JANUARY 19-25, 2014

FREE WITH YOUR COPY OF THE SUNDAY EXPRESS

Found the person of

your dreams?

Now go find your

neighbourhood shaadi
detective. There is no such thing
as too much information

)
A FEW

SPOOKS
AND A WEDDING

Contents
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

VOLUME II, ISSUE 42

08

cover

Afraid in
Safe City
Kolkatas womenfriendly reputation
takes a beating

16

SPEAKING FOR MYSELF

Amulya Gopalakrishnan on the
limits of charisma in politics
p7

DIGITAL NATIVE
Nishant Shah on the rise of the
pesky listicle
p13

PRADEEP YADAV

TECH

A Few Spooks and a Wedding

Is it love? Is it money? Is it written in the stars? Nah, the secret to a
successful marriage is the fearless shaadi detective, and the information
he ferrets out. The mother-in-law has finally met her match

Has the best gaming tablet just

come out of India?
p23

MIND GAME/
IN THE STARS
Curl up with the crossword; find out
what the week holds for you p24

DOWN IN JUNGLELAND
Every house plays unwilling host to
an army of insects
p26

NEIGHBOURS
ENVY

SIMPSON SINGHS BEFORE THE FIRE

NUMBER THEORY BURNS OUT

In UP, all roads, and the

largesse of the Samajwadi
Party government,
lead to Saifai

British rationalist Simon

Singh on the maths behind
Simpsons, and tricks
and treatments

14

The Parsis in Mumbai

struggle to preserve
a fading cultural
heritage

18

Printed and published by Vaidehi Thakar on behalf of The Indian Express Limited . Printed at Indian Express Press, Plot No.EL-208, TTC Industrial Area, Mahape, Navi Mumbai 400 710
and published at Express Towers, 2nd floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Editor: P Vaidyanathan Iyer * (*Responsible for selection of matter under PRB Act).
2014 The Indian Express Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in whole or part without the Publishers permission is prohibited
R.N.I. NO MAHENG/2012/42380

COVER ILLUSTRATION: PRADEEPYADAV

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

DESIGN: Bivash Barua, Mridul, Mithun Chakraborty, Ranvir Singh

eye

FACELIFT
PHOTOS: VISHALSRIVASTAV

Neighbours Envy
The remarkable growth of Saifai, the ancestral village of Akhilesh Yadav in UP, in the last
two decades or so has left neighbouring villages feeling left out
BY RAMENDRA SINGH

SHORT DETOUR from National Highway 2 in Etawah city to the state

highway leading to Mainpuri surprisingly doesnt open up onto a
rural inland. What emerges instead as you go
along the two-lane road, on which work is in
progress to make it four-lane, are tall buildings and bungalows surrounded by mustard
and wheat fields. This is Saifai, the ancestral
village of Samajwadi Party president
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister
Akhilesh Yadav. But it is not your usual village
it doesnt have a single mud house, has a
functional sewage system, 24-hour power
supply and concrete roads. Even many big
cities of Uttar Pradesh do not have the kind of
civic amenities and infrastructure that are
available here.
Saifai was just another Yadav-dominated
village in Etawah district, until Mulayam first
came to power in UP in 1993. Now, it has a
police station, and has become a development
block and a tehsil. The village, with a popula-

tion of 7,141, is part of Mainpuri Lok Sabha

constituency and Jaswant Nagar assembly
constituency represented by Mulayam and his
brother Shivpal Yadav, respectively.
As the sun set on January 8, SUVs, vans,
motorcycles and tractor-trolleys crowded the
entry to the glittering Niwas Maidan, the venue for Saifai Mahotsav. Traffic policemen
struggled to route VIP vehicles in the right
lane. Later that evening, Mulayam and
Akhilesh Yadav watched performances by
Bollywood stars like Salman Khan, Madhuri
Dixit and Mallika Sherawat, regardless of the
furore created by the opposition over the
extravaganza at Saifai, while the Muzaffarnagar riots victims suffered. The rural Saifai
mela was first spiced up, with the spectacle of
dancing stars, by former SP leader Amar Singh
last decade.
Sitting on the side of the road, about 5 km
from Saifai, a 62-year-old farmer of Nagla
Nathu village, Mulayam Singh, says had the
crores spent on the actors been used for the
development of the area, it would have made
a big difference. But 22-year-old Hariom

eye

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

THE CONTRAST (Clockwise from top) Amitabh Bachchan Government Inter-college and
a sprawling building at Saifai; children cycle around on the only road that connects
neighbouring Nagla Nathu village to nearby areas
Yadav intervenes: Par humko Madhuri Dixit
aur Salman Khan dekhan ko kaise milte dadda? (But how would we have got to see
Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan, grandpa?)
Two decades ago, Saifai was just like
their own village. Nagla Nathu got a primary school only in 2006 and a connecting
road only last year. Our village still does
not have a proper drainage system. The
streets become muddy in the rains. Even
the school isnt good, so most prefer sending their children to private schools in
neigbouring Karhal or Saifai, says Kamlesh
Yadav, a farmer from Nagla Nathu. His two
sons, one in Class 12 and the other an
undergraduate, are studying in private
institutions, but he expects them to work
at his farm after they finish their studies.
There are no jobs available without rec-

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

ommendations from ministers and MLAs,

so they might as well work on the family
land, says the 46-year-old, who owns less
than a hectare of land.
Its proximity to SP chiefs native place
has ensured 24-hour electricity to Nagla
Nathu, but there is resentment at being left
behind. Je carein dekhne ko mil jaati hai,
aur ka hai (we get to see all these cars, what
else)? says Kamlesh, pointing towards
SUVs speeding to Saifai.
Clearly, the opportunities lie in Saifai. A
35-year-old bakery shop owner, Indrajeet
Yadav, shifted his family from Karhal in
Mainpuri district to Saifai two years ago
and opened his shop in one of the half-adozen markets that have come up around
the village. This is where development is
happening. We get regular power supply,
roads are good, there are schools, colleges,
good hospitals and banks, he says. The
village has branches of several major
banks, including Bank of Baroda, Bank of
India, Union Bank of India and two cooperative banks.
Indrajeet lives at a rented accommodation in Saifai with his wife and two children. His two sons study in LKG and UKG
at the English-medium Sughar Singh
Memorial School, run in the name of
Mulayam's father. Indrajeet has also
bought a 1,200 square-foot plot on the
outskirts of the village for Rs 8 lakh.
Everyone wants to buy property here.
The rates are higher than in many cities,
he says. Indrajeet hopes that Saifai will
soon become a district. The village was
rumoured to replace Lucknow as the state
capital during Mulayams last tenure as
CM. Soon after becoming the CM in 2012,
Akhilesh announced that a Saifai Development Authority will be set up for its
planned development.
The development here is multi-layered and healthcare facilities are not far

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FACELIFT
behind. A building with white walls and a
red roof houses the employees of the Rural
Institute of Medical Sciences and Research.
A few yards away is the academic block. A
tar road from the academic block leads to
four blocks of buildings being developed as
hostels. Set up with an allocated fund of Rs
270 crore in 2005, the institute has been
constantly upgraded. It has a super specialty wing and a research organisation. The
paramedical college developed at a cost of
about Rs 300 crore is a recent addition. An
emergency trauma and burns centre is also
in the making at an estimated cost of
Rs 42 crore.
The Saifai airstrip, 10 km from the village,
helps the government fly in celebrities every
year for the Saifai Mahotsav. The previous
Mulayam government spent Rs 100 crore to
upgrade it to international standards.
Akhileshs cabinet took it forward, and handed it over to the Airports Authority of India
for the development of an airport. Crores
have been spent on maintaining the runway
lights and repairing its boundary walls.
The road which connects the village and
the airstrip is a cemented four-lane one. The
residents of nearby Odampur village say
two decades ago Saifai was the laggard, it
didnt even have a road. The villagers of
Odampur had pooled in to build a pucca
road and a primary school, says Pradeep
Mishra, a schoolteacher in Odampur.
Odampur still has that one primary
school, while Saifai has several schools and
research institutes, including the Amitabh
Bachchan Government Inter-College, which
was established in 1997 when Mulayam
was defence minister, and the Chaudhary
Charan Singh Post Graduate College.
Our village and Saifai used to be similar, but now there are huge differences. Not
a single resident of our village has a government job. The roads inside the village
havent been repaired for years, says Sintu
Mishra, a farmer in Odampur.
When SP first came to power in UP in
1993, Mulayam made small budget allocations for Saifai. Eventually, bigger projects
came in. The first area Mulayam, a former
wrestler, focused on was sports. He set up
the Chandgi Ram Sports Stadium named
after a Haryana wrestler and an international sports complex at a cost of Rs 58
crore. Akhileshs government sanctioned Rs
5 crore for a sports college last year. An allweather international-level swimming
pool at a cost of Rs 103.21 crore is also coming up. Saifai has a Sports Authority of
Indias training centre, too.
For children of Odampur, a small
uneven area outside the villages only school
doubles as a playground. This kharanja road
(brick pavement) was made over a decade
back and it has not been repaired since, and
there are no drains, says Darshan Singh, a
farmer. Odampur is one of the few villages in
this Yadav-dominated area that does not
have a single Yadav household.

GLITTER Salman Khan performs at the Saifai Mahotsav (top); the Saifai airstrip,
about 10 km from the village
Nem Singh Yadav, 82, a resident of
Saifai, says he has seen Saifai from the times
of angrezi shasan (British rule). Saifai was a
small village, which had only one primary
school. All houses were made of mud and
there were no pucca roads. Mantri (as
Mulayam is called in Saifai) did a lot for the
village. Now, all the houses, including
those of lower castes, are made of bricks
and cement, he says, basking in the sun
outside his house. One of Nem Singhs sons
works at the UP secretariat, another is in the
police and the third with the provincial
armed constabulary.

Saifai is not your usual

village it doesnt have a
single mud house, has a
functional sewage system,
24-hour power supply and
concrete roads
eye

Locals say each family of Saifai has at

least one member employed with the government. Saifai has progressed with
Mantri. Even those who did not get a government job are well-off here. My nephew
Pappu has remained with Mantri since the
beginning, says Nem Singh, pointing
towards his white bungalow, where an SP
flag is aflutter.
Nem Singh sounds a little sceptical
about Akhilesh doing as much for Saifai as
his father did, but the young CM has not
strayed from the script. Since Akhilesh
came to power, Rs 26 crore has been allotted for construction of shops, offices,
rooms, cafeteria, among other things, for
developing Apna Bazar, a form of local mandi, where farmers can sell their produce. In
March 2013, the government sanctioned
Rs 3.11 crore for the construction of a
tourism complex in Saifai.
With more projects in the pipeline for
Saifai, the villagers have nothing to complain about.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

speaking for myself

Amulya Gopalakrishnan
amulya.gopalakrishnan@expressindia.com

The Limits of Charisma

Lets judge politicians not by how they appear, but what their parties do
AMIT CHAKRAVARTY

HIS LOK Sabha election has been shrunk to a personality contest between two or three individuals. We view public appearances by politicians like theatrical productions, analyse rhetoric, costume, body language, audience engagement.
And certainly, at least one political party would like us to
believe that the 2014 general election has a presidential cast. That
all the bewildering variables in our elections are made irrelevant by
the force of Narendra Modis personality.
Modi has few competitors in the charisma department. His
voice is a tuned instrument that dips conspiratorially, thunders in
defiance and shifts to a sincere, matter-of-fact tone when he is
doing the successful CEO routine. He seems to embody technocratic
efficiency, nationalism and machismo. Theres no doubt that he
answers to a deep need, after years of a namby-pamby UPA and
slowing growth, to surrender to a decider. This governments
inability to visibly take charge, or communicate its actions, has created this yearning for confident leadership.
But how far can charisma take you? Many of our most successful politicians have been inept public speakers, low-wattage personalities. Mayawati exerts great hold over voters, but is not credited with much in the way of rhetoric or stage presence. In 2004,
Sonia Gandhi, considered to have near-zero public appeal, won over
the extraordinarily popular Vajpayee. The late EMS Namboodiripad,
veteran Communist leader for over six decades, had a serious
speech impediment. When asked if he always stammered, he
answered: No, only when I speak. While individuals do become
the bearers of great hope in a presidential system, Barack Obama
being the obvious example, the kaleidoscopic complexity of a
parliamentary system like ours doesnt seem to oblige larger-thanlife leaders.
Whats more, politics is not a sound and light show, a matter of
merchandise and holography, it is what affects people in their lives,
or what resonates with their beliefs. A few of us might derive our
voting preference from who has the zingier line, but for more citizens, it is about the substance of their platforms.
Often, charisma is conferred in retrospect, after election victory
think of the changing assessments of Indira Gandhi or Margaret
Thatcher. Theres the famous story about the Kennedy-Nixon
debates of 1960, when those who heard the debate on the radio
thought Nixon had won, but those who watched on TV were persuaded by Kennedys appeal. But as many have pointed out, theres
more to that story Democrats had a clear majority in that period,
and the surprise was not that Nixon lost, but that he nearly won.
This runs counter to our intuitions. Most of us feel, at a gut level,
that personality matters. Politicians and their campaign managers
certainly behave as if it does. The consensus among political scientists, though, is that the impact of leadership on outcomes in a parliamentary system is highly uncertain. While voters are more familiar with leaders than with policies, they vote on the basis of a more
sophisticated calculus, based on personal experience and partisan
loyalties and simply cite the leaders name as shorthand. Personalities matter in indirect ways, in the way they influence parties and
governments and the occasional close contest, but it is not established that they count for any decisive advantage among voters.
But is a media-soaked 2014 different? If personal aura could carry
an election, it says something troubling about our emotional state, our
misguided expectations from politics. Those who trade on strength

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

If personal aura could carry an election, it

says something troubling about our
emotional state, our misguided
expectations from politics. Those who
trade on strength and charisma to get to
office are scary because it is a
fundamentally undemocratic impulse to
look to leaders as conquering heroes
and charisma to get to office are scary because it is a fundamentally
undemocratic impulse to look to leaders as conquering heroes.
Most of our political leaders do understand this, and they speak
of their partys causes rather than themselves. Rahul Gandhi, for all
his simplifications, tells us there is no hero on a white horse, sun
streaming behind him, who can rescue us from our situation. Even
Arvind Kejriwal, who cannot be accused of modesty of mission,
always speaks of the people powering his movement. Modi, in stark
contrast to everyone else, pitches himself as a solver and satisfier,
he tells us to wait a few months until he can fix everything.
No matter who you vote for this election, look carefully at
whats on offer, quite apart from the self-confidence and charisma
of those offering. It is wonderful to feel like part of a dramatic transformation, but the high is illusory democratic politics employs
different energies altogether. Governing doesnt call for cleansing
upheavals, but for a practical dedication based on long-held priorities, taking a call on divisive issues, distributing finite resources
with incomplete information and then defending those decisions,
incrementally improving lives. We need a sense of proportion, and
we need to get real in what to expect from politics.

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A Few Spooks
COVER

Is it love? Is it money? Is it written in the stars?

Nah, the secret to a successful marriage is the fearless
shaadi detective, and the information he ferrets out.
The mother-in-law has finally met her match

eye

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

and a Wedding

BY ANUSHREE MAJUMDAR
WITH AMRUTA LAKHE, PRAJAKTA HEBBAR AND PREMANKUR BISWAS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PRADEEP YADAV

In the detective trade, one

could devise a drinking game
around two words: character
and reputation. They are the
bedrock on which
pre-mat investigations, and,
subsequently, marriages
are based on

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

VERY MORNING, Monica Sen wakes up

at 6 and throws herself head first into
the rush that is the school run. Her
husband and child must be awoken
and fed, their tiffins packed, the five-year-old
made to stand still at the bus stop. Rushing
back home, she gets ready, packs her own
lunch and travels to her assignment for the
day. It could be anywhere in Delhi. In her mid30s, with a pleasant disposition, and clutching
her mobile phone tight, Sen doesnt find it difficult to chat to people about their Aadhar
card, or her plans to move into one of the

eye

vacant apartments in the colony. If it is important, she might even ask to see the floor plan;
and how many attached bathrooms did you
say the flat had?
Back at her office, Sen types up a report,
based on her conversations with the maid, the
security guard, the neighbours, sometimes
even the unsuspecting family, along with the
video she shot on her phone, in stealth mode.
Women want to know what kind of a house
the family lives in, the number of bathrooms,
the state of the house in general, how many
helpers they have. They want to know about

COVER

the mother-in-law the most, since she is most

likely to run the family, says Sen (not her real
name). And who are these women? The ones
who have hired Ladies Detective India (LDI)
for a pre-matrimonial investigation, before
they make the biggest decision of their lives.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Coupled with a shot of doubt, it makes for an
explosive cocktail, one that most families in
the (arranged) marriage market are unable to
handle. Is the prospective groom a good
boy? Does the girl have the right character?
Does the family actually own three properties
in Gurgaon/Vashi/Rajarhat? Look no further, a
visit to the friendly neighbourhood spook and
a glance at his pre-mat package will answer
all these questions, within a fortnight.
You cant take anything or anybody for
granted, says Satchit Kumar, looking sharp in
his suit and tie. The director of Globe Detective
Agency (GDA) is a busy man. His office, in
Nehru Place in Delhi, looks like any other corporate office. The only giveaway is the framed
certificates from international detective associations and companies. Since its inception in
1961, by Kumars father, Prem, GDA mostly
does background checks, due diligence, IPRrelated work, corporate investigations etc. But
pre-mat is a different ball game. Its impor-

10

Women want to know what

kind of a house the family lives
in, the number of bathrooms, the
state of the house in general .
They want to know about the
mother-in-law the most,
since she is most likely to
run the family

tant to do ground research because that is the

most current primary information we can
provide. So we use a number of methods, like
posing as a mystery shopper to the family-run
business, or a similar suitable guise, says
Kumar, who supervises a team of approximately 75 detectives, including freelancers, in
Delhi alone.
Back in the day, one didnt quite need the
detective. Families decided who you married
and the wise old women of the house relied
on the vast network of nosy grandmothers
and gossipy aunts, and their sleuthing. But
with the rise of social networking, online dating and matrimonial sites, the way young men

eye

and women meet each other has changed, and

with it comes a gamut of concerns. In the last
five years, the maximum amount of pre-mat
work we have done involved international
cases. The bride or the groom was in Canada
or the Gulf and the prospective spouse was in
India, says Kumar, whose agency is associated with the Council of International Investigators, and partners with detectives abroad to
conduct investigations.
Recently, they checked out an American
address for a client in India. She said the guy
was very romantic and sincere but she wanted
to find out more. She had his home address.
When my associates rang the doorbell, a
woman opened the door and three children
milled around her, says Kumar. Marriage
frauds are not so uncommon. People meet and
fix their marriages online which provides
ample opportunity to lie or cover up, says
Rahul Rai, who runs Veteran Investigation
Service (VIS), in Mumbai.
In the arranged marriage market, pre-mat
investigations are a simple affair. The family
that approaches us either has a specific doubt
about the other party that they need us to
investigate, or ask us to do a routine check,
says Satendra Singh, a detective with VIS. The
routine check involves looking into the famiJANUARY 19-25, 2014

lys background, financial stability, past marriages, drinking and smoking habits, past
affairs, even over-involved siblings, and can
cost anywhere from Rs 15,000 in Pune to Rs
25,000 in Mumbai to Rs 6,000-7,000 for a
days work in Kolkata and Rs 35,000 and
upwards in Delhi. Dilliwaale want to know
about a familys finances the most. That way,
they are very down to earth, says Kumar with
a smile. But Baldev Puri, chairman of AMX
Detectives and LDI, disagrees a wee bit.
Money is important, but since the families
can easily check that out by themselves, they
come to us for things like character and reputation, says Puri.
In the detective trade, one could devise a
drinking game around those two words:
character and reputation. They are the
bedrock, the foundation on which pre-mat
investigations, and, subsequently, marriages
are based on. Youll hear the words being
clucked on their tongues by the people in the
neighbourhood, the extended family, coworkers, and sometimes those who have two
coins to rub together and are looking for a
third. Look around you, your maid, the security guard, the night watchman, the maali,
the presswallah, the keepers and cleaners of
your home, those who control your sanity
and the timing of your morning ablutions
with the doorbell they are all vital sources
of information for anybody who comes
snooping, and perhaps is willing to pay for it.
Theyre the ones wholl talk about your character and reputation.
How does a detective identify a good char-

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

acter or an unsavoury one? The latter is easy, if

the template has been set by the clients. Mostly, it is bad habits and friend circle, says Sanjay Sonavne, 48, a Pune-based private detective. Does the boy smoke, drink or take
drugs? And what kind of people does he hang
out with? If many of his friends have a criminal record, then that is a deal-breaker for the
brides parents, he says. For the boys family,
if the girl has a long string of boyfriends in her
past, shes quickly ticked off the list of potentials. It is almost the same in Mumbai: excessive drinking or smoking, former partners
keeping in touch will make a family lose sleep.
A boys family had come to us. They had
noticed something fishy about the girl he was
supposed to marry, says Satendra Singh. So
his team followed the girl around. One day, the
girl gave the detectives a slip. It took us a few
hours to track her down, but when we found
her, we were more than surprised, Singh says.
It turned out that she wasnt having an affair
with one man: but with four, he says.

Is the boy into bikes? Does he

come home late and drunk, does
the security guard carry him to
his room? Does the girl party a
lot? What was she wearing when
she returned and what time was
it? Was she on a bike? Was her
hair flying loose?

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In Kolkata, perhaps the smoking isnt such

a big deal for the Bengali girls family, since
there are other concerns. Bengalis tend to be
more concerned about the educational qualifications of the prospective bride and groom,
while Marwaris tend to worry more about
their financial stability, but that doesnt mean
that they arent worried about their character, says TK Das, who heads the GDA branch
in Kolkata.
In Delhi, clients want to know almost
everything. Is the boy into bikes? Does he
come home late and drunk, does the security
guard carry him to his room? Does the girl
party a lot? What was she wearing when she
returned and what time was it? Was she on a
bike? Was her hair flying loose? chuckles
Kumar. What if the young people in question
have a lot of friends, on bikes and otherwise?
Body language, says Puri, thumping his hand
on his desk. How a girlfriend sits with a
boyfriend on a bike is different from how a
friend would sit. A friend or an acquaintance
will position her upper body away, to avoid
making contact! We check out how people
behave in public places like a club or a bar to
see how physically close they get to coworkers
and friends, he says. It is not always what you
do, but how you do it.
It is 11 in the morning and independent
investigator Rajesh Ghosh is inside a Kolkata
mall. Moving casually past bored housewives
with straightened hair, privacy-seeking lovers
rushing to the matinee show, the 30-something man with windswept hair, in a windcheater is at work. Hes been tailing a young

11

COVER

Marwari businessman to find out what

kind of character he has. The morning was
uneventful: no Emotional Atyachar-like rendezvous with mini-skirted ladies. Ghosh
hums with approval when the chap is soon
joined by a middle-aged lady. Thats his
mother, said Ghosh. He is a mommas boy.
I will give my client the green signal, he
says.
Increasingly, sexual orientation is also
on the checklist of pre-mat enquiries. It
wouldnt have crossed a familys mind a
couple of years ago, but is an important
question they raise today, says GS Yadav,
Truth and Dare Detectives, Mumbai. Puri
remembers a case from last November. The
girls family knew the boys family well. We
simply ran a cursory pre-mat investigation
and didnt find negatives. The engagement
went ahead as planned, says Puri. A seasoned detective, he and his team were surprised when the girl called him to ask for
another investigation. She said she suspected that he was having an affair with
another girl and was buckling under family
pressure to marry her. Since their engagement, she said hed never called her on his
own, there were no romantic gestures, he
didnt even hold her hand , says Puri, who
then launched something of a sting operation on the boy. We sent a vish-kanya his
way, but he didnt take the bait. We changed

12

Increasingly, sexual
orientation is also on the
checklist of pre-mat enquiries.
It wouldnt have crossed a
familys mind a couple of years
ago, but is an important
question they raise today

tactics, and found that the boy was not born

for the opposite sex in the first place, says
Puri, almost triumphantly. The girl took the
news well, but she and Puri had to be careful about protecting the boys secret from
both families. We said he was involved
with somebody else, says Puri. The girl was
saved from an unhappy marriage and the
vish-kanya made a pretty penny in the bargain.
But if you thought the pressure was on
the young man and woman under surveillance, spare a thought for the one individual
who is investigated as closely and relentlessly: the matriarch. The character of the
mother is almost always asked about. Especially, if the boy still lives with his parents,
or if the mother visits often, women want to
know what kind of a house theyre getting
into, says Kumar. This is where someone

eye

like Sen can truly showcase her skills. The

best time to gain entry is in the morning,
when the entire household is turned upside
down, with people getting ready to go to
work and the whole world ringing the doorbell, she says. How does the mother
behave under pressure, how does she treat
the help, does she shout a lot, is she hands
on, is her son henpecked and her husband
under her thumb? Women demand to
know these things, says Sen.
With the reports handed in, the premat investigation comes to a close. Its our
company policy, we never follow up, we
never discuss the decision taken by the family, says Kumar. Puri, however, is a little
more involved. His agencies, LDI and AMX,
offer counselling services for their clients as
well. Most of the sessions are for post-mat
cases, when couples find themselves bickering over each others habits and lifestyles.
The detective takes his clients, both men
and women, aside to discuss the factors that
form the backbone of a successful marriage. As for pre-mat counselling, it
involves speaking to both men and women,
and ridding them of any delusions they
might harbour about a married life.
In Chapter 6 of Pride and Prejudice, Jane
Austen wrote, Happiness in marriage is
entirely a matter of chance. The detectives
will tell you, Dont take any chances.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

INNOVATE

Premium Rush
A bike messenger service in Bangalore will run errands for you and deliver
happiness, the eco-friendly way
JYOTHY KARAT

BY V SHOBA

the applicants they should be

able to communicate in English,
and enjoy riding a bike, says Singh.
HIS CHRISTMAS, my Santa
Twenty-one-year-old Debajit
was a dapper young man in a
Chetry is Cyclercitys youngest ridgreen cycling jersey and heler. He smiles brightly after a 14-km
met. In under two hours, he zipped
run, having just delivered garments
about town to pick up a cake weighfrom a tailor in Vijayanagar to his
ing two kilos and delivered it, frostclient in JP Nagar. I am not tired, I
ing intact, to my doorstep with a
could go on, he says. Chetry recentHappy Holidays and a jaunty
ly ferried a 25-kg parcel containing
twinkle. Manjunath Gidder, 29,
invitations for a Puma Social Club
rides for Cyclercity, Indias first and
event. Every day, I learn something
only bike messenger service. He
new: how to greet people, or ask for
makes a living out of dodging traffic
directions in Kannada, he says.
and pedestrians to quick-pedal anySoon, Chetry and his colleagues
where between 40 and 60 km a day.
won't have to struggle to find
He enjoys cycling, the quiet turning
addresses in the city: Cyclercity is
of the wheels and the world rolling
working on equipping their bikes
by underneath. In Bangalore, the
with GPS for efficient delivery and
weather is always perfect for
real-time tracking. We promise
cycling. As a cyclist I have access to
delivery within four hours. With
one-ways and small roads. But the
GPS, we will be able to give you the
best part about the job is that cusexact time of delivery, says Singh.
tomers always appreciate the
Bangalore is a supportive city
effort, says Gidder.
for a startup, says Bymana. Many
The novelty of the service,
techies have called us offering to
which has been in pilot mode for
ride part-time. Students have
over a month now, has already won
applied to intern with us, he says.
Cyclercity some regular clients,
Most of all, our customers appreciincluding corporates, florists, bakate the hard work. They often want
ers and hospitals. Now, its army of
to tip the boys but we have to
12 couriers wants to grab your
politely decline. With an investpackages for you, ride out home to
ment of Rs 4 lakh much of it spent
get you the cellphone you forgot,
hand-deliver special invites and
Debajit Chetry (21), a delivery boy working for Cyclercity, stops on branding the business, which
averages 400 km a day, is set to
run other errands. Starting at Rs 70
for a picture near Cubbon Park in Bangalore
break even in four months, says
for a five-km delivery, you pay
Singh. He is working on merchandising and
riders. When you are on the road for an entire
more for heavier packages and longer rides.
other revenue-generation verticals. Business
day, your hands need rest and these handles
We calculated that in peak traffic, riding a
aside, Singh says Cyclercity is an appeal to
give you three comfortable positions, he
bicycle is at least twice as fast as driving, says
Bangalores eco-friendly side. If, by achievsays.
Niranth Bymana, 28, an ex-Army man, who
ing some degree of success, we are able to
Singh is a bit of a mother hen to his bikco-founded the service with cycling enthusiinspire people to get back in the saddle, that
ers, sending them off to work with a bottle of
ast Rajiv Singh.
would be hugely rewarding, he says.
glucose, calling to check if they are okay, and
On an official trip to Europe last year,
Cyclercitys key selling point will be its
welcoming them back with lunch or a glass of
Singh, 29, encountered bike messengers in
efficiency, says Megha Bhagat, a NASSCOM
juice. Every morning, the boys fan out across
action for the first time and immediately
executive who was one of the first to avail
the city and stand by at bus shelters and in
decided to nix a career in marketing for the
its services on the first day. I had to subthe offices of a few partnering businesses.
excitement of entrepreneurship. I found
mit a visa application, but I couldnt find
They are encouraged to carry books to read
there was no such service in India, he says,
the time to go to a photo studio in Indiand to listen to music on their companybetween answering phone calls at his office,
ranagar and get my pictures processed and
issued cellphones during downtime. When I
which occupies half a garage at the back of a
printed. Cyclercity did the job promptly,
call them with a brief about the next job, they
friends house in RT Nagar. Two green bikes
she says. In a busy city, the scope for a
are always raring to go, Singh says. It is digare parked at the door and biking equipment
door-to-door delivery service are endless
nified work and the boys enjoy it. Before
fills the wall shelves. An avid tinkerer, Singh
from picking up drycleaning and deliverthey joined Cyclercity on a monthly salary of
bought regular bikes from a sports store for
ing hot lunches to a medical store run, to
Rs 9,500, some of them had worked in small
Rs 15,000 each and fitted them with 21 gears,
original documents safely dropped off in
restaurants and petrol pump stations; others
special handles, tyres, bottle holders and othtamper-proof envelopes. For everything
received vocational training at NGOs. When
er accessories. Indian bikes dont come with
else, there is email.
we were hiring, I had only two conditions for
bull-horn handles, which I wanted for my

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

eye

13

BOOKS

PLAY BY

NUMBERS
British rationalist and author Simon Singh on tricks and
treatment, and the math behind The Simpsons
BY PRATIK KANJILAL

IMON SINGH, indefatigable populariser of science and mathematics,

has yet another book out. Its a lot of
fun, partly because it explores the
hidden landscape of a fun TV series, and
partly because its one of those books which
you can open anywhere, at random, and
start reading without any sense of guilt. The
Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets,
planned for 2008, is six years overdue, and it
could be a while before his next is out. Both
the delay and the pen-down strike owe to
the same event an encounter with pseudoscience. But compared to the fate of
Narendra Dabholkar, who is being considered for a posthumous Padma award, this is
a small price to pay.
In April 2008, Singh wrote a column in
The Guardian titled Beware the Spinal Trap,
in which he drew on his own book Trick or
Treatment, written with the physician Edzard
Ernst, to challenge the claims of chiropractic.
The school of treatment, established by a
magnetic healer in turn-of-the- century
Iowa, traces the origins of all disease to misalignments of the musculoskeletal system
and its interface with the nervous system.
While the source of lower back pain may be
sought here, to imagine that ear infection
might originate here stretches credulity.
Though the book had investigated 32
schools of treatment and found them wanting, chiropractic was singled out in the column, which drew the ire of the British Chiropractic Association. Singh was sued for libel
and in 2010, he won. The case drew enormous public attention and instigated an
overhaul of the law of libel itself. Curiously,
despite this publicity, the book was a total
failure. I had reasoned that if you spent
$100 per year on alternative treatment, you
would be willing to spend $10 on a book
questioning the subject, says Singh. But
publisher after publisher turned us down,
and they were right.
But, significantly, bloggers got the plot.
Three of them wrote a little search script
which located all chiropractors claiming to
cure colic by manipulating the spinal col-

14

eye

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

umn. Complaints were filed against all of

them, the community came under unprecedented scrutiny and almost overnight, chiropractors were taking down their websites
and modifying claims. Three bloggers in
the UK achieved more in one weekend than
all the official regulators had in 20 years,
says Singh.
Apart from chiropractors, Singhs targets
include homoeopathy and herbal medicine,
whose value may remain eternally contested. Their ability to deliver cures may be
quantified and proven to be trivial, but their
value includes factors which may be irrational yet completely human. For instance, a
patient with a terminal or incurable condition leaves behind a family which may want
to be assured that they have tried everything, even mumbo-jumbo. On the other
hand ayurveda, which was rubbished by
Indian doctors as jadi-booti medicine just
half a century ago, is now a flourishing sector
of the pharmaceutical industry, with the
blessings of the government. Apart from scientific truth, politics and culture are also
arbiters of how we live and die.
Sceptics like Simon Singh have been
arguing the preeminence of scientific truth
for decades, with indifferent success. Writing a book about pseudoscience is about the
least effective way to combat it, he acknowledges, since the clientele for cures or wellness, to use the new cant would resist
being educated. Using media, as Singh has
also done, is a little better. But educating
MPs and doctors is far more effective. Especially because the inaction of doctors, politicians and academics explains why pseudoscience flourishes worldwide. So Singh is
taking time off writing to establish the Good
Thinking Foundation, which recognises the
scientific efforts of bloggers and MPs, which
now go unappreciated.
Trick or Treatment stands apart from the
body of Singhs work, which earned him the
MBE in 2003, and the inaugural Lilavati
Award, instituted by the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010 in Hyderabad. It is his only book which was coauthored, which had an adversarial mission
and which bombed. His other books have celebrated amazing events and ideas in the history of science and mathematics and,
through their lens, tracked that history.
Fermats Last Theorem (1997) revealed the
history of European mathematics by following the history of its most enigmatic riddle,
Pierre de Fermats conjecture in number theory, recorded as marginalia, along with the
tantalising message that the proof existed
but could not possibly fit into the margin. The
formal poof was provided by Andrew Wiles
in 1995, using modern cross-disciplinary
methods that Fermat knew nothing about. In
that span of time, medicine had moved from
William Harveys postulation of blood circulation to synthetic, genetically created drugs.
Physics had progressed from Newton to the
neutron bomb. Wooden ships had yielded
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

BADGE OF HONOUR Singh with his parents after receiving the MBE in 2003 for services to
science, technology and engineering in education and science communication; (left) Singh
place to human-rated spacecraft as the most
sophisticated mode of travel. And in all that
time, Fermats Last Theorem remained
unsolved. Singh picked up the story at the
very end, with his first meeting with Wiles
for BBCs Horizon, the science programme
which he did at the time.
Big Bang (2004) dealt with the biggest
and most fundamental question in the sciences, which would naturally recurse the history of science. And now, The Simpsons and
their Mathematical Secrets uses the most popular and pervasive TV series ever to dive deep
into mathematics. Of course, the fact that The
Simpsons is math-rich is one of the worstkept secrets of pop media. Usenet used to
hum with Simpsons math gotchas, and true
connoisseurs had even started websites and
little directories. However, Singh is probably
the first fan to attempt a detailed listing of all
the math goodies in the Simpsons and Futurama, and to explain the arcane humour to
the layman.
An unconscionably large number of
Simpsons writers seem to have left behind
promising careers in mathematics, statistics
and computer science in order to do hyperliterate cartoons. They have littered the Springfield landscape with baggage from Harvard
and Stanford. Most of these mathematical

The fact that The Simpsons

is math-rich is one of the
worst-kept secrets of pop
media... Singh is the first fan
to attempt a detailed listing
of all the math in the show
eye

curiosities are visible only for a second, tantalising fans into connecting with each other
to confirm finding. But almost no number
seen on the show is non-significant. Many of
them are primes, on which all of mathematics rests, since all numbers are either primes
or their multiples. Syly, very slyly, the Simpsons writers are trying to teach the world
mathematics.
Besides, the people who have figured on
The Simpsons is an honour roll of the history
of the mathmatical sciences. They range from
Alcuin of York, perhaps the most interesting
thinker in 8th century Europe, to Stephen
Hawking, who actually appeared. One is persuaded that these figures deliver the real
payload of the Simpsons to the viewership. It
isnt the japes about Homers family, or the
jokes about Amanda Hugginkiss and the
fabled Russian thug Yuri Nator. It is science
and math straight up but sugar-coated, a prophylactic against the confusion and ignorance which turns us into unthinking consumers of pseudoscience.
A worthy project, and as Quixotic as the
best of them. Singh tells of a joke from Futurama a character sees the binary number
0101100101 written in blood and is bemused,
then sees it in a mirror and is spooked. He
tried it on students at a high school in the UK.
The joke bombed because not one student
could transform the binary mirror image,
1010011010, into the decimal 666 the
Number of the Beast from the Book of Revelations. We have more technology, more
resources in education than ever before, and
were going backwards? Singh asks. Maybe
mainstream education should consider using
clandestine teaching, Simpsons-style, to stem
the tide of ignorance.

15

SPACES
BY PREMANKUR BISWAS

ARKNESS SETS in early in Kolkata.

By 6 pm, awash with orange-hued
streetlights, it becomes a different
city. The mad rush of Dalhousie is
still there, New Market is bustling with shoppers and hawkers, Coffee House is clogged
with the smell of cigarette and coffee, and
women still wash utensils under gushing
water hydrants in the lanes of Shobhabazar.
But the city shrinks imperceptibly for
women. By evening, my para is unrecognisable. Strangers take over the place. Known
corners take on sinister hues. I dont feel
safe, says 28-year-old Anushree Bhatter, a
freelance photographer based out of the city,
about the upmarket neighbourhood of New
Alipore, which saw a spate of molestation
cases two years ago.
A mild sense of justified paranoia grips
most women of the Indian subcontinent as
soon as dusk descends, and Kolkata is no
exception. There are empty roads to be negotiated, groping hands to be averted and stares
to be ignored. For decades or more, however,
Kolkata cushioned itself comfortably in the
complacence of being a safe city. Delhi was
where all the bad things happened. Mumbai
partied late into the night and invited trouble. Bangalore with all its beer bars and call
centres spelled trouble. While Kolkata sat
contended as an island of peace and safety.
Really? According to the National Crime
Records Bureau, the incidence of crime
against women was highest in West Bengal in
2011. More than 2,000 cases of rape were registered that year.
In the last few years, Kolkatas reputation has been battered by many cases of violent crime: from the Park Street rape, the
Kamdhuni gang rape and murder to the
recent gang rape and alleged murder of a 16year-old girl. Many people are not surprised
at the figures or the number of women
speaking out. Kakoli Bhattacharya of
Kolkata-based womens rights organisation,
Swayam, believes that the safe city tag was
illusory. It will be foolhardy to presume that
things were hunky dory once and they have
changed now. Having worked in this field for
decades, I have witnessed numerous incidents of rape, eve-teasing, and sexual
harassment in the workplace, says Bhattacharya. Over a decade ago, on New Year's
Eve, 2002, five young men had chased a
woman riding pillion on a motorbike at Nirmal Chander Street and murdered the traffic
constable, Bapi Sen, who had tried to intervene and protect her.
Fifty-year-old Reba Das, a domestic
worker who commutes from the suburb of
Santragachi to south Kolkata every day,
observes that sexual violence has been
relentless and rampant in the city for as long
as she can remember. When I was younger,
I would get catcalls from louts on the road.
This is why we would travel together in a
huddle. Today, I feel ashamed to admit that I

16

How Safe in

Safe City?
Kolkatas reputation as a women-friendly place takes a
battering after many cases of violent crime
am groped in buses at times, says Das. Last
year, in a little talked-about incident, Rebas
friend was raped near the Satragachi flyover
when she stepped out alone early in the
morning to report for work.She was accosted by an unidentified man. He tried to
snatch her gold earrings. When she resisted,
he forced himself upon her and raped her,
says Das.
The citys women point to a greater hostility towards those who step out of conventional roles. Nowhere will you find the slotting of good victim and bad victim more than
in Kolkata. I was tagged a bad victim because
I partied and boozed. Therefore, I asked for
it, says Suzette Jordan, who was raped in a

eye

taxi on Park Street in 2012. In many ways, the

culture urges you to respect only a certain
kind of woman. You are expected to respect
women who are like your mothers. Those
who question that stereotype are looked at
with suspicion, says Jayeeta Biswas, a student of English at Jadavpur University.
Recently, Nila Sen (name changed on
request), a working single mother of a 16year-old son, put up a status message on
Facebook, about how her son was being
harassed by young men of her neigbourhood
because his mother was a divorcee. They
would call me names in front of him and
when he protested, he was beaten up. When I
tried to intervene, I was manhandled too.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

Nowhere will you find

the slotting of good victim
and bad victim more
than in Kolkata. I was tagged
a bad victim because I
partied and boozed.
Therefore, I asked for it

PHOTOS: SUBHAM DUTTA

OUT OF THE BUBBLE For women in Kolkata, commuting during rush-hour in trains and
buses is as trying as in other cities.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

eye

These boys were hardly a few years older

than my son. I didnt know what to say, says
Sen. She was advised by the elders of her
neighbourhood not to antogonise the men.
They said I have to live here alone and I
shouldnt take that risk, she says.
For working women in Kolkata, commuting during rush-hour is a nightmare, like any
other city. But many feel that you are more
likely to be groped in a crowded metro in
Kolkata than in a packed local train in Mumbai. There is this passive aggression in some
men that is very palpable. Recently, I was
groped in a bus by a young man in a bus.
When I confronted him, he hurled abuses at
me and said he wouldnt even look at a girl
like me, says Sweta Chatterjee, a student
from Film and Television Institute of India.
Catie Buttner, a social worker from
Philadelphia, who is working with sex workers of Sonagachi (Asias largest red-light district), observes a pattern in all this. Its funny
how I am more comfortable walking down
the streets of Sonagachi. Things are more
sexually liberated there. I have faced more
harassment in the middle-class pockets of
the city, she says. Catie recalls a number of
incidents where she and her Indian male
friend was accosted by the local police for
being out late at night. A year ago, a French
national was chased down by a gang of bikers
in Ballygunge. As a foreigner in a city, I am
used to be stared at. I know that people stare
at me because I look different and unusual.
But there is a thin line between staring and
leering. When I am travelling in the metro, I
am usually leered at by middle-aged, officegoing men, she adds.
The citys infrastructure has a major role
to play in the way women of Kolkata feel
about their wellbeing. The restriction on the
operating hours of bars and restaurants in
the city that started after the Park Street rape
case in late 2012 has had an adverse effect on
the citys safety. When I was younger, we
could get cabs from Park Street way
beyond midnight, says Paromita Chakraborti, director, School of Womens Studies,
Jadavpur University. Today, there are hardly
any cabs available beyond 10.30 pm. Even
autorickshaws and buses dont ply on roads
beyond 11pm. These things matter. Its
almost as if the authorities are asking us not
to step out of our houses at night. A city that
refuses to recognise the right of each and
every citizen of the city to commute freely
can never be a safe city, says Chakraborti.

17

SURVIVAL

Before the Fire

Burns Out
The Parsi community is struggling to preserve a
fast-eroding cultural heritage
BY KEVIN LOBO

WALK THROUGH Navroze baug, built

in 1908 to house poor Parsis in
Mumbai, transports you to another
world the architecture changes,
and the noise surrounding the Lalbaug flyover dissipates. Its a scene straight out of
Kiran Nagarkars Ravan and Eddie, with a Parsi
touch. The stereotypes that characterise Parsis, like a 60-something person struggling to
kickstart a well-preserved Luna, come alive
here, and its hard to imagine that what you
are witnessing is on the verge of extinction.
The 10th World Zoroastrian Congress
that was held in Mumbai last month discussed a host of issues plaguing the Parsis,
from the erosion of their language and culture to the declining population. The event is
held once in four years to address issues troubling the community and is attended by
members from across the world.
Fleeing from the Muslim invasion in Iran,
Parsis arrived in Gujarat somewhere around
the 8th or 10th century. They assimilated well
into the Indian culture, and even adopted Gujarati as their mother tongue. Introducing us to
a resident of the baug, our guide Anaita Irani, a
member of the baugs managing committee
switches to the hybrid Gujarati or Parsispeak.
How long will the language or the culture
will survive is difficult to tell. The phrases
that make the language unique are fast disappearing, says author Meher Marfatia, who
co-wrote Parsi Bol with Sooni Taraporewala.
The book is a collection of 716 phrases, some
of them hilarious. From insults like boodhvar
na vandha, which literally means someone
who doesnt know the days of the week post
Wednesday, but is used for a person who
lacks intelligence, to idioms that roll off your
tongue, such as pengo chengo for a bowlegged person, the book is a fun archive of the
language. We initially asked our relatives

18

FADING CULTURE A Parsi priest at an agiary offers prayers (above); an elderly Parsi on his
Luna at Navroze baug in Mumbai
and friends for phrases they had heard. But
when we broadened our research to the
entire community, we realised that we hadnt
heard many of them. Unfortunately, the next
generation will be worse off, says Marfatia.
That the language is getting lost in time
can be seen through Parsi theatre, which was
revolutionised when Adi Marzban created a
new idiom with his hilarious Gujarati plays
from the 30s through to the 80s. His plays
made keen observations about the community, while poking fun at it. Maneck Davar, owner of the publishing house Spenta Media,
remembers how there would be complete
silence in the baugs when Marzabans plays
were aired on AIR. Most Parsi plays now are
renditions of Marzabans scripts, but lack the
punch. Younger actors read from a Roman
script. You dont get the full impact of certain
gags, because the nuances of the language gets
lost. Its unfortunate that there are no new
writers, although some like actor Meherzad

eye

Patel are trying, says Marfatia, who authored

Laughter in the House as a tribute to Marzban.
Today, the Parsis find themselves fighting a
battle between evolving as a community and
preserving what they have. Parsis follow a strict
form of Zoroastrianism, which doesnt allow
conversion even after marriage. Therefore, the
children of women who marry outside the
community are not considered Zoroastrians.
The Parsi community is facing the same problem as the Japanese, and they have been working at population stabilisation for 20 years,
says Shernaz Cama, director of Parzor Foundation, Unesco, dedicated to preserving Parsi culture. Ten years ago, a Parsi woman gave birth to
0.94 children in her reproductive cycle, the
number is now at 0.88. Add to this, 30 per cent
of Parsis remain unmarried and another 31 per
cent are over 65, and the extinction of a people
looms dangerously close.
But the government as well as some
community members are now working on it.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

PHOTOS: PRADEEP KOCHAREKAR

MEMORIES
Navroze baug
(above); Dolly
Dotiwala, Piloo
Wadia, Dadi
Sarkari and
Homi Tavadia
in a play by Adi
Marzban,
Maatidao ne
Udha Paaro
(courtesy,
Dolly & Bomi
Dotiwala,
Laughter in the
House: 20thcentury Parsi
Theatre by
Meher
Marfatia
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

eye

The government of Indias Jiyo Parsi scheme,

launched in September last year, aims at
reversing this population decline Rs 10
crore has been earmarked for programmes
including in vitro fertilisation and advocacy.
The Bombay Parsi Punchayet has stepped in
to encourage families to have more children.
It pays Rs 3,000 a month to couples who have
two children and Rs 5,000 a month to those
who have three, until the child turns 18. This
initiative, however, met with limited success.
We need to inculcate a sense of community in the Parsi youth. Only if they care about
preserving our culture, will we survive, says
Davar, honorary secretary of the 10th World
Zoroastrian Congress.
Delhi-based designer Ashdeen Liloawala
shot to fame last year with a show that contemporised the traditional Parsi weave
gara. The gara is a style of hand-woven
embroidery that was developed when the
Parsi community traded with China in opium
in the 17th century. Another example of the
Parsis brush with a foreign culture, gara is
characterised by motifs which are quintessentially Chinese. Even people in the community didn't know what some motifs are. A
woman wearing a gara with ornate looking
bats as motifs thought they were butterflies.
She hasn't worn the dress ever since I told her
what they were, says the designer. Parsi
traders of the time got weavers to embellish
these motifs on saris, creating the gara.
Liloawala has brought the garment back into
public consciousness.
Jimmy Mistry, owner of real estate company Della Technica, set up the Parsi Resource
Group in 2006, a charitable trust that works
with the community. But the economic condition of the priests is closest to his heart. For
the past 40 years, the financial condition of
the priests have deteriorated. Some of them
still fend for themselves on a salary of barely
Rs 150-170 a day in a city like Mumbai, he
says. He ran a sustained campaign with the
Bombay Parsi Punchayet, and since last year,
the group has been putting together about Rs
10,000 per month for each priest. Parsi priesthood is a family calling and comes with a host
of occupational hazards they often suffer
respiratory and knee-related problems as
they have to tend to the fire and have to sit in
prayer every day.
According to Ramiyar Karanjia, principal
at the Dadar Madrasa that functions as a
boarding school for young priests, the issue is
deeper. People with a desk job get paid as
much or more as a starting salary. As a
momed (priest), there is no growth. Young
people dont find it challenging, he says.
But hope floats. Davar believes that
events like the 10th World Zoroastrian Congress may not offer solutions, but helps build
a sense of community. Liloawala, who wants
to start a blog or a website that documents
Parsi culture, says, There has to be a balance
between what you protect and what you
move on from. We need to be part of the
modern context.

19

digital native

Nishant Shah
digitalnative@expressindia.com

10 Ways to Say Nothing New

OINAM ANAND

The rise of the listicle, a safe,

non-thinking information piece that
tells us what we already know
ALWAYS LIKE to begin the New Year with a self-fulfilling prophecy, assured in the fact that like New Year resolutions, it will
quickly be forgotten in the attention deficit times that we live in.
Nevertheless, it is always a fun exercise, to play Cassandra, and utter
ominous things about the time to come. I am looking at my fasterthan-byte feeds online and trying to figure out the new trend that is
going to be the absolute death of us in 2014. I did some research
(Google search), consulted some experts (asked friends on Facebook), analysed critiques (trolled on Twitter), and looked at current
trends (followed funny Tumblrs) and finally have the answer. The
thing that we must brace for is the list or rather the listicle (an
article that is written like a list).
Have you noticed it? Almost anything
that is anything on the internet lately has
been presented to us as a list. There are lists
for everything of things people say, of
things people do, of things people want to say
about people who do things. On websites in
the business of making things go viral (and
slightly fermented), the listicle has emerged
as the next best thing.
Now, I dont want us to run away with the
idea (10 ways to run away with ideas coming soon on Viral Nova) that lists are new.
Lists have always existed and have been one
of the most basic forms of archiving, sorting and storing human
knowledge and information. However, the new lists that are doing
the rounds on BuzzFeed, Reditt, Viral Nova and everywhere else
need attention. The listicle is an incredible performance of the
strange, the silly and the deranged. Like reality TV judges, they are
empty, clich-ridden and yet seductive. They are supposed to produce profound truths, give us insights into our everyday practices,
harness the wisdom of crowds and help curate overloaded information feeds to distil what is most relevant and useful. In itself, that is a
fantastic ambition and for somebody who is constantly moaning
about there not being enough time to follow everything on the

internet (way too many videos of pandas making friends with wallabies on Vimeo these days), I appreciate the ability that listicles
have of reducing read-time and giving us tweet-sized nuggets of
wisdom. Bam! Our lives have changed!
And yet, as you look at these lists, you slowly start realising that
listicles are significantly empty. They try to pass on the banal, the
boring, the insipid and the extraordinarily common-sense as
knowledge, information and wisdom. I am randomly looking at the
last five listicles on my timeline 20 reasons why a 20-something
would never survive Hunger Games (right, because thats the message of the books get children to kill each other!), 31 insanely
clever ideas to remodel your new house (a lot of them using
chopped up coke bottles and toilet paper rolls for that intimate
ambience), 18 ways of discovering happiness through travel (my
first rule is be very rich), 25 universal horrors of hair removal (let
it grow! Let it grow! Let it grow!) and seven ways of making a to-do
list that works (get it? Get it? A list about making an efficient list.
May I please say #FacePalm?)
So, snide remarks aside (10 ways to let go of sarcasm?) what
does this mean for us? Why are listicles so popular? Why are the
tech-savvy, educated people online, who could be overthrowing
authority (all hail, Snowden) and feeding starving children in a poor
country of their choice why are they all spending the time with
listicles? I am proposing that the listicle is the final death of politics,
criticality and thought on the internet. We have already seen how
online conversations quickly devolve into an exercise in creative
name-calling and racist, bigoted bullying. The internet has already
shown us that all debates end in accusations of fascism (Godwins
law) and that anything that you say online is going to offend somebody who will then come back, like the ghost of Christmas past, and
haunt you. In the hostile space that the internet has become, not the
very least because everybody is not watching porn, searching for
pictures of animals, or pirating music and movies, we are all trained
to be the saints who were persecuted for their beliefs. There is no
such thing as a bad person on the internet. Everybody is smug, holier-than-thou, and even when wrong, are saintly wrong, and thus
martyrs. For a medium that was supposed to
encourage conversation, unless you are in the
company of people you know, the internet
has become a hunting ground, where the only
thing you can do safely is make a list. And
hence, the listicle.
True, once in a while, there are some really
cool listicles (though they might lead to mild
electrocution or house burning down, but hey,
no pain, no gain, right?) and they do help in
visualising and transmitting information very
fast. At the end of the day, listicles are the
space that conversations go to die. The listicle
is a safe, non-offensive, non-thinking information piece that tells us what we already know, confirms what we had
always suspected, and gives validation to the impressive schools of
thoughts like My grandmother says so and I have heard that. It is a
way by which we escape deep thought or engaged talk, basking in the
enchantment of our own brilliance, no longer in need of thinking
anymore, because look, look how beautiful our thoughts look in the
listicle, and look, how many people are sharing it! The listicle has
risen and it looks like it is just going to get more popular. Maybe it is
time to write a listicle about why we shouldnt be writing listicles.

Listicles try to pass on the

banal, the boring, the
insipid as knowledge,
information and wisdom.
I am proposing that the
listicle is the final death
of politics, criticality and
thought on the internet

20

eye

Nishant Shah is director, research, Centre for Internet and Society

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

CINEMA
VASANT PRABHU

The Accidental
Filmmaker
The world of Delhis Lajpat Nagar, with its nuances and
quirks, has seeped into Vikas Bahls Queen
BY ALAKA SAHANI

ITH THE movie Queens trailer

going viral, its no secret that Kangana Ranauts character Rani travels to Europe on her honeymoon alone. This
one-line plot struck Vikas Bahl three years
ago. Yet, more than 10 drafts later, when he
set out to shoot Ranis story, suggestions
and inputs often came in from different
quarters on the sets. The script was constantly improvised.
To tell Ranis story, Bahl had to depend
primarily on his experience of a lower middle-class world in Delhis Lajpat Nagar,
where he grew up. I have lived in the
world Rani comes from. I am lucky that it
has stayed on with me. So, it was not an
effort to take it to the screen, says the
director, whose family, like most of Lajpat
Nagars residents, migrated from Pakistan

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

THE QUEENS GAMBIT (above) Kangna

Ranaut as Rani in a still from the film;
(top) Bahl
during Partition. Life in Lajpat Nagar
exposed him to two different worlds. Bahl
is confident of knowing how people in Indian small towns think. If I like a film,
chances are that they are going to like it
too, he says.

eye

Humour is expected to play a key role

in holding the audiences attention. By his
own admission, Bahl loves to crack jokes. I
even tend to cross the line at times, he
confesses. Ranaut too is known for her
sense of humour, while Anvita Dutt who
has co-written the story as well as the dialogues (the latter with the actor) is pretty
whacked out. The combination of the
three of us, who have the ability to make a
serious situation fun, helped the movie find
its flavour, says Bahl, the former CEO of
UTV Spotboy, who co-founded Phantom
Films with Anurag Kashyap and Madhu
Montena.
Ranaut also brought in the much-needed understanding of their lives in a small
town. As a man, I could not be sure if I had
travelled the whole mile and got the
nuances correct as Queen is a girls story. I
knew Kangana would understand her better. She comes from that world and knows
how girls are overprotected and not very
ambitious, he says. The fact that the actor,
who is from Dehradun, too has had an
amazing journey in the industry, added layers to Ranis character.
Today, a prominent name in off-beat
Hindi movies credited for producing Udaan,
Dev. D and No One Killed Jessica, Bahls entry
into the industry was unpremeditated. This
MBA-graduates first taste of showbiz came
when the Sony channel hired him. When
the channel acquired SAB TV, he became its
creative and business head. Later, he took
charge of UTV Spotboy, which was set up to
support low-budget movies. It is during
this stint that he started writing the story of
Chillar Party, which captures the efforts of a
group of Mumbai children to save a dog.
Soon, he grew attached to the story and
roped in Nitesh Tiwari to co-write it. Even
though they took the script to a few directors, they did not like the changes suggested to them. It took a nudge from Iranian
filmmaker Majid Majidi to direct it themselves. Majidi was supposed to make a film
for UTV. One day, I narrated the story to him
and he told me that only we can tell this
story well. The doubts I had about direction
was put to rest by Anurag when he said, Its
not tough. Just put up a camera and shoot,
he says.
Despite the experience of making
Chillar Party, Bahl was at a loss for the first
few days of shooting Queen. After completing the film, which was shot in nearly 150
locations over 45 days, Bahl is confident of
taking on more directorial work. Though he
has been toying with a couple of ideas,
including one about a mad destination
wedding, his next is likely to be The Return
Gift. This was written by his friend Saurabh
Narang, director of Vaastu Shastra, who
passed away in 2010 from cancer. I have
promised his wife that I will make the film.
Its a difficult film to direct. But I am confident of handling it, says Bahl, who has
rewritten the screenplay to suit his style.

21

HERITAGE

Its Hammer Time

BEST BID Sarfaraz Begum Shamsi at work
at Russell Exchange in central Kolkata

Sarfaraz Begum Shamsi, the only woman auctioneer of

India, on how she learnt the tricks of the trade
BY PREMANKUR BISWAS

BRASS FIGURINE, an earphone and a

key ring sit on Sarfaraz Begum Shamsis desk. She darts a glance at the
items before addressing the assembled
crowd, Any bidder for these items? This
beautiful brass figurine, the earphone and
the key ring could be yours for only Rs 30. Do
I hear Rs 35? she asks. Even as she addresses
a roomful of irritable, over-eager buyers,
Shamsi is a picture of unfazed confidence.
The buyers include a cross-section of
society: starting from walk-in visitors like Ed
Knowles, a filmmaker who has made a film
on the auction house, to regulars who come
over to source items like old lamps and vases
for business establishments. Some middle
class regulars also come here to procure second-hand items of daily use. Locals, including families from north Kolkatas mansions,
come to sell over old things.
Shamsi flips from one item to another
(paper clips, electric shaver, brass cutlery,
American diamond-studded bangles) without a twitch of an eyebrow. She dismisses
accusations of being partial, You didnt hear
my bid, you are favouring them, with a
graceful wave of her hand.
Shamsi is Indias only woman auctioneer
and the tag of being the sole woman in an
exclusively mans profession sits easy on her.
I dont want to be burdened by this so-called
honour. For me, this profession is just a pro-

22

gression of my life. I dont see it as a remarkable step by any means, says Shamsi, as she
takes a break from the Sunday auction at the
oldest surviving auction house in India, The
Russell Exchange, in central Kolkata.
Sitting behind a stately mahogany table,
she points out at an old trench coat hanging
artistically on her wall, Its decorative, and
not for sale. As we sip steaming cups of
milky tea, Shamsi opens up about the fine
art of auctioneering, You should have seen
my father, who started this business in 1940.
He knew five different languages English,
Spanish, Urdu, Arabic and Bengali. But more
than anything else, he knew how to relate to
his customers, says Shamsi, the eldest
daughter of Abdul Majed.
I remember visiting auctions conducted by my father at different European consulates in the 1950s. The outgoing staff of
the consulates would sell off most of their
possessions before they left the city. I
bought a cutlery set for myself from one of

Business was a bit rough

in the 1990s and early
2000s when people lost
interest in old things. But
now there is renewed
interest in old artifacts and
furniture, says Shamsi
eye

these auctions, she says. Its through these

visits that she learnt the art of evaluating
things. An auctioneer is most importantly,
an evaluator. He or she needs to know the
true value of the things that are being auctioned. I need to recognize a Rosenthal (a
renowned brand of German chinaware) the
moment I see it, she says.
Today, Majeds three children, Sarfaraz,
Anwar Saleem and Arshad Salim, are in
charge of the property. Things were a bit
rough in the 1990s and early 2000s when
people lost interest in old things. But the
business is looking up again as there is
renewed interest in old artifacts and furniture, says Shamsi.
The thought of working, let alone entering the family business, never crossed her
mind even though her parents gave her
equal opportunities as her brother, until she
lost her husband. Even then she didn't enter
auctioneering. I was an educated young
woman who knew she had to get married
and settle down even without anyone telling
her so. After my husband passed away, my
in-laws encouraged me to take up teaching,
says Shamsi, now in her mid-60s.
Her stint as a teacher for 20 years, in a
strange way, helped her become a good auctioneer. As a teacher, you need to command attention. You need to be constantly
aware of the things around you. Children
are always distracted. Similarly, there is a
lot happening in an auction room. Some
buyer will subtly raise his hand because he
doesnt want others to know he is bidding.
Someone else will signal with a raised eyebrow. A good auctioneer keeps a tab on
everything, she says.
A decade ago, when she shifted back to
Kolkata to take care of her ailing mother,
she was almost bullied into auctioneering
by her youngest brother, Arshad. He literally shouted at me saying I cant expect to
while away my time. I was very upset then.
But now I know he did it for my own good,
she smiles fondly.
She started off with auctioning old
clothes, soon she started auctioning expensive china and rare issues of books and
counted the likes of Shabana Azmi and
Javed Akhtar as her customers. We auction
old clothes once a week. My brother felt I
could handle it. On the first day, I was a bit
nervous and very conscious about the way I
would bang the hammer, she says. But she
took to it like a fish to water. Today, when
she bangs the hammer to signal the end of a
bid, it seems like she has been doing it forever. Well, it's in my blood,she says.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

SPOTLIGHT

UC Browser 9.5, Android

FREE

The latest version of UC Browser promises faster download speeds by splitting files into multiple parts and
downloading them simultaneously.The browser also lets you sync your bookmarks and open tabs between multiple
devices. It automatically loads the next page on websites (such as Google) when youre near the bottom of a page.

TECH

Gamers Paradise
Has the best gaming tablet
just come out of India?
BY NANDAGOPAL RAJAN

OLO HAS done it again. The brand from

Indian manufacturer Lava International has become the first to bring out a
tablet with NVIDIAs Tegra 4 mobile processor with quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU and 72core GeForce GPU. This, after they managed
to pick up Intels chip for smartphones before
everyone else. NVDIA claims their processors
make the 7-inch XOLO Play Tegra Note the
fastest tablet on earth. That is a claim we had
to test.

DESIGN
There is not much to talk about design;
everything is what you would expect in a 7inch tablet. There are small grilles in the front
to accommodate the powerful speakers. The
plastic does not look or feel all that premium,
though the texture at the back gives it a good
grip. This will come in handy when you are
playing games with the tablet. A rubber finish
would have been ideal for this device.
The all-black body has a Xolo logo as well
as a chrome ring around the camera lens. The
one differentiator is a small groove on the
bottom where the stylus has been stowed
away. Yes, as the name suggests, this is a
note-taking tablet too. The tablet has a magnetic field in the bezel which attracted nearby small metallic objects. It is a bit awkward
and for me suggests poor production qualities. Since a lot of people are going to use this
for high-end gaming, there is a mini-HDMI
port,which is a welcome addition.

PERFORMANCE
This is where the Xolo Play Tegra Note really
stands out from the crowd. The tablets Antutu Benchmark score of 33805 was second
only to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and not
by much. Its Quadrant score (16698) was
many times more than the number 2, the
HTC One X. But these are just numbers, and I
had to experience this brute force in action.
I started with the graphic-heavy Iron
Man 3 game and was really impressed with
the processing power as well as the superb
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

Whats Inside
Android Jelly Bean 4.2 powered by
NVIDIA Tegra 4 mobile processor with
quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU and 72-core
GeForce GPU. Seven-inch HD IPS LCD
display (1280x800p) with micro HDMI
connector. Rear 5MP HDR and front
VGA webcam. 16GB internal storage
with microSD expandable up to an
additional 32GB.

Price: `17,999

graphics, which rendered well on the HD IPS

display. The rich background appeared
smooth and there was no lag of any kind. In
fact, as I moved the tablet from left to right to
help Iron Man clear the obstacles in front of
him, I started feeling like Tony Stark himself,
the experience is that realistic. The tablet
comes preloaded with NVDIA Tegrazone
which showcases some of the best games
that have been optimized for this processor. I
tried Eden to Green, a game for kids, with the
best 3D graphics you will see on a mobile
platform. The game was a good showcase of
what this tablet is capable of. In terms of
sound output, this is also one of the best

eye

tablets I have seen,which is good enough to

be amplified on external speakers. On the flip
side, the device does heat up a bit after a few
minutes of gaming. It is a definite put-off for a
device that has been made for gaming.
The other side of the tablet is its notetaking abilities. Pull the stylus out and the
Tegra Draw and Write apps pop up on the
screen. The Tegra Draw is a great app that
works well with the chisel and brush stylus.
The good thing is that the back end of the stylus can be used like an eraser. However, the
experience with the Write was not perfect
and there seemed to be a small lag between
where the stylus was and where the writing
appeared. Still, it is quite workable if you have
good handwriting.
The battery life is decent and will give
you eight hours with full-time gaming. The
camera is average and does not perform as
one had expected.

SHOULD YOU BUYIT?

Yes, if you are a gamer, and an artist. Maybe, if
you are a regular tablet user. The first two categories of users will get their moneys worth
in a day. It is the most powerful Android
tablet around and the only concern is
whether the Xolo build quality will last as
long as you want it to.

23

mind games
The problem posed to you last week
was from October 2010 issue of The
Bridge World magazine. This was
the second of the two problems in
the regular column Test Your Play.
The Bridge World is one of the oldest
bridge magazines. It was founded
by Ely Culbertson in 1929. Its current editor and publisher is Jeff
Rubens, with Michael Becker as
problem editor, and many other
contributing editors.
Rubber bridge;
Dlr: East; Vul: None

(1) fails when East has the missing

trump; (2) fails when East has
queen-third (or, impossibly,
fourth) of diamonds, hence
1=2=3=7. (1) fails against more
shapes, independent of the location of the queen of diamonds, so
(2) is the superior approach.

THE BIDDING:
EAST

SOUTH WEST

NORTH

3
pass

pass

pass

West leads the club deuce.

Plan the play.
Apparently, clubs are seven-one. Aiming to drop the short queen of diamonds is well against the odds. There
are other chances. Win trick one and
draw two rounds of trumps. If West
has four (or five) hearts, play one (or
two) more top hearts to leave him
with one trump, unblock the ace of
spades, and lead the deuce of hearts.

WEST
(YOU)
: Q 4 3
:10 9 6 3
: A K 10
: J 10 4

NORTH (DUMMY)
: 10 7 6
: Q 5 4 2
: 3 2
: A 7 5 3

THE BIDDING:
SOUTH WEST

NORTH EAST

1
3
pass

1 nt
4
-

pass
pass
pass

pass
pass
-

If hearts break three-two, you can (1)

unblock in spades and lead the heart
deuce or (2) draw the last trump, unblock spades, and play ace-king-low
of diamonds.

NORTH
: K Q J 9 6
: 5 4
: J 10 8 6
: 10 8

WEST
: 2
:A K 10 9 6 2 SOUTH
: Q J 9
: A
: Q 5 3
: A K Q J 3 2
: A K 5
: A 7 4

EAST
: 7 6 5
: J 8 5
: 7 5 4
: J 10 9 2

*forcing; two spades would have

shown a stronger hand
Trick One: Diamond ace, two, four,
five
Trick Two: Diamond king, three,
nine, queen
How do you plan the play.

SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD
QUICK CLUES
ACROSS
1 Arguments
6 Arabs
9 Deeds
10 Tangerine
11 Determined
12 Beta
14 Seesaws
15 Samurai
17 Airless
19 Thrives
20 Been
22 Take the rap
25 Rationale
26 Shies
27 Stake
28 Surrounds
DOWN
1 Added
2 Great bear
3 Mistreated
4 Nitwits
5 Singers

24

1939

Try this problem now:

IMPs; Dlr:South; Vul: E/W

NORTH
: K Q J 9 6
: 5 4
: J 10 8 6
: 10 8
SOUTH
: A
: A K Q J 3 2
: A K 5
: A 7 4

CROSSWORD

6 Amen
7 Alive
8 Scenarios
13 Amir Khusro
14 Scabbards
16 Reversion
18 Stalags
19 The rear
21 Extra
23 Pests
24 Bone
CRYPTIC CLUES
ACROSS
1 Lord Byron
6 Wiper
9 Radon
10 Sensitive
11 Ocean liner
12 Flog
14 Attests
15 Yanking
17 Forging

19 Breaths
20 Asks
22 Court cards
25 Clarionet
26 Volga
27 Doted
28 Paperback
DOWN
1 Largo
2 Red letter
3 Banana skin
4 Rustics
5 Nunnery
6 Waif
7 Phial
8 Reengages
13 Undercover
14 Affianced
16 Inter alia
18 Grown up
19 Burnt up
21 Krait
23 Shack
24 Find

1938

QUICK CLUES
ACROSS
1. ___ _ march on: get the better
of (5, 1)
4. Done or said heedlessly or
negligently (8)
10. Its capital is Tallinn (7)
11. __ _ expense (go all out) (5, 2)
12. Rajasthan desert (4)
13. An area bounded by a diameter and
a half-circumference (10)
16. Flew like an eagle (6)
17. A beneficiary of a will (7)
20. Gloomy, upset or cheerless (3-4)
21. Go backwards, retreat or ebb (6)
24. Excludes, banishes (10)
25. Fits snugly to _ ___ (1, 3)
27. Getting a single or a four (7)
29. Domain of an independent Muslim
chieftain (7)
30. Apprehension about what is going
to happen (8)
31. Lecture, sermon or homily? (6)
DOWN
1. Success is counted ___ by those
who never succeed... (8)
2. Lavish; wasteful (11)
3. ___ on ones feet: do well in the
end, luckily (4)
5. Attacked or assaulted (8)
6. Roots out or destroys
completely (10)
7. Easy on the ___ : pleasant to look
at? (3)
8. Ranges or extents (6)
9. Reveals as fangs (5)
14. Passport visa etc. (11)
15. Speak in indefinite terms, in a
way? (10)
18. Surrounds, beleaguers or invests (8)
19. Back out (6, 2)
22. Makes active or excited (6)
23. Adjourn or procrastinate (5)
26. Snap or snip, sting (4)
28. Saturns wife, sop anagram? (3)
CRYPTIC CLUES
ACROSS
1. In remorse, quells successor (6)
4. Weapon to intimidate, taking in
Diana and bandleader (8)
10. Liable to be in dead trouble after
conversion (7)
11. Gets a graduate to move about in
hot waters, generally (3-4)
12. Punches popular numbers (4)

eye

13. Not worth considering one legal

scholar in casual dress (10)
16. Greek letter, somewhat indecent,
causing deep offence (6)
17. Geraint turns out to be a thankless
person (7)
20. Emissaries for example featured in
strange tales (7)
21. Home about 10 after five, make
up (6)
24. Look forward to Bonfire Night with
great enthusiasm? (4, 6)
25. In the distance, any field appears
rustic at first (4)
27. Diet may be varied before
sunset (7)
29. Rock bed in which half of the gold
in Victoria was found? (7)
30. Social Democrats hid a large cup
and a broken leg which they slyly
imported (8)
31. Hound with big head, something
worth having (6)
DOWN
1. Collisions push mass all over (5-3)
2. Suit, say, reserved for naval
officers? (11)
3. Chair, moving portion of speech to
the end, has lunch (4)
5. Making a noise and causing
annoyance (8)
6. High cost of arranging different
working hours? (10)
7. Sheepish sound of the scholar
leading the Americans? (3)
8. We have to take the ship once to
Dorset area (6)
9. They urge people to buy products
of the first millennium with
points (2-3)
14. Goat runs after insects (11)
15. Taking part in a motor-cycle trial
other people cant possibly
understand? (10)
18. Bowler Brett carries poisons for
Middle-Easterner (8)
19. Row not unexpected in Northern
Irish Parliament (8)
22. Avoids the Spanish dues
perhaps (6)
23. Its pronouncedly different for
runners in Kentucky (5)
26. American business contract with a
Peruvian (4)
28. No good leaving the cubs as the
second person (3)

JANUARY 19-25, 2014

in the stars

BY

PETER VIDAL

aries

taurus

gemini

MAR 21-APR 20

APR 21-MAY 21

MAY 22-JUNE 21

The planets are still in a formation which encourages secrecy, but steer clear of people
who are determined to spread
rumours or go behind partners backs. Upheavals early in
the week could knock you off
course, but youll soon steady
your nerve. You should enjoy
your excellent social
prospects midweek.

Rarely have the trends been

better for Taureans with professional ambitions. Venus indicates that this is an excellent
week for securing a new job or
achieving respect for your accomplishments so far. Jupiter
adds the possibility of massively enhanced personal satisfaction. Plus, the Moon should
act solidly in your favour.

cancer

leo

virgo

JUNE 22-JULY 23

JULY 24-AUG 23

AUG 24-SEPT 23

There are times of the year

when the planets offer you a
degree of inspiration that takes
you beyond the limits of your
life. To make the most of such
trends, you must consciously
look for ways to improve your
lot. Such a time is now. So, dont
be put off by daily trivia, even if
travel plans are disrupted early
in the week.

Very interesting developments

are taking place in the area of
your chart ruling your finances.
There does seem to be some
confusion, but also a great opportunity to benefit from any
savings or investments. Money
is probably the greatest area of
concern, although there are
definitely some excellent bargains to be had.

Most of your planets are in

that part of your chart which
encourages you to play down
your personal feelings. However, dont ignore your individual needs. Mercury, your
planetary ruler, is in a poetic
mood, and you may do best to
concentrate on creating an
impression, rather than burying yourself in the facts.

Lifes not all plain sailing at

the moment, but then nobody
ever said it would be. The one
area of opportunity is romance, which many of you,
for one reason or another,
have tended to ignore. The
next set of lunar alignments
falls in a lively, assertive part
of your chart, setting you off
on a new cycle of adventure.

libra

scorpio

sagittarius

SEPT 24-OCT 23

OCT 24-NOV 22

NOV 23-DEC 22

Venus and Mars combine to

offer the best planetary influences as far as relationships
with loved ones are concerned. You must, though, act
in line with your individual
feelings. There is bound to be
a major mystery early in the
week, and that could set your
mind thinking about fresh
ideas and new ambitions.

Your planetary influences this

week are potentially pleasurable. This is why you must find
some time to enjoy yourself
free from the cares and burdens of everyday life. One
other point to bear in mind is
that emotional ties could
prove costly, and youll have to
decide whether the price is
worth paying.

Short journeys are on the cards.

If you have brothers or sisters,
they are the relatives who will
be most important over the
coming two weeks. Otherwise,
stick with those friends who
you know and trust as yourself.
Any professional upsets early
in the week should be cleared
up after a few days and with
a bit of goodwill.

capricorn

aquarius

pisces

DEC 23-JAN 20

JAN 21-FEB 19

FEB 20-MAR 20

The indications that a new

partnership could be profitable, financially, are growing
stronger. Perhaps a new friend
will come up with a proposal.
Its a positive time to experiment as long as the odds are
on your side. First, though, you
need to check out every single
angle, and make sure that all
possible problems are covered.
JANUARY 19-25, 2014

Venus and Mars are the two

planets which rule your social
life, making you irresistible to
other people. Now that both
these marvellous celestial
bodies are offering you their
support, you will at last make
new friends. Oh, and your financial stars will improve as
the week passes, bringing
hints of new prosperity.

Romantic encounters and

quiet moments are in store for
all Pisceans, especially if an element of mystery is involved.
One thing is certain, and that
is that you must listen very
carefully to all well-meaning
advice. Even if it doesnt
sound quite right at first, you
could change your mind by
the end of the week.

eye

BIRTHDAYS
JANUARY 19
Secretive planetary aspects encourage you to keep yourself to
yourself, but family members
and partners will misunderstand
your intentions, unless you explain yourself properly. Over the
next 12 months set yourself one
task: to be much more confident.

JANUARY 20
There are few changes expected
today, although those of you determined to stay up late tonight
will begin to feel a change of
mood towards midnight. There
may soon be news of a delay in a
romantic ambition, and you
might have to pay for a dream
before it can come true.

JANUARY 21
You may be reluctant to share
your hopes. Perhaps the next
year will see a shift in your social
loyalties and a broadening of
your horizons. Your priorities
will shift constantly between the
need for hard, practical results
and the desire to let your imagination run riot.

JANUARY 22
You could be confused, but if so,
its only because youve not focussed clearly. On the one hand,
it is okay to think your wildest
thoughts, on the other, if youre
to put them into practice youd
do best to follow some conservative methods.

JANUARY 23
This is a bright moment, and
youre both big on ideas and full
of feelings. So, it seems that your
head and heart are both driving
you forward. If youre sure of
your needs and desires then
youll be a definite winner.

JANUARY 24
Use the day to improve your relationships with friends. Make the
most of any goodwill that comes
your way, exploiting offers of
help to the full. Dont turn down
invitations without considering
them properly.

JANUARY 25
Its a fine day for a birthday.
Work out your targets and resolve to achieve them as soon as
you can. Your favourite planets
are starting a set of new cycles,
pointing to both a week and a
year in which you should highlight lifes pleasures.

25

down in jungleland
PHOTOS: THINKSTOCK

Ranjit Lal
ranjitlal55@gmail.com

RANJIT LAL

(Clockwise) The
lime butterfly, a
cockroach, and
ants

Spot the Squatter

In every nook of your house, an army of creepy-crawlies has made itself at home

OMESTAYS HAVE, of late, become very popular amongst

holidaymakers. You get comfortable accommodation, ghar ka
khana, affable hosts and none of the synthetic smiles of
trained hoteliers. Creepy crawlies and other creatures have known
this for years and I was just making out a list of the guests Ive hosted wittingly and unwittingly at home, over the years. Needless
to add, none have paid any rent, though, heh-heh, many have with
their lives.
Ubiquitous to any home are, of course, cockroaches. Last year,
fortunately, I had very few cockroach guests, and I still remember,
with a certain fondness, a magnificent old codger, in polished
mahogany, which made my bathroom its home for weeks before
being turfed out because family was visiting and would get hysterical. Another bathroom squatter I got fond of was a large hairy yellow-and-brown (wolf, I like to think) spider that made the potty lid
its holiday home, but which would deferentially disappear when it
had to be used and so upset no visiting Ms Muffet.
Bathrooms hold a strange fascination for creepy-crawlies and
their ilk. Two years ago, there was a mass invasion of big, black ants
in another bathroom: they poured out of the shower drain in a
nightmarish black tide, covering the floor and advancing like extras
in some Alfred Hitchcock horror extravaganza. Their intentions
were clear: Take the bathroom, then the bedroom, then the house,
then Delhi. All-out war had to be declared and it took two days
before they were routed. It was sad, because I like these fellows
even with their huge pincers and metallic black eyes and mechanically programmed brains theyre not mindlessly vicious like red
ants are.
Or wasps: Come spring and the orange-yellow
potter and paper wasps will be hovering
hopefully about, investigating keyholes, lamp
shades, screw slots, even as we duct-tape all
prospective orifices. Theyll still find vacancies and you have to be careful you dont disturb them while doing the housekeeping
because theyll chase you around your own
home, if irritated. Theyre touchy, these guys,
I got bitten once because I took objection to one

26

sunbathing on my neck while I was in the pool. They loved the pool
too and would land on the water, legs splayed, and float implacably
towards you. The deadly metallic greeny-black spider wasp is
another ghoulish interloper and makes its appearance during the
monsoons. Itll catch tiny, anaesthetised spiders by the dozen in, say
a screw slot, lay an egg on one of them, seal up the slot with what
looks like white cement and whiz off. Its grub, when hatched, will
feast on fresh spider-meat, grow and eventually wriggle out of its
prison. I did some rough maths and calculated that at any one time,
there must have been at least 50,000 anesthetized, soon-to-be-eaten spiders in the complex where I lived, which is pretty much holocaust scale. But nature keeps everything balanced, so I guess there
must be plenty more.
Mosquitoes, of course, are the most unwelcome guests. They
lurk about on the plants outside the front door and in the garden,
and slip in when the doors are opened. Ive banned most plants in
the house for that reason. Perhaps the most welcome guest was
the caterpillar of the lime butterfly. Years ago, I saw one (and later
more) on the leaves of the Chinese orange plant just outside the
front door. I jam-jarred it and fed it; it duly pupated and then early
one morning, I watched as the gorgeous butterfly emerged, dappled
in black-and-lemon yellow, with crayon smudges of mauve and
orange. It crawled tiredly out on to a twig, hung its wings to dry. But,
alas, as it attempted to fly, it was brought down by the dog.
At the moment, Im waging another grim bathroom war. Some
months ago, a nasty looking black-and-red centipede was discovered, again on the potty lid. Its contract was terminated with
extreme prejudice. Now, just back from a short holiday, I was
informed that hundreds of baby centipedes crawled out of
the shower drain (again) during my absence, along with
an adult, seeking revenge no doubt. They were cleared,
but just yesterday, another lot emerged: tiny, filamentous
and moustachoed. Im showering with slippers on.
Enough! Wait for reptiles and mammals in
Homestay 2!
Ranjit Lal is an author, environmentalist and bird watcher. In this
column, he will reflect on the eccentricities and absurdities of nature

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JANUARY 19-25, 2014