Indholdsfortegnelse for 08/01/2016 i The Caravan

On the afternoon of 18 May, Yogen Shah, a 54-year-old photographer, received a short phone call from one of his many informants across Mumbai. The informant said that Shah Rukh Khan was at Mehboob Studio, in the posh suburb of Bandra. As I sat across from Shah in his spacious office in the Yari Road neighbourhood, he cautioned me that the leads he receives can be inaccurate, or delivered too late to be useful. He decided to pursue this one anyway, and we set off in an autorickshaw on the ten-kilometre trip south to Bandra. When we reached the studio, a band of guards in safari suits manned the entrance, standing before a cluster of about 25 paparazzi. Shah and I joined the photographers in time to hear one of…

One day in June 2013, members of the board of the German football club St Pauli found they had an unused flag pole atop their stadium. Of the three poles, one flew the club’s name in brown and white, one had flown the word Kiezhelden—referring to the club’s neighbourhood social projects—but a third, which flew a flag of one of the sponsors, had just been vacated. So the board members approached Dirk Bruellau, the president of Queer-pass St Pauli, a gay and lesbian fan club of the team. “Maybe you are interested, they asked me,” Bruellau recalled. So Queerpass installed the stadium’s first rainbow flag—a symbol that has, across the world, become synonymous with queer pride. Since 2013, the flag has been flying at the Millerntor Stadium, the team’s home…

On 3 June this year, writing in the Economic Times’ editorial page, the journalist Abheek Barman declared that, “At 7.6%, India is the fastest-growing economy or the best data fudger.” Barman, a consulting editor with the news channel ET Now, called the gross domestic product estimates released by the government on 31 May “a crazy statistical fudge” and “a delight for emperors in need of new clothes.” For these serious accusations, he had the following to offer as evidence. “The bulk of growth has apparently materialised from R 140,000 crore—try wrapping your mind around that number—of ‘discrepancies’ in our balance sheets,” he wrote. Barman said that TCA—the chief statistician of India, TCA Anant—“has conjured up a more than four-fold jump in ‘discrepancies’ and padded it to the GDP number.” He…

IN NOVEMBER 2006 , Bangalore was officially renamed Bengaluru following a movement spearheaded by the writer UR Ananthamurthy. He had argued for this as part of a wider project of “Kannadization,” by which, he wrote shortly afterwards, “I mean the ability to belong to the world at large even as one is rooted in one’s Kannadaness.” URA, as Ananthamurthy is locally and affectionately known, was shaking his fist at the new-millennium, tech-driven, glass-and-chrome Bangalore, whose shocking prosperity seemed to have inured it to local culture. How much the new name dented this indifference remains an open question. URA admitted it was “a symbolic step,” even while hoping it would lead to a collective change of heart. He was also involved in a long-running and potentially more far-reaching campaign to enhance…

I AM SIXTEEN. I have gone along with my parents to a Christmas lunch party in Mumbai thrown by the poet Dom Moraes and his wife, the actress Leela Naidu. Jeet is on his knees offering a bunch of red roses to a tall, striking young woman. He seems to be reciting one of his poems to her. Later, at the same party, I push open the door to the bathroom. Jeet’s in the bathtub with the same woman. They are kissing. I’ve never seen two people kissing. I say sorry and shut the door. I return to the party and resume a conversation I was having with a friend of Jeet’s, the photographer Madhu Kapparath. It’s 1992, and Prince’s hit song that year is ‘Sexy Motherfucker.’ Madonna has just…

Eye on Poland - New Graphic Design from Poland 17 JUNE TO 31 JULY BHAU DAJI LAD MUMBAI CITY MUSEUM, MUMBAI Eye on Poland displays the decades-old tradition of Polish poster art. The exhibition showcases artwork made for concerts, films, CDs and album covers. The posters use humour, elements of fantasy, and experimentations with form to awe-inspiring results. One particularly striking image depicts an almost geometrical representation of a crying face, entirely in black and white. In the works of artists such as Malgorzata Gurowska, Agata Dudek and Ola Niepsuj, one can see attempts to combine traditional Polish aesthetics with pop culture and newer trends in art. Rapidly gaining recognition, Polish graphic design now occupies a unique position in the European continent.…

Anthology by Stray Factory 3 JULY ATTA GALATTA, BENGALURU The theatre group Stray Factory presented four of their award-winning plays and a work-in-progress production as a performance called Anthology, which marked the finale of the Speaking of Theatre festival in Bengaluru. The performers used the same pared down set for all performances. The fourth wall was non-existent, and the actors frequently interacted with the crowd. The first play, Karpooram, was a tale of two siblings, based in Puducherry, who have been separated for over four decades. Va Van Gogh dealt with issues of plagiarism, and the blurry lines of what constitutes original art. Maya from Madurai, the only solo act of the evening, was a biographical story of a small-town girl, originally written in Tamil but partly rendered in English…

On 25 May, Bangladesh was awash with birthday celebrations for its national poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam. Garlands were hung on his grave in Dhaka, cultural programmes were held, and both the president and the prime minister made statements in his honour. Still, two days prior, a group of artists had gathered in the Bangladeshi capital to demand that the government do more to memorialise Nazrul, by naming more roads after him and building more monuments to him. Such fervour would not have surprised Kalyani Kazi, the 83-year-old widow of Aniruddha Kazi, Nazrul’s eldest son. A few days before the festivities, in her flat in Kolkata, she explained to me that, “in Bangladesh, there is a more affectionate public for Nazrul’s work.” But as much as Bangladesh claims the poet as…

Even before the hype surrounding the recent cabinet reshuffle and expansion had died down, the spin had begun. Gossip in Lutyens’ Delhi played no small part in both, and, as is usual, it got things wrong on most important counts. The reshuffle was not, as it was bandied about, a sign of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo further asserting its control over the government. Rather, it was about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh laying down the law. The new cabinet appointments represent a midterm course correction meant to ensure that the Sangh Parivar’s ends are achieved—and, crucially, that they are achieved quietly. The three most important changes—the end of Smriti Irani’s reign over the ministry of human resource development, Arun Jaitley losing charge of the ministry of information and broadcasting, and…

NARENDRA DABHOLKAR was in a chatty mood on the evening of 18 August 2013. The 67-year-old rationalist had delivered a lecture against superstition in the town of Rahimatpur, in Maharashtra’s Satara district, and was returning in a car to his home in Satara city, about a half-hour drive away. On the way, Dabholkar held forth on “the benefits of a healthy diet, regular exercise and time management, to help one live longer,” recounted Shivaji Raut, an old friend and right-to-information campaigner, who was with him on the journey. Though he arrived home quite late, Dabholkar rose early the next morning to catch a 6 am bus to Pune. He generally spent the first two days of each week in the city, where he oversaw the work of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha…

IN A BRIGHT-YELLOW COTTON SARI with a black-and-white border, feet clad in a pair of simple black slippers, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi walked into the pleasant Delhi morning. She walked, as was her wont, briskly along the pathway from her residence to the neighbouring bungalow, where Peter Ustinov, the Academy Award-winning actor and columnist, was waiting to interview her. She was running late by 30 minutes. As she crossed the wicket gate between the two compounds, at 9.20 am, Sub-inspector Beant Singh, who had been guarding her for almost a decade, turned and shot her. When she collapsed to the ground after taking three bullets, Satwant Singh, a 21-year-old who had been with the prime minister’s security detail for just ten months, fired 30 rounds at her. The two men…

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is a technique evolving rapidly from the realms of cardiothoracic surgery and cardiology to intensive care medicine worldwide. ECMO finds its usage in patients with lung failure. Extracorporeal life support is indicated when the patient has an acute, potentially reversible, life-threatening form of respiratory failure which is unresponsive to conventional therapy. Acute refers both to the rapidity of development of respiratory failure, and to its duration prior to consideration for ECLS. Not only has it evolved but it has also improved in many ways with respect to compact and user friendly equipment and has provided new options in the treatment of severe circulatory and respiratory failure in patients of all age groups. The most important thing is that it has provided us with the hope of…

Gandhi and the Politics of the Image 14 JULY BHARAT TOURIST HOME, KOCHI The talk, “Gandhi and the Politics of Image,” explored the political relevance of the cultural representations of Mohandas Gandhi. The historian Vinay Lal began with a presentation of various images of paintings, sculptures, statues and caricatures of Gandhi. Lal and the sociologist Ashis Nandy then discussed these images. Nandy saw Gandhi’s solitude reflected in some of the images, and spoke at length about the idea. He further talked about how the grandiosity of the images creates a narrative of a historical event for the viewer. The discussion ended with a comparison between images of Gandhi and some of Mao Zedong, and an analysis of how differently the two have been portrayed.…

Rediscovering Haripura Panels: Nandalal Bose FROM 30 JUNE NGMA, DELHI Rediscovering Haripura Panels showcased the Haripura posters of Nandalal Bose, a pioneering figure of modern Indian art. Mohandas Gandhi commissioned the work in 1938, wanting art that was accessible to the common person who visited the Indian National Congress-session pandal in Haripura. The posters included elements of folk art and used local materials for representations of rural populations. A suite of tempera on paper, the posters were simply displayed in wooden frames, as if they were windows into people’s everyday lives; from the potter and the housewife, to those of the hunter and the bull wrangler.…

The Sufi shrine where the Shia saint Sher Shah is buried is a simple structure. Sitting in an open field in a village called Bhambha, on the outskirts of Lahore, the building’s pointed dome is painted dark green. Its spire is topped by a sculpture of a right hand: a Shia symbol. Orange flags—characteristic of Sufi shrines—fly from the building’s roof. A few malangs, volunteers who watch over the dargah, usually sit around the property, their hair and beards untrimmed. Had I simply been driving past, little about the structure would have seemed unique. But throughout the area, the shrine is known for a feature that makes it remarkable among Muslim dargahs: a collection of cows. The cows are considered sacred by many, with devotees often bringing them offerings, such…

The two sides share an understanding of the character of the Indian state, and particularly of its character under the majoritarian rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party. On 25 June, a two-member suicide squad of the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba ambushed a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force on the Srinagar-Jammu highway, near the town of Pampore in the Kashmir valley. The attack left eight jawans dead, and over 20 injured. “I salute the courage of the CRPF personnel martyred today in J&K. They served the nation with utmost dedication. Pained by their demise,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted in response. There followed a chorus of mourning for them, on social and mainstream media. One of the eight killed was Vir Singh, a Dalit from the village of Nagla…

          EVERY WEEKEND, thousands of people in England descend on empty fields, dressed as soldiers from the Second World War. They erect tents, dig trenches and wield period-appropriate weapons. Occasionally they recreate battles, but, for the most part, they focus on accurately setting up elaborate camps, complete with barracks, uniforms, rations and more. For two years, starting in 2012, the American photographer Daniella Zalcman documented Second World War re-enactments across England. Her work culminated in Sunday Soldiers: a black-and-white photo series that features various types of images, including many striking portraits. Hailing from the US state of Maryland, where re-enactments of the American civil war are common, Zalcman was struck by the comparatively more personal tone of the events she attended across the Atlantic Ocean. “In America, the Civil War…

HALF LION HOW PV NARASIMHA RAO TRANSFORMED INDIA Vinay Sitapati When PV Narasimha Rao became the prime minister of India, in 1991, he assumed power amid economic crisis, violent insurgency and political turmoil. Despite this, the academic Vinay Sitapati argues, the skilled politician was able to transform India’s economy and foreign policy. Drawing from over 100 interviews, and some of Rao’s never-before-seen personal papers, this biography traces his life from a village in Telangana, through his years in power, to his humiliation in retirement. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, 392 PAGES, R 699 ONE THOUSAND DAYS IN A REFRIGERATOR Manoj Kumar Panda Translated by Snehaprava Das This collection of 14 short stories from the Oriya writer Manoj Kumar Panda weaves together dramatic plots and vivid characters. One story narrates a woman’s journey…

Dastan-e-Kabir 15 JULY BAHA’I HOUSE OF WORSHIP, LOTUS TEMPLE, DELHI The Lotus Temple hosted Dastan-e-Kabir, an evening of performances to celebrate the poetry of Kabir through dastangoi—an Urdu storytelling tradition—and fusion music. Dastangoi has recently seen a revival of sorts, led by artists such as Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Mah-mood Farooqui. Ankit Chadha, the evening’s dastango, or storyteller, has worked closely with Mahmood. Dressed in the traditional garb of a dastango, purportedly similar to that of Kabir himself, Chadha ricocheted between biographical accounts of Kabir and his own experiences. Chadha’s act was followed by a musical tribute to Kabir by the band Neeraj Arya’s Kabir Cafe, who render Kabir’s poetry through music infused with rock, pop and indigenous music.…

Masks of Mexico 19 JULY TO 31 JULY INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE, DELHI For at least 3,000 years, Mexican folk-culture has found expression through masks. Besides being known for their aesthetic charm, the masks are also an integral part of cultural events—commemorating the harvest, marriage, birth, death and so on. To share this ritual art, the Mexican embassy showcased masks from the many milieus of the diverse country. From the western region of Michoacán, there were lacquered wood masks that satirised old people; from the state of Nayarit, there were bonded paper masks painted with antler bones, which are used in an Easter dance and burned afterwards; and “Negrito” masks that represented Mexico's black African slaves brought to work in mines and fields.…