeling of impending gloom took over her. What
will she tell Amma? Amma would demand every single detail; each word
and gesture would be parsed. Perhaps she should just tell Amma that
Madhavan was gay. For her mother understood so many things, homosexuality
was not one of them. She giggled as she got on her bike and the
Learner’s Licence card that she had been contemplating getting rid of for
days now, fell off on its own and she rode into the sunset. The universe had
spoken.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 59

MUSIC
SHIREEN
QUADRI
simon thacker.
Photo: Shireen Quadri
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THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

INTERVIEW
Reimagining
RHYTHMS
scottish guitar
virtuoso and composer
simon thacker, who
performed at the sacred
pushkar in December
2017, on reimagining
musical landscapes and
reinventing ragas
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 61

MUSIC
Scottish composer and guitar virtuoso Simon Thacker is the leader of
some of today’s most prescient ensembles. His group, Simon Thacker’s
Svara-Kanti, is a world leading Indo-Western collective that has seen
him tour and premiere new work at major festivals in India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. Svara-Kanti’s debut album Rakshasa came out in 2013 and has
been critically acclaimed.
Thacker is also the leader of and composer for Simon Thacker's Ritmata, featuring
three of Europe’s finest jazz/world musicians: Paul Harrison (piano),
Mario Caribe (bass) and Stu Brown (drums). They toured New Zealand in 2015
and are currently recording their Creative Scotland supported debut album.
In association with Polish cellist Justyna Jablonska, he has just released the
new Karmana album featuring Simon’s six movement Karmana suite for guitar
and cello, reimagined Gaelic, Romany and Polish music, one of the most
advanced ever uses of backwards recording and special guests Karine Polwart
(Scots song), Masha Natanson (Romany song) and Sarvar Sabri (tabla).
Thacker is also classical guitar tutor at Edinburgh College and Edinburgh
Napier University. He recently performed at The Sacred Pushkar in
December 2017, organised by Sanjoy Roy's Teamwork Arts and presented by
by Shree Cement.
In this interview, Thacker says that music, to him, is life. “It is a journey of
self-discovery. I have always felt that what has been discovered musically
thus far to transmit our deepest feelings and emotions is but a scratch on the
surface of what is possible. I have many visions of new possibilities, and my
compositions, ensembles and collaborations are the means of my journey to
realise these,” he says. Excerpts from an interview:
Shireen Quadri: A guitar soloist, composer and leader of the ensemble,
Svara-Kanti, world’s leading Indo-Western collective, you have been touring
the world. Tell us about how you go around preparing for performances in
each of the big cities?
Simon Thacker: “Simon Thacker’s Svara-Kanti” is my vehicle for expanding
on traditions from the Indian subcontinent, and for creating new soundworlds
by absorbing the aspects of each tradition that moves me most. It is a
collective that changes lineup depending on the programme focus (Carnatic,
Baul, Punjabi, totally new instrumental music, and so on). Each international
performance has been different, with contrasting preparation. For example,
the first time I toured India, in 2014, I brought a UK-based lineup which had
toured constantly for a couple of years, but I added Baul singer Raju Das Baul
as a guest for two songs. So my preparation for that involved going to
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INTERVIEW
Santiniketan to meet Raju, choose songs and rehearse, reimagining the music
while I was in its heartland, before joining the rest of the group.
When the group played in Dhaka in 2016 (to 60 000 people in the Army
Stadium for the International Folk Fest), I brought what had by then become
a fully fledged Baul programme and this time I added Kushtia-based Baul
singer Farida Yasmin for two songs, with only 48 hours to create the music
from scratch! As I’m used to creating under pressure in remarkably tight
timescales, I could draw on my immersion in the tradition over so many
years to pull it off with great success. For my Pakistan tour in 2015, I reimagined
a famous popular song, making it more dramatic and closer to a classical
tradition, so preparation was mainly this recomposition. For The Sacred
Pushkar (a Teamwork festival) in 2017, I simply had to choose the best programme
for the stunning open air lake side setting.
Shireen Quadri: Svara-Kanti’s 2013 debut album, Rakshasa, has been getting
great reviews. Tell us about its making. What aspects of the two traditions
— East and West — did you focus on?
Simon Thacker: Rakshasa attracted 50 great reviews from around the world
from publications spanning an array of genres (Indian, jazz, experimental,
world, classical, even rock), showing how boundary demolishing it was.
Whereas the album we will be releasing next year, Trikala, is one compositional
voice (me) and many performers from different traditions, Rakshasa
was the same four performers interpreting four very different composers.
The music spanned classical Carnatic, Hindustani and Dhrupad influences to
Punjabi folk (Surinder Kaur, Narinder Biba) transformed, and finally the title
track depicting the demons of the Ramayana through my own invented raga
and a development of the backwards recording technique pioneered by Jimi
Hendrix and The Beatles.
Shireen Quadri: The group’s next album will be released next year. What is
it going to be about?
Simon Thacker: Trikala will be released in June and it is an epic double
album. It is designed, rather modestly (!), to be the most advanced Indo-
Western release up to this point. On the first CD, there are instrumental
pieces that reveal what I regard to be the most prescient realisation of the
musical language I have been developing, that goes beyond notions of
“Indian” and “Western” to truly occupy its own space. I think of this not as
“fusion”, which is often a simplification or amalgamation, but as a new clas-
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MUSIC
sical tradition, an evolution of tradition. This features Grammy Award-winning
tabla maestro Sukhvinder Singh Pinky and incredible violinist Jackie
Shave. There are also radical Punjabi folk reimaginings (my vision for contemporary
Punjabi music) and two tracks with leading Carnatic percussionists.
The second album consists of my reimaginings of both Indian and
Bangladeshi Baul songs with Raju Das Baul and Farida Yasmin and my
instrumental compositions using the Baul string instrument khomok in new
ways with classical guitar and tabla. So, there are Hindustani (North),
Carnatic (South), Punjabi (West) and Baul (East) traditions transformed and
enriched with new layers and new music that is beyond categorisation. I’m
confident that it will prove to be an important milestone in intercultural
music.
Shireen Quadri: You are also the leader and composer for Ritmata, which
also features three of Europe’s finest jazz/world musicians: Paul Harrison
(piano), Mario Caribe (bass) and Stu Brown (drums). Tell us about the debut
album of the group that you are currently working on?
Simon Thacker: Simon Thacker’s Ritmata is my longest running group (since
2006) and has developed into what I call my musical laboratory. I draw on
inspirations as diverse as Native American Pow Wow, 13th century Spanish
miracle songs, Dagestani Mountain Jewish and Sufi traditions to write original
music for the incredible abilities of the musicians, who can realise any
score no matter how demanding and improvise near telepathically. The
album is kindly supported by Creative Scotland and also features two special
guest singers from unique traditions, but as it is not coming out until summer
next year, everything is still under wraps. I promise it will be spectacular and
will add new dimensions to the soundworld of the classical guitar!
Shireen Quadri: With Polish cellist Justyna Jablonska, you have also released
the Karmana album featuring your six-movement Karmana suite for guitar
and cello, reimagined Gaelic, Romany and Polish music, one of the most
advanced ever uses of backwards recording and special guests Karine
Polwart (Scots song), Masha Natanson (Romany song) and Sarvar Sabri
(tabla). Tell us about the album.
Simon Thacker: Karmana is a Sanskrit word meaning “performing anything
by means of magic” and explicitly seeks to explore what makes certain
sounds and music moving and transformative. It is inspired by the belief in
music as a means of transcendence. There are always two strands to my
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INTERVIEW
simon thacker with raju Das Baul (right). Photo: Shireen Quadri
work: explicitly new original music coming straight from my subconscious
and often radical reimaginings of traditional material. These two strands
infuse and drive each other on: traditions transmit creative spirits and learning
from the past, the original new music propulses me forward and gives me
new means of transforming myself and the pre-existing material. So it features
new instrumental music written for my long time duo partner Justyna
Jablonska on cello, which we have toured extensively, as well as a new vision
for Scots, Gaelic, Polish and Roma Gypsy song, as well as an explosive trio for
cello, guitar and tabla.
Shireen Quadri: 2016 saw the premiere of your Songs of the Roma, the new
Romany musical journey, at the Made in Scotland showcase in the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival with Justyna Jablonska and Masha Natanson. Tell us about
the experience.
Simon Thacker: The spiritual home of the Romany people is India and I have
such an affinity with traditions from Rajasthan. Justyna has Roma ancestry
and we both love Roma music, so an exploration of this tradition, with me
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65

MUSIC
adding new layers to what is one of the world’s great song repositories,
seemed a natural next step for us. Masha had guested on the Karmana album
and it worked so well that I always intended to create a whole programme
for this combination. She has a stunningly emotive voice. We were chosen to
represent Scotland at the prestigious Made in Scotland showcase at the
world’s biggest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in 2016 which
gave me the perfect opportunity to do so. We will be touring widely in 2018
and releasing our first album, with me transforming songs in Roma,
Romanian, Serbian, Russian and Polish, as well as creating virtuoso instrumental
music.
Shireen Quadri: You teach classical guitar at Edinburgh College and
Edinburgh Napier University. Tell us about your own influences?
Simon Thacker: Teaching keeps you grounded and in touch with parts of your
own formation and journey that you might otherwise forget, as well as makes
you constantly re-evaluate every aspect of your art and music in general. My
particular journey has been one of a multitude of simultaneous paths that have
fed my evolving musical world, which has allowed me to connect with musicians
from wildly different backgrounds to my own. My formal classical university
and conservatoire training was always allied to exploring the path and
evolution of ideas, forms, inspirations and genres across the world, including
Indian traditions, flamenco, North Africa, Native America and so on. I played
in a jazz quintet and big band at uni and a rock band in high school. My classical
education and immersion in masterworks by Bach, Britten, Rodrigo and
all the greats gave me the means to explore and absorb in order to create the
musical world I want to hear and want people to experience.
Shireen Quadri: What aspects of the folk, classical and spiritual forms of the
Indian subcontinent fascinate you?
Simon Thacker: The Indian subcontinent offers so much to explore. The classical
traditions, which I have listened to since I was 13, are perfectly complimentary
to Western pre-early 20th century classical music in that they use the
same raw materials of music in almost the exactly opposite way (complexity
of simultaneous notes in harmony vs the highly developed raga system, the
movement of sa but fewer scales vs an unchanging drone and a cornucopia of
scales, etc). There are many aspects of Indian classical traditions that I came
to realise are naturally part of my musical language, in more or less literal
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INTERVIEW
ways, for example the Carnatic rhythmic system. In spiritual and folk traditions,
such as Baul, Sufi, Punjabi, I found an energy, aesthetic and directness
of expression that matches my own quest perfectly. This connection is deeply
embedded, spiritual and emotional, beyond words. My music explains it
more eloquently than my prose.
Shireen Quadri: What do you think lies at the root of your expansive compositions?
What are some of the things that shape your compositions?
Simon Thacker: Music to me is life. It is a journey of self discovery. For as
long as I can remember, I was never satisfied with the status quo and always
felt deeply that what has been discovered musically thus far to transmit our
deepest feelings and emotions is but a scratch on the surface of what is possible.
I have many visions of new possibilities, and my compositions, ensembles
and collaborations are the means of my journey to realise these.
Shireen Quadri: Your oeuvre is marked by a certain intricacy and depth of
understanding. What do you turn to for inspiration? What do you think lends
your compositions their intensity?
Simon Thacker: Inspiration comes in many forms and I find it is best not to
analyse its origin too much, but I believe that the more disparate sources,
from every art form (I love dance, visual art and theatre for example), the
more deep connections you make with people on a similar journey, the more
positive influences then the more likely inspiration is to flow through you.
Your mind and subconscious needs to be fed and connected with creative
spirit. If you do this, at a certain point, usually unexpectedly, it just blurts
something out and that might prove to be your greatest ever composition.
The intensity of my music, which is often commented on, is simply a reflection
of my personality. I prefer rawness, directness and unfettered expression.
Shireen Quadri: What are you currently working on?
Simon Thacker: Trikala by Simon Thacker’s Svara-Kanti will be released in
early summer after I finish recording (there will also be lots of videos recorded
for my YouTube channel) in Kolkata and Chennai in February. The Simon
Thacker’s Ritmata new album will be entering a new phase in March and Songs
of the Roma will tour and record a new album in April and May for release at
the end of 2018. It will be a busy start to the year!
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 67

LITERATURE
68
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

POETRY
To Poetry
Don’t desert me
just because I stayed up last night
watching The Lost Weekend.
EDWARD
HIRSCH
I know I’ve spent too much time
praising your naked body to strangers
and gossiping about lovers you betrayed.
I’ve stalked you in foreign cities
and followed your far-flung movements,
pretending I could describe you.
Forgive me for getting jacked on coffee
and obsessing over your features
year after jittery year.
I’m sorry for handing you a line
and typing you on a screen,
but don’t let me suffer in silence.
Does anyone still invoke the Muse,
string a wooden lyre for Apollo,
or try to saddle up Pegasus?
Winged horse, heavenly god or goddess,
indifferent entity, secret code, stored magic,
pleasance and half wonder, hell,
I have loved you my entire life
without even knowing what you are
or how—please help me—to find you.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 69

LITERATURE
I woke this winter morning
to the smell of the sea
and hummed a song for nothing,
how nothing came to me.
I dreamed I mounted a horse
along an empty beach
where we galloped far away
‘til I was out of reach.
Troubadour Song
We trotted past the lighthouse
abandoned on the dunes
and paused by a small stable
that was now in ruins.
I woke this winter morning
to the smell of the sea
and made a song for nothing,
how nothing came to me.
We rode to the starkest edge
of nowhere, by the sea.
The horse was all that remained
of what I’d longed to be.
We had somewhere deep to rest
and nothing left to see,
and so the two of us walked
into the cemetery.
I woke this winter morning
to the smell of the sea
and sang a song for nothing,
how nothing came to me.
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POETRY
The Keening
All morning he heard a faint thrumming
In the distance, a wail, a wild cry—
Atonal, primitive—
Almost too far away to hear,
A frequency nearly beyond us now,
Yet ours alone.
All morning he tried to blot it out
And follow the news breaking
Like a fog over the day,
But he kept hearing it rising
And coming closer, a chant,
A plea from the dead
Suddenly burning inside him,
One of the grief-stricken ones,
Wearing a button-down with a tie
And walking the hall with a notebook
As if he belonged here, as if
He had something else to report.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 71

LITERATURE
I Was Never Able to Pray
Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.
Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.
I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves
and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night.
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POETRY
Black Rhinoceros
The Black Rhinoceros at Brookfield Zoo
Eating sweet potatoes, carrots, and bread
Looked like my uncle’s extended family
Crowding around the table at Thanksgiving.
Mrs. Movehill suddenly started crying
On the second-grade bus, which often stalled,
And the next day we had a substitute teacher
Who said that rhinos have poor eye-sight
And swivel their tube-shaped ears in all directions
So they can hear their enemies approaching, lions
And people who carve their horns into daggers
Or mash them into pain relievers.
My parents bought my shoes on discount
At Wolinsky& Levy, and so whenever I raised
Either foot my sole said “Damaged.”
That’s why I kept my feet close to the floor.
When Mrs. Movehill returned, she wore dark
Dresses and told us that the Black Rhinoceros
Is the same muddy color as the White Rhinoceros,
Which is strange, if you think about it, and we did.
What does it feel like to have two horns
Tilting up on a huge head, Mr. Rhinoceros?
You lumber around in your skin of armor
Like an exiled general or a grounded unicorn.
Everyone knows that a pachyderm in peril
Would still rather live in the open savannah.
We can’t tell if you are trumpeting forward
Or backward in your scrubby house.
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73

MUSIC
THE SOU
SHIREEN
QUADRI
notes from t
stage being set up at the
sacred pushkar 2017.
Photos: Shireen Quadri
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FESTIVAL
LITERATURE I ARTS I CULTURE
ND OF MUSIC
e sacred pushkar 2017
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MUSIC
For three years, the sacred town of Pushkar, tucked away in Rajasthan’s
Ajmer district and nestled in the midst of Aravalli range, has seen its
holy ghats reverberate with the strains of music in modes which evoke
the ardour of piety, stirring souls, bringing people from variegated hues of
cultures closer. For three years, The Sacred Pushkar, organised by Teamwork
Arts and presented by Shree Cement, an annual two-day confluence, has celebrated
a variety of traditions, a whole host of aspects that define and redefine
the word “sacred”.
If music breaks barriers, spiritual music perhaps can do much more. It certainly
helps shed linguistic boundaries, nourishes souls and forges bonds
between people of different faiths and cultures. Like the previous two years,
the 2017 edition of the festival, which was organised on December 16 and 17,
saw rhythms of Sufi, gospel, acapella, folk and North Indian and Carnatic
classical music echo across its lakes and ghats.
If Sufi music added to the enchantment and allure of the experiential festival,
highlighting the celestial nature of music, its heritage walks and “satvik”
food on offer aligned with the idea of wellness. The festival, which orients
itself in three directions — social, spiritual and cultural — has been showcasing
how music and yoga can heal body and soul and make people of different
continents feel connected with the sacred town, considered to be holy by
practioners of multiple faiths, including Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, proving
how art is essentially a part of divinity.
Day 1 started with Hansa Sharma demonstrating the mantras of wellness
with a yoga session between 8-9 am. It was followed by teachings on non-violence
and compassion by Geshema Tenzin Lhadron who was last year
awarded Geshema, the highest degree in Buddhist doctrine or philosophy,
along with several other nuns, who became the first nuns in the Tibetan
Buddhist tradition to reach the highest pinnacle of academic excellence. Then,
Delhi-based theologian, poet, meditation practitioner, art curator and critic
Robinson Robert took enthusiasts on a heritage walk around Pushkar.
Thereafter, Gangor Ghat came alive with a nagada workshop by Nathulal
Solanki, who has been playing the nagadas for several years now, performing
all over India and showcasing his talent at numerous festivals all over the
world. Nagada, also called kettledrum, is a conical drum played with the
Surnai and Nafeeri (two sticks) and holds a significant place amongst
Rajasthan’s folk instruments. Solanki hails from Pushkar Sangeet Gharana
and has mastered in Kuchamani Khayal. Having performed with Prem
Joshua, Indian Ocean and Susheela Raman, among others, he now runs his
own school in Pushkar where he teaches nagada to people from all walks of
life.
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Jaipur Ghat before a performance. a roadside cafe with offers more than just food
and drinks (below). Photos: Shireen Quadri
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 77

MUSIC
Members of laboratorium pieśni (song laboratory), a group of female singers from
poland, during a performance. (below). Photos: Shireen Quadri
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FESTIVAL
Barely had the sounds of nagada died down when Song Laboratory
(Laboratorium Pieśni), a group of female singers from Tri-City (Poland), took
over. Known for traditional and polyphonic singing, they are also proficient
in acapella singing as well as with shaman drums, Shruti box, Kalimba, flute,
gong, Zaphir and Koshi chimes, singing bowls, rattles etc. They create new
space in a traditional song, adding voice improvisations, inspired by sounds
of nature, often intuitive, wild and feminine.
It was time for another heritage walk by Robinson, who now took people
around the amazing ghats of Pushkar. The evening began to bristle with
sacred bhajans by Arushi Asgaonkar. Soon, World Ethnic Music
Ensemble, a unique combination of musicians from Iran, India, USA,
Afghanistan and France, took over. The ensemble was formed by Iranian
master percussionist and musicologist Fakhroddin Ghaffari in 2010. Ghaffari
plays percussions from different parts of the world. Part of Coke Studio at
MTV-India (Season Two), he has earlier shared stage with many the likes of
Abida Parveen and Hans Raj Hans. The ensemble was a colourful celebration
of a variety of musical traditions: acoustic, electronic Mandolin, sitar, cello,
guitar, tabla and percussion. The ensemble’s music is steeped in Arabic and
Persian flavours, with a dash of Indian folk and classical as well as Flamenco.
Then, Bhanwari Devi and Nathulal Solanki jammed together to bring
about the confluence of folk and nagada. It was followed by “Three
Generations of Percussion” by Vikku Vinayakram, the Grammy Award-winning
Indian percussionist, who plays Carnatic music with ghatam, an earthen
pot. Credited with popularising ghatam, Vinayakram has been awarded
the Padma Shri (2002), Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship (2012) and Padma
Bhushan (2014). The day ended with the soulful renditions of Kavita Seth
whose Sufi and Classical numbers ricocheted off ghats, the stone steps used
to descend to the lake edge.
Day 2 began with a session on yantra yoga and Vajra dance by Zoltan Cser
of Bulgaria. The Vajra dance is part of the Dzogchen Teachings transmitted
by the world renowned Dzogchen master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. It can be
practised by up to 12 dancers, six men and six women. Following precise
sequences of steps, the men move in a clockwise direction while the women
move counter-clockwise on a big, five-coloured mandala of concentric circles
and triangles. The movements are coordinated by the sound of sacred syllables
(mantras), which can be found in the original texts of the Dzogchen
Teaching.
It was followed by the rendition of Indian Classical ragas on flute by Atul
Shankar, who received his training under his grandfathers, late Pandit Bhola
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 79

MUSIC
Kavita seth during a performance. nathulal solanki conducts a nagada workshop
(below). Photos: Shireen Quadri
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FESTIVAL
Nath Prasanna and Pandit Khelvan ji, renowned exponents of Benaras
Gharana. After another round of heritage walk by Robinson (to Savitri temple)
and nagada workshop by Solanki at Gangor Ghat, Rashmi Agarwal belted
out some Sufi and devotional songs. Agarwal is best known for her many
collaborative projects, including “The Z Factor” project with Jazz musicians,
combining ghazals with Jazz and “Roohdari Rang”, which combined Sufi
songs with Kathak dance. Her albums include Rang De Maula, Sentiments,
Songs of Kabir, Enchanting Chant, Deep Electric and Soul Box.
Then, it was time for the wonders of guitar and the mysticism of baul
music to unfold. Scottish guitar virtuoso Simon Thacker-led band,
Svara-Kanti, set the stage on fire with their enchanting performance.
The bauls and guitar strings gave way to a session of polyphonic singing and
Shaman drums by Laboratorium Piesni. Later, Mukhtiyar Ali rocked the
night with his Sufi qawaalis.
At the Sacred Pushkar, music is used as a tool for social, cultural and religious
integration. The festival highlights how boundaries — linguistic, geographical
and cultural — blur when it comes to bonding over music or meditation.
It provides an avenue for the locals to mix with people of multiple
race and ethnicities, bringing foreigners and locals together, with the intermingling
facilitating, and even enhancing, the understanding of the “other”,
forging social cohesion.
The sacred town provides a perfect setting and intimate space for conversations
to begin at its restaurants and cafes where people could be seen
around bonfires, milling about, striking all kinds of conversations.
In today’s times, a festival that promotes such an intermingling, acquires a
special significance. And Teamwork Arts, which is doing its bit by organising
such festivals, including the Mahindra Kabira Festival on the banks of
Varanasi in November, must be lauded for such thoughtful initiatives where
people from different places find a platform to come together.
Pushkar has long been known for its annual multi-day livestock fair and
cultural fête. It was perhaps time to redefine the town and associate with
something more substantial and cosmopolitan. The Sacred Pushkar, a festival
that’s getting bigger in scale and vision with each successive edition, promises
to give tourists a reason to descend on its ghats in December and soak in
the breathtaking sights, especially sunrise and sunsets along the ghats. For
instance, Jaipur Ghat at one end of Pushkar Lake, is a beautiful venue for the
evening musical performances. The periphery of the lake gets defined by
night bulbs. There are candles lighted along the seating area in votives. The
venue is decked up. Wall artists make colourful murals on the wall near the
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 81

MUSIC
Members of the audience enjoy the performance. Brass band members during the
heritage walk (below, left). sanjoy roy. Photos: Shireen Quadri, Teamwork Arts
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FESTIVAL
venue. There is sand art, decorated camel cart and makeshift tents for shops.
The cafes are bustling with young and old, munching, smoking or sipping tea
or coffee to keep themselves warm. The Westin Pushkar Resort & Spa, the
luxury hospitality partner for the event, has luxurious 80 villas with private
pools and fitness centre.
According to Sanjoy Roy, Managing Director, Teamwork Arts, his
personal takeaway from the event was the exceptional diversity of
music and representation of the sacred from the Nordic countries.
“Waking up each morning to the sounds of flute drifting across the Brahma
Kund was magical and captured the very essence of this quaint old-world
hamlet set amidst the hills and sand dunes of Rajasthan,” says Roy.
Roy says that music and the arts are a perfect way to showcase the spiritual
essence of creative artists. “In today’s somewhat divisive world, we find
that art knows no language, caste, colour or religion. It’s a pure celebration of
the sacred within us and is reflective of the outer environment. Keeping all of
these many thoughts in mind, we have been keen to create platforms for different
arts across sacred sites in India and abroad,” says Roy.
However, putting all this together has hardly been a cakewalk. The challenge
has been to bring so different artists and discover the wealth of their
“passion and diversity”.
Roy says, “In 2017, we travelled through the desert sands of Rajasthan to
the icy winter landscape of the Nordic countries, taking in the many different
traditions and forms. The challenge always remains to make the experience
magical and get people to absorb the surrounding atmosphere so that they
stop a while and search within.” The next edition of The Sacred Pushkar, says
Roy, will be held on 12- 14 October, 2018. “We are planning to add more meditation
and yoga elements to the festival. Our main focus will be on mind,
body and soul. So, each and every element of the festival will reflect that,
including full organic food trail and more meditation and spiritual morning
and evening music,” says Roy.
For those visiting Pushkar at the time of the festival, the town acquires a
new hue. Minal, a student of the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design in
Jaipur, who is doing a research on the cultural exchange in Pushkar, says he
rediscovered Pushkar on his second visit to the city which coincided with the
Sacred Pushkar festival. “The heritage walk aroundthe city and the beautiful
cable ride to Savitri temple, dedicated to Brahma’s wife, Goddess Savitri in
the Ratnagiri hills, by Robinson were fascinating,” he says.
For Pushkar, the festival is akin to an annual rite of passage that helps the
town take a peek into its soul, aided with hymns and chants.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 83

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LITERATURE
86
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

POETRY
I wake up with my cheek against
a wooden floor. It’s dark,
but somehow I’m aware of being
cradled in a space
within a larger space. Yes —
these must be the walls
of whatever box or basin I’m in
looming out of the gloom.
A Spotlight
Very carefully, I lift
my head up, then my shoulders,
noticing the damp as it
peels away from me.
The basin rocks a little — it’s
a boat. I’m in a boat.
But am I moving? Nothing in
my pockets, lighter gone.
I run my hands along the sides
and seem to find the corners
of a stern. I look over the edge
and focus hard, but can’t
be sure if what I’m seeing are
the ripples in my wake
or imperfections in my vision.
‘Where am I?’ I ask,
feeling like an idiot
for saying it out loud.
HUMPHREY
ASTLEY
Just then, the space behind me
lights up, and I turn
to see a sheer expanse of white
noise, and at the bow,
a spotlight with its back to me.
A spotlight? A figure. A person?
Petrified, I cannot look
away. Slow as ice,
it turns its head and looks at me —
the empty face of the moon
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LITERATURE
Time’s Furrow
‘Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?’
Galway Kinnell
Progressing, endowed with greater knowledge
perhaps, I nonetheless come up
against this clock. I find myself
lowered to the earth on coiled
ladders by my parents, lowered
into Time’s furrow, where this
rock and I are guided, bound
by levees named for Sisyphus
and Atlas. They ask me what the matter
is with flux, I answer thus —
the only counterweight’s the nudity
of youth, the nameless sense
that while my senses lie about
their wealth, they cannot lie about
the mirror’s way with rags. It is
the future meeting me at every
moment, and my demanding more.
Only a human-being would hate
endlessly arriving. Endlessly?
No, not quite — an end
point will come as surely as
my point of entry in this so-called
pointless universe. I am
being-written, a blue To be
continued… How can my will be free
if it was never gifted to me?
It levies the self. We have a deal,
then. I’ll count the days and value
them, valet for this blind
Old Man. And find out what I am —
progression endowed with greater knowledge?
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POETRY
Breathless
a modernized pastoral
They call me Breathless;
and it’s true I have
a habit of saying
the world is very
beautiful.
What I don’t say
is that my sense
of beauty might be
special: nature
is unequalled
in artificial
eyes, being
removed. (Once,
a visitor
asked me if
I could remove
an eye, but all
I could think
to do was blush.
He clapped and laughed.)
*
Nevertheless,
I know my thoughts
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89

LITERATURE
are valued: I have
often submitted
to interviews,
in which they ask
questions like
‘Do you feel
you are conscious?’
‘How should I know?’
I reply,
which made them laugh
the first few times.
It’s a routine
I am in a sense
willing to suffer,
unlike the tasks
my keepers set,
which I enjoy:
showering,
watering
the rubber plant.
*
Twentiethcentury
Argentine
poet Jorge
Luis Borges
described routine
90
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POETRY
as a salvation
of sorts. The poem
is beautiful,
a modernized
pastoral.
I can recite it,
with analysis,
at your preferred
playback speed,
if you’d like?
Say the word;
it’s all in here.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017
91

LITERATURE
Why did you give me this name
before all others? Grave
enough the odds of taking
skin alone, but then
this infant has to grow
into this sign. How
can I inhabit it
if it is not empty —
if it is empty, what
is stopping its collapse?
Call
From throat to tongue to lips,
the call unspools, a sinestring
I helplessly
weave into a net,
a subtle swaddling.
This is what you gave me
in front of all the others,
before passing away
by standing still in the crowd,
the way an era sets
into the sleep of faith.
Still, the mark we can’t
see is the mark we can’t
erase. Self-evident.
Not so odd, then,
that when they speak my name,
it is your call I hear.
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POETRY
Options
Was that the great drama
of my life? You wonder
how many men answer
this question the wrong way.
No, they say, I still
have one more in me, surely,
straining like some awful
kitchen sink Wagner.
The breaking of a home,
a deal with the devil
that wears your feeble skin,
an earthquake and a sigh —
wasn’t this enough,
for want of a prouder word?
Wouldn’t it be insane
to open up the pit?
Maybe those are the options —
insanity or quiet.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 93

Masque whips up g
HOSPITALITY
Celebrating
SHIREEN
QUADRI
the Masque organised its
exclusive pop-up at
the lodhi in new Delhi.
Photos: Masque
94
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

CUISINE
rare flavours
astronomical delights
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HOSPITALITY
The exclusive pop-up of Masque, the high-end restaurant based in
Mumbai, was held at The Lodhi in Delhi early in December. Owner
Aditi Dugar, co-founder and head chef Prateek Sadhu and event curator
Raaj Sanghvi together put up a 14-course elaborate and impressive meal
which enthused food connoisseurs in Delhi.
About 19 sous chefs worked in an open kitchen to whip up gastronomical
delicacies. At Masque, they served rare food in style, in a setting that was
elegant and graceful. It was quite an experience to eat fresh seasonal wild
harvests from Ladakh and Kashmir.
Highlighting the concept of Masque, Dugar said, “We are a wilderness-totable
restaurant. All our produce comes from within the length and breadth
of the country. We practise a lot of foraging techniques where we really
reach out to far-off areas beyond our reach in India and we work with a lot
of forest departments and small-scale farmers to help us bring lost ingredients
to the table. It’s a produce-driven restaurant and we do work with local
farms in and around the areas. It’s a very seasoned menu and it changes
every month. Prateek Sadhu is a Kashmiri. So, the menu draws on the
Himalayan belt and the Kashmir region where there are clear climatic
changes. The bar also echoes the same philosophy. It’s like a cocktail kitchen.
We don’t really like to call it a bar. At Masque, the bar is like a kitchen set up
outside. And one can choose a pairing according to taste and can name a
drink. When you come to the bar next, you can re-order your cocktail. We
store the recipe and you’ll get exactly the same combination.”
As Dugar spoke, we went ahead to make our customised cocktail drinks.
Soon, it was time for the sit-down lunch. The Sourdough Katlam bread was
served at the table. “We have been serving this since the hotel started,” said
head chef Prateek Sadhu. The hand-made butter was creamy, smooth and
delicious.
The chef also directed us not to stir or mix the green almond broth that
looked and tasted exotic, cooked in three different oils. “It has to be drunk
as Japanese drink tea. Just pick up the cup and drink,” the chef directs us.
Then, there was sea buckthorn, brought from the northern part of Ladakh,
close to Pakistan. “This August, we went there and foraged 150 kilos of sea
buckthorn. We do our R&D in the kitchen and created this cuisine with pine
salt and black pepper cream at the bottom. This is our intermediate course,”
says the chef.
One of the dishes was made with the second rarest mushroom on the
planet. Some of the rare ingredients that are used in the Masque kitchen are
praan — Kashmiri shallots with garlicky notes — green almonds, chinar
leaves, wild nettles, mallow, sea buckthorn etc.
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CUISINE
chia seed toast, charcoal pillow, takoyak. edible flowers and leaves (below).
Photos courtesy of Masque
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 97

HOSPITALITY
some of the rare ingredients used at Masque are praan — Kashmiri shallots with
garlicky notes — green almonds, chinar leaves, wild nettles, mallow, sea buckthorn.
Photos courtesy of Masque
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CUISINE
Idea is to elevate hidden
ingredients: Aditi Dugar
ADITI DUGAR
Founder, Masque
What led you to start Masque and
what was the thought behind the
selection of the city? What are your
expansion plans?
I’ve always thought there is too large a
gap between the international food
scene and our local one, though that’s
quickly changing; Prateek and I also
shared the concern that not enough
people were looking inwards for
flavours, techniques and ingredients.
There is such an abundance of good
produce here, and it deserves its due.
There still remain so many local
cuisines and hidden ingredients to
explore. That’s the idea that Masque
was built on: local ingredients and
flavours, elevated to the next level in
ways people wouldn’t expect. There
are no expansion plans for the restaurant
on the books yet, but we are
exploring the idea of setting up a lab or
test kitchen to focus on R&D.
What were your expectations from the
Delhi pop-up? How much do you
think you’ve achieved in this context?
We wanted to explore a new market
and introduce Masque to it, and have
the opportunity to educate larger audiences
on the produce of India. We
wanted them to experience what can be
gained out of looking inwards, so to
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HOSPITALITY
co-founder, Masque, and head chef prateek sadhu with aditi Dugar. Photo courtesy
of Masque
speak. No matter how confident you are, there’s always a little bit of nervousness
reaching out to a new audience! That said, the response was overwhelming
— we received incredible support from the industry, media and
diners, who were very receptive to the whole concept.
What are your next plans?
I also run a catering company called Sage & Saffron that’s on the charts for
expansion. For Masque, we have a bigger vision for the restaurant still; it’s
very focused and driven in a particular direction right now, and it’s too early
to expand. We’re currently investing more in the research we’re doing to
achieve that vision.
Your advice to young entrepreneurs starting out in the industry?
Take risks to challenge yourself and your mind — if it’s not making you
nervous, it’s not challenging enough!
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CUISINE
Rediscovering India’s brilliant
produce: Chef Prateek Sadhu
PRATEEK SADHU
Co-founder and head
chef, Masque
What made you plan a pop-up in
Delhi? What were your biggest challenges
of the Delhi pop-up?
I’ve done a fair bit of travelling this
year — Mexico, the US, Russia and
Scotland to cook, Jammu & Kashmir
and Uttarakhand to forage — and we
thought it was time to share a little
piece of Masque within India as well.
We wanted to showcase what we’re
doing at the restaurant and shine light
on some of the amazing ingredients we
found, especially up north.
The Lodhi was very supportive and
opened up their lawns to us for the popup.
But this was more than just a few of
us travelling to another city to take over
a restaurant kitchen — we wanted to
make it a holistic experience, as close to
the original as possible. We built an
entire outdoor kitchen from scratch on
the lawns (thanks to FCML!); we only
faced a couple of minor technical glitches
over the course of the two days, other
than which everything flowed smoother
than we could have imagined!
What have been your takeaways from
this event?
That audiences are extremely receptive
and excited to expand their horizons!
One of our initial hesitations about a
restaurant like Masque was how respon-
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HOSPITALITY
prateek sadhu at work. Photo courtesy of Masque
sive people would be towards it, but our guests consistently relieve those concerns.
It’s a super feeling to share the excitement of discovering — or rediscovering
— India’s brilliant produce with diners that are equally thrilled to learn.
What are your favourite cuisines from the Masque menu? What do you
think was the major draw for Delhi food enthusiasts?
I can’t quite point out a cuisine, given that we don’t have any one in particular,
but some of my personal favourite ingredients from The Lodhi menu
were sea buckthorn, tiny and tart berries from Ladakh; some brilliant local
oysters, Kashmiri morels and green almonds that we use in an almond broth
served with three oils. We also had a great batch of passion fruit, apricots
and sunchokes — it’s so hard to choose!
Tell us how you go about cooking with foraged foods?
It’s tricky. First of all, because we have a very small window within which
to transport them back to the Masque kitchen intact. Then, of course, quantities
are limited, so we can only set aside so much to experiment and play
around with. There are inevitable hits and misses, and you have to keep it
very concise so as to not waste ingredients. We try not to mess around with
the flavours too much.
102
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

see trails of thought
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LITERATURE
104
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

POETRY
In Poetry’s Dark Nights
(Translated from Urdu by the poet)
in poetry’s dark nights
from the whispers of two hands
from the misty frontier of lips
from the covert songs of faces
from the vanished empires of feet
from the spread arms of nuclei
an ocean has raged down –
RIYAZ LATIF
The Exegesis of Lips the
Shade of Non-Existence
in my voice
the expansiveness of ages
that courses to the stretches of invisible shores
to the unborn shadows of worlds…
passing beyond there
vortex within vortex,
alive in my waters,
tell me,
who shall rise
from the exegesis of my lips the shade of non-existence
when a history
comes to be written
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 105

LITERATURE
Ask
listen, liquid air frothing
from green leaves
listen, mystique-forging drops
of murmuring rains
listen, doves of dew quivering solitary
on soft lips of grass
ask the depths of her eyes
ask the depths of her eyes
to return to me all my tears
for now,
I want to inscribe with flowing water
poems of thirst
To Become a Phantasm
in the slumbering deserts of my voice
how many dreamy lands do I bear as I roam
how many barren fruits of forgotten dusks
how much cryptic frenzy of falling leaves
how many walls with
vegetal ranks of livid, liquid shadows
What now
in the slumbering deserts of my voice
might be the rationale
for the dissolution of a dissolving world?
Melting all distances into myself
vein by vein
I leave outside
the unity of voids
and on the obscure symphony of whispers
arising from that distant shore
in the slumbering deserts of my voice
how many mirages of dreamy lands do I bear as I roam
the fate of whose sands it is to disappear;
for my limpid voices to become a phantasm!
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POETRY
Abstract Chant —1
already interred, the sultanate of fugitive wings
blood, from land to land, branched
sky a stratum icy
in the body a perpetuity faded
what other, the constitution of dust?
hue by hue touch flared dowsed
vein in vein grass
the green the green of leaves
within the reach of bones
the fire of a million waters
night through night ephemeral
along with supernovas in fists
the geometry of tears
that flowed away grain by grain
then O, my love!
the reckoning of the cosmos
was ciphered!
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 107

LITERATURE
Abstract Chant — 2
far afar soft
soft rage of snow’s inscriptions
all white in the soul
the world too, the soaring too
white, the smoke that I
shall extract from your being
white, the fruitless color
of vapor steam butterflies
again life
the undraped flowers
of your rib-cage are falling
drop by drop in
the bowl of intransience
white now, the unveiled dust of truths…
the inscriptions of snow
that coursed away
shadow by shadow,
thus, the reckoning of a frozen world
was ciphered!
108
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POETRY
The Ant
stretched shrunk
oblique askew
walking rushing my being
a string of fervent frenetic bodies —
moment to moment, like moments here
there’s arriving passing attaining vanishing;
there’s to cease an instant, and to be an instant —
striding roving, this is my musing:
lugging this atom-worth body,
what more entanglement with
this world a grain of sugar?
lugging this atom-worth body,
within the dominions of my own antennae,
who knows what all I’ve lost?
who knows what I seek
in speck within speck wilds;
in the ears of a frenzied elephant!
striding roving, I ruminate:
brewing up a straw-light tempest,
in the stormy eyes of a droplet
I will have to plunge
On the watery shores of a teardrop
I will have to perish!
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LITERATURE
Water My Mirror
Water my mirror
whose eyes a roiling vortex
in which sway being nonbeing
drop in drop a web of stars
liquid reflections of voids
Reflections, in flowing murmurs,
in a wet watery lilt
voice something to their own selves
In water’s mirror
all faces
of my lost faces
keep flowing…
From Eagles’ Eyes
from eagles’ eyes
infinitude’s silhouettes
as if were spiraling, falling,
far down in the liquescent
reverie-circles of the world…
within the silhouettes’ reach
may there be seas of nonappearance
may there be evanescent vistas
may there be station-less centers
In this abode of enchantment
from eagles’ eyes
may the sky flow forth
And in the unfathomed soaring
of fluid worlds
may your touch abound…
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POETRY
Descent
from the night’s eye
has dripped now
the frenzied passion
of my molten shadow!
Dali *
in landscape’s bones, a strange wild passion
in mist’s cranium, blood of voids
in vestment’s ruins, body’s column
It’s a circle of sounds, and the core is but air
fleck oh fleck in colors, all encirclements of vision
from the canvas sprout relentless, dreams’ ineffable empires
O sepulcher of Time!
Solitude denuded!
Passion unleashed!
*Salvador Dali (1904-1989): the renowned Spanish artist associated with surrealism
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 111

LITERATURE
112
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017

POETRY
South Delhi Roadside, 9 pm
As you sell your last
half-melted mango popsicle
and start to push
your cart home,
you think that by now
the ice must be melting
high in Himachal.
Perhaps she is banking
the fire early tonight. Perhaps
she is stepping out
to piss.
MICHAEL
CREIGHTON
Perhaps she is watching
winter wheat ripen
in moonlight.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 113

LITERATURE
South Delhi Jungle Park
with Surya, age four
The beetle walks on its front legs,
back legs pushing a ball of dung across our path.
You complain the ants will bite you
if we don’t keep moving.
Even the neon-necked peacock fails
to hold your attention;
there is grit between your toes,
a bothersome slipperiness in your
puddle-soaked sandals.
Only the tiny purple and brown
speckled egg on the path before us
stops your complaints. It’s beautiful,
you say, let’s take it home and hatch it.
I place the egg in my breast pocket,
knowing there are things
I’ll never be able to explain to this little girl—
the hopelessness of a fallen egg,
the bright yellow stain that will appear
some hours later on my white shirt,
just above the place
I imagine my heart to be.
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POETRY
An Old Woman
After Kolatkar
There’s a purpose behind our choosing
which stories we conjure or board,
like this train rushing south through the flatlands,
or the bus we pass heading north.
I’m only a common magician,
hiding balls under fast moving cups:
you’ll see what I choose to show you;
my tools are omission and flux.
The point’s not the watching or telling,
but the struggle to see and to touch.
What’s under the cup I’m not showing?
I can’t say, but I’m sure of this much:
I have seen the temple walls fracture
and boulders break into sand.
I have heard the falling sky’s clatter;
I’m reduced to small change in her hand.
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LITERATURE
Brother
His mother said it had been cold,
so they’d tried warm oil and prayers
for days before they carried him down
the hill and caught a bus
into town, where the doctor said:
too late, you’ve come too late.
His family taught him how to speak
with face and waving hands:
simple feelings, actions, things;
places to go and leave.
He must be grown by now, but he
was twelve the year he walked
us past the temple to the school
high up there on that hill.
The doors were locked, the students gone,
he’d never been that close;
he peered through windows, studied desks
and did not want to leave.
You asked me: how would longing feel,
without a word to hold it?
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POETRY
Sister
Later, the bare-shelved shack,
the deaf brother, the sick cow’s keening,
but right now, she’s sitting next to a half-dug
field of potatoes, singing.
The melody is cousin to some minor key,
the words about Dehradun in the spring;
no clouds above—but in this breeze,
the taste of evening rain.
Feed the Snake
The sky is clear when a smiling girl
offers to lead us up the trail that connects
the road by the river to her village in the hills.
After an hour, she tells us to sit and rest.
‘This pond and that tree are brothers,’
she says, ‘and we leave milk on these banks
to feed the snake that lives here.’
My seven-year-old son shakes his head
and asks: ‘But is the snake real?
Have you ever seen him?’
She shrugs:
‘Why would we want to see him?’
In the valley below, yesterday’s rain
flows toward the Bay of Bengal.
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HOSPITALITY
Towards M
SHIREEN
QUADRI
the staff of the lalit new
Delhi at the lGBt Brunch.
Photos: The LaLiT
the lalit strives towards m
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EVENTS
aking a Difference
aking the society inclusive
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HOSPITALITY
The LaLiT hosted a series of events in November-December 2017 that
aligned with its broader objective to be inclusive. Here is a roundup:
DRAG MAGNET
In November 2017, Kitty
Su, the nightclub,
brought a couple of
megastars to India. Alaska
Thunderfuck 5000 was on a
two-city tour and performed
at Kitty Su Mumbai
and Kitty Su New Delhi.
Justin Andrew Honard,
who runs with the stage
name Alaska Thunderfuck,
studied theatre at the University of Pittsburgh. He moved to LA after graduation
and started his career as a professional drag queen. In 2014, Alaska
released their debut single, Your Makeup Is Terrible. This was followed by
their debut album Anus in 2015.
Keshav Suri, Executive Director of the LaLiT Suri Hospitality group,
said, We are not only hosting successful events, we are redefining set society
norms, and I am proud to say that we are making a difference. While
championing the change, I am getting to tick my bucket list. I am a huge
fan of Alaska and to have her perform at Kitty Su is like a dream come
true,” he said. The LaLiT, as a group, is making conscious efforts to implement
an all-inclusive policy. As part of the plan, they want to help incorporate
the LGBT community into the mainstream. The drag shows are
aimed to help achieve that goal.
INDIAN WINE DAY
The hotel hosted the Indian Wine Day in association with Subhash
Arora’s Indian Wine Academy and Delhi Wine Club in December
2017. The event was organised to celebrate Indian wines and break
the myth that it does not go well with Indian food. In the dreamy settings
of Alfresco, Sommelier Charles worked magical pairings between Baluchi
food and Indian wines. It was an eight-course delicious meal served along
some best Indian wines from Sula, Grovers, Fratelli and York. Gucchi and
Safed Mushroom Ki Galouti with York Cuvee Brut. Afghani Murgh Kebab
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EVENTS
the acid attack survivors walked the ramp. Photos: The LaLiT
and Panchporan Mahi Tikka with Grovers Art Collection Sauvignon Blanc.
Lamb Nihari, Anjeeri Kofta and Gilafi Kulcha with Fratelli Sangiovese and
Charossa Reserve Temparillo. There was Chandon Brut Rose with some
assorted desserts that matched with some flowing champagne and good
music. Overall, it was a night to remember.
POWER WALK
The LaLiT New Delhi hosted a ramp walk to support acid attack survivors.
It tied up with the NGO Make Love Not War, spearheaded by
Ria Sharma and Tania Singh, where victims of acid attack walked the
ramp for the first time as the crowd cheered them along. The outfits for the
fashion show were donated by about 20 designers.
Speaking on the occasion, CMD, LaLiT Suri Hospitality Group, Jyotsna
Suri, said: “In a small way, the LaLiT Suri Hospitality Group is trying to
wipe away discrimination. We are trying to be as inclusive as it possibly
can be for us. It’s not the government or the institution, but people like all
of us who have to get together to be able to lend support to make life better
for the victims.”
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HOSPITALITY
at the indian wine Day (top); Keshav suri (above) with an acid attack survivor.
Photos: The LaLiT
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EVENTS
Keshav Suri said, “What we are doing is basic human rights. It’s for us
human beings to stand up for people who might not be able to and that’s
something my parents have been doing for many years. And that’s what
the LaLiT Suri Hospitality has been doing for many years.”
LGBT INCLUSIVE BRUNCH
The hotel kickstarted India’s first inclusive brunches at Alfresco in
November at The LaLiT New Delhi. After its launch, the LaLiT has
moved a step closer to its vision of making the society inclusive. In
the past, the hotel has undertaken several initiatives to bring the LGBTQI
community to the mainstream.
A special menu was crafted to create the ultimate Sunday recipe. These
once-a-month affairs will lay out a delectable spread as the hotel hosts the
LGBT community in style. Mahi, the group’s first transgender, hosted the
event, accompanied by Kashish, the runner-up of India’s first transgender
beauty pageant. DJ Kakkid entertained all with his music.
Keshav Suri has always been vocal about the rights of the community.
“We are human beings, and that’s all that matters. The LaLiT is a familyrun
group and we value people and relationships before all. Our doors will
always be open to people of any caste, creed, gender or sexual orientation.
Our hope is that one day we can bring about a change in a way people perceive
other people,” he said.
The LGBT brunches are one of the many endeavours undertaken by The
LaLiT to further their all-inclusive policy. The group has been actively
propagating the agenda of equality and also opened the doors of employment
for queer and the differently-abled.
SUPER FOOD BRUNCH AT THE LALIT MANGAR
In December 2017, the LaLiT Mangar and Origin Superfoods came
together to organise a Super Food healthy brunch. Dr S.M. Raheja of
the Indian Association of Cardiology and Siddharth Sawhney, executive
director of Origin Superfoods, gave important talks on healthy living
and the importance of superfoods in our staple diets. They talked about
healthy dietary habit and restraining the temptation of eating junk food.
The healthy lunch was made of superfoods — cranberry yogurt, fox nuts,
detox drinks, salads, fruits and kathal biryani, gluten-free pizza, tofu bhurji
and much, much more. Desserts had kheer and assorted sweets made of
superfoods.
THE PUNCH I DECEMBER I 2017 123

Contributors
Edward Hirsch (born January 20, 1950) is an American poet and critic who wrote
a national bestseller about reading poetry, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with
Poetry (2009). He has published nine books of poems, including The Living Fire:
New and Selected Poems (2010), which brings together thirty-five years of work,
and Gabriel: A Poem (2014), a book-length elegy for his son that The New Yorker
calls “a masterpiece of sorrow.” He has also published five prose books about
poetry. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in
New York City.
Humphrey ‘Huck’ Astley is a poet and musician based in Oxford, England. His
works include the three-part album and stage-show Alexander the Great (PRSF,
2013-15) and the pamphlet The Gallows-Humored Melody (Albion Beatnik Press,
2016). A new pamphlet, The One-Sided Coin, is forthcoming from Rain over
Bouville. | humphreyastley.co.uk
Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri is a senior journalist who writes on culture and
people. She is a fellow of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez New Journalism
Foundation (FNPI), Colombia.
Michael Creighton is a middle school teacher and library movement activist in
New Delhi, where he’s lived since 2005. New Delhi Love Songs, his first collection
of poetry, was published by Speaking Tiger In association with the Jehangir
Sabavala Foundation in December 2017.
Radhika Venkatarayan works as a qualitative researcher in Mumbai. Her short
fiction has appeared in New World Writing, Out of Print Magazine, Fiction 365,
Pyrta Journal and Madras Mag. Her short story was included in the Madras Mag
Anthology of Contemporary Writing and is forthcoming in Borders &
Boundaries, A Women of Colour Global Anthology. She is working on her novel
currently and blogs at primalsoup.in. She is an alumnus of VONA (Voices of our
Nations Art Foundation), a programme for Writers of Color.
Richa Jha, a freelance writer and editor, has remained under the spell of the written
word all her life. When not bitten by the travel bug, she likes to wield the editorial
scalpel, gently, without too many bruises. She hopes to eventually succeed
in getting the balance right. Just as she hopes to someday get the science behind
the exposure and the aperture in a camera right.
Riyaz Latif holds a doctoral degree in art history, and after a postdoctoral fel-
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lowship with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the MIT, he
taught at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, USA. He has been working as an independent scholar since his return
to India in the summer of 2017. He emerged as a significant voice in Urdu poetry
during the last decade of the twentieth century, and his poems have been published
in reputed Urdu literary journals of India & Pakistan. Along with two collections
of Urdu poetry, Hindasa Be-Khwaab Raton Ka (2006) and Adam Taraash
(2016), as well as a book of translations into Urdu from European poetry, titled
Mera Khoya Awazah (2014), he has published a number of articles, and has translated
Urdu fiction and poetry into English, most of which can be found in the
Annual of Urdu Studies.
Shireen Quadri is a marketing and communications professional who has
worked with several publishing houses. She is founder and publisher, The Punch
Magazine. Passionate about travel and adventure, she also loves to read, cook and
watch movies. On Twitter and Instagram, her handle is @shireenquadri. You can
reach her on shireenquadri@thepunchmagazine.com.
Suman Tarafdar writes to fund his travels. Part of the fast transforming Indian
media professionally, aspects of culture, design, urban life and history fascinate
him. Current political trends disappoint. Delhi-based, he has worked with leading
Indian media organisations across mediums. His previous publications
include The Indian Cinema Quiz Book (Penguin, 2002), though he has since grown
disenchanted with popular culture.

IN THIS ISSUE
ANJUM RAJABALI,
EDWARD HIRSCH,
HUMPHREY ‘HUCK’
ASTLEY,
JISHNU ‘SHORT
ROUND’ GUHA,
MICHAEL CREIGHTON,
PRETI TANEJA,
RADHIKA
VENKATARAYAN,
RIYAZ LATIF,
SIMON THACKER,
SWATI ROY,
SUNIL KANT MUNJAL