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SAY HELLO TO
‘THE SANDMAN’
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13 2022 Neil Gaiman’s beloved Sand-
man comics finally get the live
action treatment with new
Netflix series The Sandman.
Follow Morpheus, the King of
Dreams, on his adventures
and explore his troubled rela-
tionship with humanity
SEE PAGE 11

RETAIL INFLATION EASES TO 5-MONTH LOW IN JULY | PAGE 18

CITIES
OF THE
FUTURE
AS WE CELEBRATE 75 YEARS OF
INDEPENDENCE, LOUNGE IMAGINES
CITYSCAPES OF 2047 AND ASKS
WHETHER THEY WILL ALLOW
INDIVIDUALS THE FREEDOM TO
REALISE THEIR FULLEST POTENTIAL TASTE
Bangkok’s Sühring brothers
and their New German cuisine
ZOOM
Objects of Indian
memories
FOCUS
Could Auroville resolve the
urbanism-ecology debate?
CULTURE
Beyoncé returns
to the dance floor
02 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi FIRST

WEEKEND
A NOTE FROM
THE EDITOR
NEW ON SCREENS Two big Hindi releases, a breezy music business
TO-DOs
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN
drama, and a modern Korean romance

The future of LAAL SINGH

CHADDHA

our freedom has

dream of re
fin all y co
m
m
ak
e
in
to
g
fru
gestating
Aamir Khan’s long- est Gump
Fo rr
ition. Directed
n, Laal Singh Chad
-
A LItERARy ISLAND

by Advait Chanda

I
s or igi na l, ha sa n 2006, the literary journal
Ha nk
dha, like the Tom Almost Island began holding
eeds via key events
COURTESY THE ARTIST

storyline that proc story, seen intimate gatherings with writ-

in this country’s hi ers from all over the world.The
e ey es of on e man. Khan
through th reena idea was to have them talk at
plays Chaddh a, Ka
-st ar s. (In length about their craft and cul-
Kapo or Kh an co
s) tural contexts. This year’s edi-
thea tre
tion, to be held in Delhi, will
have Cuban poet Reina María
Rodríguez, Malayalam poet
Anitha Thampi and publisher S.
Anand of Navayana reading the
work of Marathi poet and Dalit
activist Namdeo Dhasal, Chilean
poet Raúl Zurita, Mumbai-based
writer Sharmistha Mohanty,
Mexican poet Balam Rodrigo
and writer Aishwarya Iyer. All
work will be read in the original
RAKSHA BANDHAN language by the authors and in
‘Face To Face’, Gigi Scaria, inkjet print on archival paper. Akshay Kumar will be hoping his third English by translators. Almost
release of the year fares better than the Island Dialogues, India Interna-
previous two. He plays a chaat shop tional Centre Annexe, Lecture
owner who has vowed to marry his Room II, 19-21 August
Imagining the future is always fun. As we mark 75 years of India’s love (Bhumi Pednekar) only after he
independence and look towards the big milestone of 100, it’s gets his four sisters married. Aanand
hard not to wonder what the world will look like in 2047. The L. Rai directs this film written by
generation that came of age soon after independence in 1947 put Himanshu Sharma and Kanika Dhil-
the country first, yet could not have imagined the changes it has lon. (In theatres)
undergone, as we learn in one of the articles in Lounge this week.
We are taking the leap, though, and believe that 25 years from
now, the city is still likely to be central to our lives. There is no
reversing urbanisation, no matter what idealised notions one
may have of the bucolic life.
In the cover story, as we explore the future of Indian cities, we
look at the possibilities ahead of us and the challenges inherent
in change. How we choose to plan and build these urban spaces
will be a reflection of how we choose to live—with heterogeneity,
inclusivity, vibrancy and multifunctionality. Architects will have UPENDING HIERARCHIES
to reimagine the cityscape, not just in terms of technology and

J
futuristic design, but also to accommodate the social, political THE HIGH NOTE oydeb Roaja, an artist from
and ecological concerns of the day. Artists, architects and design- Maggie (Dakota Johnson) is assistant to the 11-time Grammy winner Grace the Tripura community
ers tell Lounge what they think the cities of the future will look (Tracee Ellis Ross), who is stuck in her career. Maggie, who wants to be a music spread across the Chittagong
like and the issues that will shape their spread. It does seem a bit producer, thinks Grace should produce new material, while her manager Jack Hill Tracts in south-eastern
utopian to imagine cities of the future bringing together the built (Ice Cube) wants the singer to take up residency in Las Vegas. He ticks off Mag- Bangladesh, urges viewers to
and natural environment and helping all human beings reach gie, telling her to find her own clients if she wants to be a producer. Find one reimagine power structures. His
their fullest potential, but that, essentially, would spell freedom. she does: David (Kelvin Harrison Jr), also the love interest. It’s a pleasant, work, mostly ink on paper,
It is the weekend before Independence Day, so naturally that is breezy watch with a serving of melodrama. (Netflix) reflects on the possibility of dis-
the theme running through most of the articles in this issue. An rupting hierarchies and makes
essay from Auroville explores the urbanism and ecology debate, space for the Adivasis of his
asking whether the small community could have used its time to NOTHING SERIOUS homeland. One of the series,
build the ideal city. In another piece, we explore memories of the Woori (Son Sukku) is asked by his boss to take over titled Generation Wish Yielding
past 75 years through objects—from the everyday steel Godrej the sex column of the magazine. “But I write on cul- Trees And Atomic Tree, explores
almirah to the passports issued by a newly independent India to ture,” he says. “Isn’t culture sex?” she asks. To get a the subject of militarisation in
the early designs for spacecraft. A number of private museums hang of his new project, he joins a dating app, the conflict-ridden Chittagong
and archives have started paying attention to these daily objects where he matches with Ham Ja-young (Jeon Jong- Hill Tracts. He depicts Adivasis,
and we pick such ordinary things that mark moments in contem- seo), who has a disastrous dating history; she’s only some wearing battle tanks as
porary history. As simple as they may seem, these objects con- looking for sex. The two meet up, and, predictably, headgear, as larger than military
nect us to our past, creating a sense of community and shared his- hit it off. Unlike the mushy, almost convent-school men. Another series, Right To
tory, all of which we need as we go forward into the next 25 years. approach to dating/love in most K-dramas and Relief, shows Adivasis providing
films, Nothing Serious is modern in its outlook and food to men in suits. Jhaveri
Write to the Lounge editor shalini.umachandran@htlive.com the dialogue bold and fun with two talented actors. Contemporary Art Gallery, Mum-
@shalinimb (Amazon Prime) bai, till 20 August
—Compiled by Vangmayi Par-
Compiled by Nipa Charagi and Uday Bhatia. akala and Jahnabee Borah

LOUNGE MOVE LIVE SHOP DINE

ONLINE
How to lift weights Should you let your Smart backpacks: to Easy recipes with
YOUR the right way pet share your bed? buy or not to buy? ‘chhole’ and ‘paneer’
FAVOURITE
WEEKEND READ
W I W N
eightlifting is back in the lime- f you are not a pet owner, you may be e all travel with them—and the utritious and delicious recipes
light in India. Indian athletes, astounded by friends who are unfazed good old backpack can now that also hold out the promise of
NOW THROUGH led by Mirabai Chanu, Jeremy by their pet jumping into bed with also be a smart one. Shopping being easy to cook are always a
Lalrinnunga and Achinta Sheuli, bagged them. A lot of us are still averse to having sites will try to sell you a backpack with draw. That’s the premise of YouTuber
THE WEEK gold medals as India reeled in a total of 10 animals in the house, let alone sharing an anti-theft zipper or a USB cable as a and entrepreneur Archana Doshi’s book,
medals in weightlifting at the Common- our bed with them. An article in the June “smart” one. Sahil Bhalla explains what 30 Meal Plans From Archana’s Kitchen:
wealth Games 2022 in Birmingham, UK. 2021 edition of the Sleep Health Journal a true smart backpack comes loaded Easy Vegetarian Indian Recipes For Good
The best of Mintlounge.in from After such a showing, of the National Sleep with, and whether it is Health. Doshi has been
there are always plenty of Foundation says that shar- worth investing in one. collecting recipes and cre-
the week gone by and what to questions about the sport, ing a bed with pets is simi- From backpacks that help ating videos since 2007.
look forward to in the one ahead including how someone lar to sharing a bed with a you charge all your gear The book has recipes and
can lift more than double partner or child.There are wirelessly to ones with eclectic pairings from
their bodyweight. The psychological benefits to built-in massagers, there across India. Try Karnata-
thing is, you could add weightlifting to having your pet curl up with you; it is also is a lot a backpack can do these days. You ka-style Huli Soppu Saaru (tangy curry
your workout routine too—it’s easier hard to push away a pet that’s curled up will get stopped at security checkpoints with fresh greens) served with fenugreek
than you think, and Shrenik Avlani tells on your feet. It can be very comforting to more often than not but these do bag you carrot thepla, or Gujarati valor muthia nu
you how. It’s a challenging workout that share your bed with pets but is it safe? bragging rights. Apparently, there are shaak (broad beans eggplant stir-fry with
needs flexibility, mobility, technique Angela Mathew finds out whether you backpacks with solar panels too, though fenugreek-leaf dumplings) accompa-
and balance. should let sleeping pets lie. they are not available in India yet. nied by Bengali cholar dal.

lounge@livemint.com In Health >> Fitness In Relationships >> Pets In Smart Living >> Innovation In Food >> Cook
@mint_lounge
@livemintlounge

ON THE COVER: ‘UNTITLED’ BY GIGI SCARIA; COURTESY THE ARTIST/CHEMOULD PRESCOTT ROAD

When the country came first
Those who were
children in 1947 put
nation and
community first,
themselves second—
a forgotten ideal
Veena Venugopal
T
here’s a story I used to tell
at parties. Remember
when Article 370 was abro-
gated, I begin. For days this
was all that seemed to mat-
ter. Newspapers were full of reports on
what it meant, who it affected. Talking
heads screamed on television. Flame wars
broke out on Twitter. It was a historical
moment by all accounts. Five days later, I
was in the elevator of the building I lived
in, in the gleaming end of Gurugram. A
fellow resident got into the lift. She looked
up from her phone and asked me in a tone
of mild exasperation, “Something is hap-
pening in Kashmir or what?”
The reactions vary depending on whom
I tell this story to. My journalist friends
usually burst out laughing and then pause
to absorb what it says about their profes-
sion. My non-journalist friends are not
sure what the joke is. When I took a break
from journalism myself, though, I too
began to find this story less comical. There
is a lot that goes on in the country, and it is
impossible to keep up with it. Every day, it
seems, is a new outrage.
In the shiny corridors of corporate India
which I now haunt, the non-work discus-
sions are usually about holiday destina-
tions and real estate portfolios. This is a
generation of people who listened to their
parents and unwaveringly chased down
the ambition of getting into an IIT or IIM.
For upper-middle-class Indians born
post-Emergency who came of age post-
liberalisation, shutting out the distraction
of the country has always been lauded as
a virtue. We began to believe it was not
just for our own good, but even the coun-
try’s, that we focused on being quiet, pro-
ductive citizens and followed the educa-
tion-marriage-children-house-vaca-
Medium Talk
Pets and screen time
WIZARD OF PAWS
Moderate screen time
as it cannot be a
substitute for the real
experience of spending
time together
Nameeta Nadkarni
R
ecently, a worried cat owner asked
me how much screen time was
appropriate for her cat. Her cat was
watching videos for a few hours daily on
the iPad. It got me thinking about what
screen time may mean for our pets.
We know that excessive screen time
can affect our productivity and lead to
developmental issues among children.
Now our changing lifestyle practices
appear to be slowly making their way into
the lives of our pets too.
What do pets see when they watch TV
or any smaller device? More than the
image, what grabs their attention is the
activity, colour and movement, though
not all animals will enjoy watching a
screen. Images must be displayed at a
frame rate of roughly 15-20 frames per
second (fps) for humans to perceive fluid
motion. For dogs, it is around 70 fps; for
a cat, 100 fps. If not, it just looks like a
strobe light to them. For birds, it must be
greater than 100 fps. So your pet bird
may not be interested in a screen.
While both dogs and cats lack our
vibrant colour vision, a cat’s colour vision
is greater than a dog’s, which may explain
why they tend to become more
engrossed in the screen. In addition,
modern TVs and iPads provide pets with
a more delightful experience than earlier
screens. So your dog or cat may not be
able to distinguish between what is real
and what isn’t.
The internet has many games for cats
and dogs. These games and films repli-
cate what our pets used to do, which was
to sit on trees and chase insects and other
small mammals and birds. With the help
of the app Pocket Pond, your cat can
chase Koi fish on the screen. Videos
tions abroad blueprint. Now, affluence in
India means building a life that has as little
to do with the reality of India as is possible.
This distancing of the educated class
from the fortunes of the country is a rela-
tively new phenomenon. A year ago, I
started work on my book, Independence
Day: A People’s History. The idea was to
understand ordinary people’s recollec-
tions of the lead up to, and celebration of,
the first Independence Day. My subjects
are mostly over 80 now, men and women,
upper and lower castes, Hindus and Mus-
lims. They all had varied experience. Yet
I noticed one underlying thread: They
were all raised in a culture where the
country came first. The freedom move-
ment was a singular goal that united the
country, and no sacrifice was too small.
In many families, political-minded
young adults gave up their education to
The internet has many games for cats and dogs.
made to entertain cats appear to receive
more views, with as many as 55 million
views in a year as opposed to six million
for dog-based videos. Videos with chirp-
ing birds, scurrying mice, or other
objects they can chase off the screen are
more appealing.
I attempted to get Catbury, my cat, to
watch a film that featured moving
insects. Fascinated, she swiped at the
screen for about 20 minutes, until I
pulled it away from her. It proves that
cats like interacting with objects that
trigger their innate desire to hunt. Cats
with a greater instinct to hunt will be
more likely to spend time on such games
and videos.
According to research, cats kept
indoors may benefit from this type of
amusement, which satiates their need for
mental stimulation. Since it is a super-
vised exercise, and much safer, it may
also assist senior cats, cats with disabili-
ties and those recovering from an illness.
When you aren’t home, you can use
screen time to keep your cat or dog occu-
pied and ease their separation anxiety.
There is currently no evidence that
watching television or using a tablet will
harm your pet’s vision. They need to be
closer to a screen to perceive movement
because they can’t see as well as humans
can. Keep brightness levels lower to pre-
vent retinal injury. Always check equip-
ment security. Remember, screen time in
FIRST
devote all their time to the freedom move-
ment. They were concerned about their
future, of course, but for them that future
could only unfold in a free country.
In Bengal, Tarun Kumar Roy, a young
teenager, proudly marched past his home,
where his mother and sisters were watch-
ing, and past the local court where his
father was employed. The district magis-
trate walked up to the group and asked
them to go home. Instead, they shouted
slogans with renewed vigour. His father
could have lost his job and that would have
sunk the family into penury. But Roy was
thinking of the country.
In Mumbai, four-year-old Ganpat Aiyar
watched his father take his beloved dou-
ble-breasted pinstriped suits and Tootal
ties to Gowalia Tank near Tardeo and
throw them into the large bonfire. The
year was 1942 and Mahatma Gandhi had
ISTOCKPHOTO
pets can involve a lot of swiping at the
device; ensure both your pet and device
stay safe.
But screen games only permit a visual
experience, not a tactile one. The hunt’s
scent, sensation and excitement are dif-
ferent, and failing to successfully catch a
real target could be frustrating. Give your
cat a break if you notice that it is becom-
ing agitated. Additionally, watching too
much television might result in a lack of
activity and lead to obesity.
So while screen time in itself is not det-
rimental, it could lead to other issues if it
develops into a habit. There is no substi-
tute for real physical activity and interac-
tive playtime.
Your relationship with your pets may
also suffer if you spend too much time in
front of the screen yourself. According to
a UK study, pets whose owners spend a
lot of time staring at their devices are
more likely to experience depression.
Additionally, they are more prone to mis-
behaving to attract your attention.
So limit screen time—for your animals
and yourself. It can be a great tool for
enjoyment when used moderately but it
will never be able to match the authentic
experience of spending time with a pet
engaged in proper physical activity.
Nameeta Nadkarni is a practising vet-
erinary soft tissue surgeon and pet blogger
from Mumbai.
The first Independence Day
celebration in Mumbai, on 15
August 1947. GETTY IMAGES
For many upper-middle-class
Indians born post-Emergency,
who came of age post-
liberalisation, shutting out the
distraction of the country has
been lauded as a virtue
@BROWNPAPERBAGCOMICS ON INSTAGRAM BY ARTIST SAILESH GOPALAN
A comic panel by Brown Paperbag Comics; and Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God Of Small Things’.
Gen Z and Arundhati Roy
The creative satire of
‘God Of Small Things’
shares the engaging
quality of Gen Z’s
political memes
Angela Mathew
T
o me, a Malayali who grew up in
Mumbai, Kerala is a jumble of
memories from summer holidays
over the years, memories of feeling
tongue-tied when relatives spoke to me
in Malayalam. But The God Of Small
Things, which came out in 1997, four
years before I was born, takes me back to
my father’s ancestral house in a small
town in Kottayam district, similar to the
one in the novel.
Right from encountering “insects
appearing like ideas in the night” to driv-
ing down a “bumpy red road through the
rubber trees” and the feeling of sitting in
mass, women on one side, men on the
other, where the “church swelled like a
throat with voices”, the book’s creative
metaphors evoke vivid memories.
It isn’t just nostalgia about my cultural
identity that makes me feel attached to
The God Of Small Things, though. I first
heard about Arundhati Roy when I was
16. I would listen to my mother and older
SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
launched the Quit India movement. Indi-
ans everywhere joined in the protest and
burnt their non-swadeshi possessions. “It
was a bonfire of my father’s vanities,”
Aiyar said, “quite literally.”
The leaders’ calls were heard even in
remote parts. Sahib Singh Virdi grew up in
Goralla Lallian, in Gurdaspur district in
present-day Pakistan. The village only had
dirt tracks. The local school did not go
beyond class IV. The newspapers arrived
a week late. Yet Virdi and his family kept
abreast of all the developments in the free-
dom movement. “We were very aware of
what was going on in the rest of the coun-
try.... We loved our leaders, we respected
them. We used to stand for hours to catch
a glimpse of them. Nationalistic fervour
was a potent potion. We all wanted to be
Bhagat Singh,” he told me.
Even after they grew up and the free-
More than small talk
sister as they chatted about the rhyming
verses of Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate,
convoluted tangents in Salman Rush-
die’s Midnight’s Children, and rich
descriptions in Roy’s Booker Prize win-
ning novel. I was determined to be
included in these conversations—and
with this disingenuous goal, seeing that
we had The God Of Small Things at home,
I picked it up.
I began reading, expecting the novel to
be full of pretentious and dense prose.
But though I didn’t fully grasp the nuan-
ces of the tragic story of a family ripped
apart by a little girl’s death, I was taken
aback by Roy’s whimsical use of lan-
guage. Her sarcasm is irreverent and
impactful. Take the way she mocks the
“Big Things”, like a casteist policeman
saying, “…He had a Touchable wife, two
Touchable daughters—whole Touchable
generations waiting in their Touchable
wombs.”
To me, the novel’s humour seems
strangely similar to the way Generation
Z expresses dissent. My generation came
of age with the internet and sarcasm,
immortalised as memes online, and this
is the language we speak. Even when it
comes to news, we gravitate towards
satirical content, like Hasan Minhaj’s
Patriot Act (2018-20) and stand-up by
comedy collectives like Aisi Taisi
Democracy. The God Of Small Things
seems almost like the intellectual prede-
cessor of this culture.
New Delhi 03
dom struggle became a story of their past,
the idea that the comforts of the individual
were secondary to the needs of the nation
endured. The engineers in the group all
said they had chosen the discipline
because by the time they finished school,
Jawaharlal Nehru had embarked on the
second Five Year Plan and infrastructure
building was the focus. Some of my sub-
jects went abroad, training as managers,
economists, academicians, but all
returned to India because they felt the
country needed them.
Yet, in 75 years we seem to have gone
from this nation-first, self-second philos-
ophy to a state of indifference to the
goings-on. Maybe it is the fact that we do
not have a common vision for India any
more. Polarisation has ensured people
cannot unite against a single issue. Every
point has a thousand counter arguments:
People will always fight each other, we
tell ourselves, what can we do, why
bother; we pay our taxes even though we
barely get anything in return. These are
comforting arguments—but are they
ethical ones?
What gives us the freedom to discon-
nect is class difference. As India’s elite,
we are in a position where we can simply
buy our way out of India’s inconvenien-
ces. It is true that it requires some wilful
blindness to live here and remain sane.
The road to ruin lies in allowing our
hearts to bleed for every poor child who
knocks on the car window. But in shoring
up our ability to not see the worst, we
have managed to evolve into beings who
can turn away from all suffering. This
privilege of being able to look away has
not been in our blood for hundreds of
years. It only took a couple of genera-
tions. It was our grandparents who toiled
at nation-building.
As the original Independence Day gen-
eration has shown us, real Indianness is
rooted in the spirit of the nation and the
community. Seventy-five years on, maybe
it’s time to pause and think about that for
a moment before hitting the forward but-
ton on the Happy Independence Day mes-
sage we get on the phone.
Veena Venugopal is a Gurugram-based
writer. Her book Independence Day: A
People’s History will be launched by Jug-
gernaut on 15 August.
When Sophie, a child in the novel,
notices an elephant electrocuted by the
roadside, her father stops to ask onlook-
ers if it is Kochu Thamban, the elephant
that used to visit the temple in their town.
When they discover it isn’t, Roy writes:
“Relieved that it was a stranger, and not
an elephant they knew, they drove on.”
To me, humorously pointing out how the
characters are missing the larger point
that an elephant dying is bad either way,
felt similar to the way people use memes
to highlight blind spots about social
issues.
The novel’s side characters feel like
they could be the subject of quippy
tweets, satirical panels by the likes of
Rohan Chakravarty’s Green Humour
comics, Sailesh Gopalan’s Brown
Paperbag webtoons, or skits on Insta-
gram Reels. Baby Kochamma, who keeps
her cream buns and insulin side by side in
her refrigerator, is akin to the classic hyp-
ocritical aunty, obsessed with upholding
outdated social norms.
Whenever I re-read The God Of Small
Things, its fluent irony and inventive
metaphors feel timeless. Roy’s artful sat-
ire, while far more subtle than the
humorous political culture of the inter-
net, has a similar quality of drawing you
in and making you think about why you
are chuckling in the first place.
Angela Mathew is a journalism student
on an internship with Mint.
04 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi
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Things to watch, read, hear, do—and other curated experiences from the team
CAUSE SHE SINGS
D F
uring the anti-government
demonstrations in 2019, Chil-
ean singer-songwriter Mon
Laferte bared her chest at the Latin
Grammys to reveal the message: “In
Chile they torture, rape and kill.” Her
social awareness is also reflected in
her music, and that’s what makes her
exciting. She recently released a video,
Aunque Te
Mueras Por Vol-
ver (Even if you
are dying to come
back), a ballad
about a stormy
past. The song is
from her 2021
album Seis,
which got her a
Grammy nomi-
nation for Best
Regional Mexi-
can Music
Album. It melds
traditional Mexican music—she lives
in Mexico—with personal experiences
and was inspired by the life of legend-
ary rancheras singer Chavela Vargas.
The new video, dramatic and intense,
shows her in a maze, trying to break
through. Her passionate singing reels
you in even if you don’t understand
the lyrics or the context. Mon Laferte
once told The New York Times that she
wants people to get goosebumps
when they hear her songs.
—Nipa Charagi
RACE TIME
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much as a racing chronograph. Especially one as
gorgeous as this solar chrono, with 100m of water
resistance. Available on Seikowatches.co.in; ₹58,000
Curated by Bibek Bhattacharya.
LOUNGE LOVES
A MONSOON BEAUTY
I I
or someone who hates walking in
the rain (made worse by the fear
of falling into an open sewer
hidden by water), I love umbrellas. I
buy far too many because I find their
construction beautiful, though I only
get the inexpensive ones wet since I
leave them behind generously in cabs
and restaurants. I love the care with
which the Japanese have created
gizmos to make
it easier to carry
umbrellas —
from brolly
lockers,
complete with
combination
locks, to
wrapping
machines to
encase your wet
umbrella in
plastic so it
doesn’t drip
rudely all over the floor. My latest love
is Nicobar’s Periyar Umbrella, with its
beautiful charcoal canopy covered
with trees, tigers and elephants, and
tiny dragonflies picked out in gold.
The ferrule and crook handle are dark
wood with stars carved into them; the
canopy is wide and light, and slides
shut with a smooth, satisfying click.
Will I unfurl it on the streets? I will
have to check the state of the
manholes and water levels first.
—Shalini Umachandran
HOW TO LOUNGE
GO GREEN
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THE LUXURY OF DRY CLOTHES
f you live in Bengaluru, you know
the feeling of despair that creeps up
this time of the year: The sun
doesn’t come out for weeks,
everything feels damp and musty, and
clothes never seem to dry properly, no
matter how diligently you put them
under a ceiling fan overnight. After
enduring years of still-damp clothes, I
clamped down on that environment
guilt and bought
a clothes dryer—
the IFB
TurboDry 550,
to be specific. It
has been life-
changing; I
almost wept on
seeing clothes
come out not just
dry but warm to
the touch. The
front-load dryer
takes around
75% of a full load from a 6.5kg washing
machine and a 60-minute cycle is
enough to get most everyday clothes
ready for the cupboard, while jeans,
bedsheets and duvets take longer. The
dryer can be wall-mounted, so you can
utilise the space over your washing
machine if it’s a front-loading one,
creating a neat washer-dryer unit. At
₹20,990, it has been worth every
penny, though I am not looking
forward to next month’s electricity bill.
—Shrabonti Bagchi
FUN AT WORK
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DIARY OF A SINGLE WOMAN
nstagram has long known that I
enjoy content related to fashion.
Now, it has somehow also figured
out that I am single, with a Kondo-
esque personality. These days, my
feed is inundated with How Asian
Woman (sic) Enjoy Their Happy Single
Life videos, showing women returning
home from work. Once they are home,
they spray sanitiser on their shoes,
which are
then neatly
put in a shoe
rack that
promises to
kill viruses. In
the kitchen,
there’s a
touch-sensor
hand-towel
roll to use
while they are
employing an
automatic
cutter for potato chips. You can enjoy
the snack while improving music
skills on a foldable piano. If you are
feeling bored sitting on the toilet, an
automatic tissue dispenser has paper
with a riddle printed on it. The videos,
all made for different home décor
brands, have text in Chinese. So, I
don’t understand anything. Will I ever
buy such products? Unlikely. I am just
happy seeing other people find bliss
in keeping their house spick and span.
—Pooja Singh
STREAM OF
STO R I E S
RAJA SEN
India at 75, the
Khans at 57
(from left) The three Khans, Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh.
S
eventy-five is a solid, statesman-like age, a been-there-done-that sort of
age, an age where you are supposed to know your place in the world and
not try to learn new tricks. Our grand nation, one must admit, doesn’t
quite seem to be acting as old as it is. As independent India turns 75 this week,
it feels like a good time to look at three specific Indians—all turning 57 in
2022—who have, over the years, become rather adept at not acting their age.
Perhaps there are lessons to learn.
Aamir Khan turned 57 in March, Shah Rukh Khan will in November and Sal-
man Khan in December. Fifty-seven, in movie-star years, is a rather significant
age. (For context: Amitabh Bachchan was 57 when he did Sooryavansham.)
They are, in many ways, the last of Hindi cinema’s Mohicans, the last to see
the mile-long queues for tickets, with films running for weeks and months—
even years—and not mere opening weekends. It is, however, a shaky time for
the trio. Hindi movies are routinely opening to empty theatres. Merely being
a star doesn’t seem to be enough any more—which may be a good thing when
it comes to audiences demanding more satisfying stories but it heralds an
alarming instability for these performers who have carved their own legacies
over more than three decades. Not only must they attempt to justify their
(unjustifiable) price tags, they now find themselves consistently targeted by
faceless trolls, irresponsibly lodged FIRs and selfie-loving officials.
The nephew of a producer, the son of a screenwriter, and the outsider who
made up his mind to conquer Hindi cinema. Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh
burst on to the scene with vitality and confidence, their appeal lying in their
nonchalance, in the way they didn’t resemble other heroes of the time. Their
heroism felt casual. In their breakout films—Aamir in Qayamat Se Qayamat
Tak (now on Zee5) and Dil (now on Netflix), Salman in Maine Pyar Kiya (now
on Amazon Prime) and Baaghi (now on Zee5), Shah Rukh in the television
shows Fauji (now on Amazon Prime) and Circus, before the films Deewana
and Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (both now on Amazon Prime)—the Khans are
goofy and delightful, revelling in their own youth, three boys who can’t
believe they are getting to monkey around in front of a camera.
Even from those early efforts, it is clear each of them unquestionably had
what is called “it”. They met the Hindi cinema brief: They could all hold emo-
tional moments, glare hard at villains, look pleasant in sweatshirts, and, when
taking hold of a girl’s wrist, make it look like the world is about to end. Yet
what hits me most about those raw efforts isn’t competence, or even charm,
but the sheer, maddeningly infectious joy of three young lads born to per-
form. Their energy is irrepressible.
They created their own trajectories. Salman, the pretty one, became simul-
taneously the most domesticated and the most brawny, the one with the most
illogical and impassioned fans; the nat-
urally gifted Aamir played up the
breeziness before switching to
intense performance-heavy
roles, branding himself as STREAMING TIP
the Actor; Shah Rukh OF THE WEEK
made his mark as an It is always worth revisiting Shah
antihero before making Rukh Khan’s offbeat attempts, and I
the women swoon, all would recommend Ketan Mehta’s
while keeping one foot uneven but ambitious 1995 satire, Oh
in parallel cinema,
alternating mega-com-
mercial films with
Darling Yeh Hai India! (Apple TV/Google
Play), where characters speak in rhyme,
everyone is corrupt, and the country
incredibly arthouse is being auctioned off to the
ones. They competed
hard, casually borrowed
highest bidder. The film would
be boycotted today.
from each other’s play-
books—Shah Rukh got his
trademark arms-wide-open pose
from Aamir in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, for
instance, just like Salman decided to remake south Indian films after the suc-
cess of Aamir’s Ghajini—and continue to keep each other on their toes.
Their rise coming at a time when the word “secular” had not yet been
labelled a pejorative, their Khan-ness was entirely incidental. Movies had
always been their own religion. In the sparkling world of the silver screen,
Yusuf Khan became Dilip Kumar and Dileep Kumar became A.R. Rahman—
and both, incidentally, married women called Saira Banu. Religion never got
in the way of fandom. Neither, to be fair, did nationality. In cricket, we grew
up loving Imran Khan as much as we loved Kapil Dev.
This 75-year-old India, on the other hand, is significantly more insecure.
Films are regularly boycotted for increasingly arbitrary reasons—like having
a Hindu character as a villain—and this makes it easier to see just what a spe-
cial time we have spent with these three Khans, with Raj and Prem and Raghu
Jaitley, icons who tied instead of actors who divide.
Now, as the very idea of India is under threat, these three Indians must
struggle to reposition themselves. They will make it, of course. They have
come up the hard way, taken many a knock on the jaw, and if they could sur-
vive the insanely high-waisted trousers of the 1990s and still emerge as
heroes, they will certainly be able to make it through this mucky time in our
history. (I am less sure about India itself.)
Over my years as a film critic, I have frequently been derided by fans—fans of
each individual Khan—for lambasting their films, and while we should not at
all let up and allow mediocrity in the name of support, we must also, in a way,
root for these three icons who have, against all odds, become underdogs again.
Aamir, Shah Rukh and Salman have never done a film together. Yet this
unlikely, inspiring, often bizarre narrative of their lives, taken together, reads
like a script. These were Hindi cinema’s heroes during the liberalisation of the
1990s, and together they embody the idea of a younger, more optimistic
India, an India open to new possibilities. Together they stand like characters
in a Manmohan Desai film. With arms wide open.
Raja Sen is a film and TV critic, screenwriter and the author of The Best
Baker In The World (2017), a children’s adaptation of The Godfather.
@rajasen

History doesn’t just happen, it is shaped by us
CULT
FRICTION
SANDIP
ROY
M
y late grandfather’s account of
15th August is rather funny. A
bunch of village kids with no
money or resources stole ‘gamchas’ (tra-
ditional cotton towels) and hoisted
them on a bunch of sticks and ran
through the rice fields overjoyed about
a free India.”
“My grandmother’s father was in the
police but he still took part in the swa-
deshi movement. On 15th August peo-
ple went around their neighbourhood
announcing that the country had
become independent.”
“In 1947 my granddad was born. My
grandfather’s father used to work for
the British people. He used to design
rifles for the police. During that time he
worked hard.”
“We were never a rich family. But my
grandpa bought a transistor with his sal-
ary which was too costly for him to
afford. I remember him telling me with
a lot of pride that in the same year he
and my grandma did not buy any new
clothes. But they wanted to hear the joy
and declaration of independence.”
The handwritten little yellow post-
cards strewn on a table at the Indian
Museum in Kolkata, the oldest in the
country, made me wistful. I grew up
with my grandparents, even my great-
grandmother, but never thought to ask
them what they had done on 15 August
1947. There was family lore about the
great-aunt who had tasted the police-
man’s baton. My mother would tell sto-
ries of families drawing the curtains and
huddling around the radio to hear Sub-
has Bose announce “Aami Subhas
The craftsperson-designer is here
The world of textile
design is moving
slowly from revival to
creating new forms
in a contemporary
context
Avantika Bhuyan
Avantika.bhuyan@htlive.com
S
ince independence, the dis-
course on textiles has been
focused on revival, with an
effort to document and pre-
serve forms and techniques.
Over the past decade, however, there has
been a shift—while textiles such as chintz
have been reimagined in a contemporary
context by artists such as Renuka Reddy,
designers like Amit Aggarwal have taken
traditional textile elements and juxta-
posed them with radical silhouettes. The
conversation seems to be moving from
conservation to innovation.
In an interview with Lounge, textile
designer and curator Mayank Mansingh
Kaul talks about the shifts, the new trend
of master craftspersons envisioning small
museums around their best pieces, and
the continuing relevance of private collec-
tions like Lekha Poddar’s. Edited excerpts:
What is missing from the ongoing
conversation around textiles?
A major aspect of conversations on
Indian textiles and handlooms has been
around revival. But it is important to clar-
ify that this is from the perspective of
state-led initiatives, not-for-profits and
those working with communities at the
grassroots. The innovation, which took
place in the private sector 1960s onwards,
has not been acknowledged. There were
huge incentives for exports in the 1970s-
80s, which led to the first generation of
export houses. Those paved the way for
the current scenario where large Indian
companies cater to the world. There have
been a lot of new developments in design,
materials and technologies here that we
either haven’t documented or paid
enough attention to. Further, there is no
comprehensive archive of work by any of
the major Indian fashion and textile
designers which is being shown publicly.
Anywhere else in the world, an influential
and successful company with a prove-
nance of over 50-60 years would have had
a museum by now. In fact, the entire pri-
vate sector has not put out its archives,
even if they do exist. While this may be a
The ‘March To Freedom’ exhibit at Kolkata’s Indian Museum provokes curiosity and
tries to tell a story through objects from the vast collection of DAG
bolchhi (This is Subhas speaking).”
But for me, the story of Indian inde-
pendence largely existed in a parade of
dates and events—Simon Commissions,
Wavell Plans and Mahatma Gandhi sat-
yagrahas. I had no place in that story.
The exhibit March To Freedom at the
Indian Museum feels different. It actu-
ally encourages visitors to take part in
the march to freedom, writing their (or
their grandparents’) memories on yel-
low postcards. Another table has a list of
pivotal events—Indigo Revolt, Santhal
Rebellion, Quit India Movement and so
on. Visitors are asked to classify them as
they see fit—war/revolt/riot/move-
ment. “I am having to unlearn a lot of
things,” says anthropology student (and
Saadat Hasan Manto fan) Disha Subra-
maniam. “I thought the story was about
Indians vs Britishers. But it’s more com-
plicated. There’s the French, the Portu-
guese, the Dutch. There were events
like the Santhal Rebellion which I never
read about in school.”
We are used to thinking of museums
as providing answers, with the certainty
of facts—seventh century sandstone,
11th century bronze, silver gelatin print
on paper, 1940. “I do acknowledge that
we go to museums for answers but
museums are not just a storehouse of
information,” exhibition curator Mrin-
alini Venkateswaran tells me. “They are
also about provoking wonder and curi-
osity. If you actually think about the
Hindi/Urdu word for museum, it is
ajaaeb ghar, a wonder house. A museum
ought to be a place that provokes curi-
osity and wonder.”
But very little in my upbringing
encouraged curiosity. You were told to
stick to the syllabus, follow the rules and
not ask too many questions. Curiosity,
we were warned, had killed the cat. And
the museum was the place which dis-
played its stuffed body, complete with
its Latin name, year of demise and taxi-
dermist’s information. You absorbed
the information laid out, admired the
COLLECTION AND IMAGE COURTESY DEVI ART FOUNDATION, DELHI
reflection of a systemic problem—a lot of
export houses produce for companies
abroad, so they can’t show their work in
India—this is indeed a glaring gap.
It is also concerning that today, revival
has become a fashionable word, with so
many designers claiming to be ‘sustaina-
ble’, ‘doing good’ for the crafts sector and
so on, without the necessary means to
qualify such claims. There is a lot of pos-
turing which needs to be questioned.
Figures like Pupul Jayakar and Mar-
tand Singh were pivotal in the conser-
vation effort. Who, in your opinion,
are the newer names who will be
THINK
The handwritten postcards record moments from ordinary lives. SANDIP ROY
taxidermy, but did not wonder about ner, while bullocks pull the silver can-
the kind of cat it might have been. Or non of Baroda. But the show asks the
why it merited a place in the museum. viewer: “Is this one reason why foreign-
March To Freedom tries to tell a story ers still think of India as the land of
through objects from the vast collection maharajas and elephants, as though
of DAG, one of India’s leading inde- nothing has changed since the British
pendent galleries. But it is also curious Raj?… Who do you think buys such fig-
about the past, sometimes questioning ures? Would you?”
the very objects being displayed. The section on the figures who
There’s a marvellous set of enamelled shaped the freedom movement has, as
metal collectible figures from the Delhi Venkateswaran puts it, “the usual sus-
Durbar of 1903, made by William Brit- pects”—Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal
ain, a clockmaker who went into the toy Nehru, Netaji—but there is also a large
soldier business in London. Lord and portrait of B.R. Ambedkar and an 1805
Lady Curzon ride on gorgeous capari- engraving of Tipu Sultan, a far more
soned elephants, followed by the nizam contested nationalist figure these days.
of Hyderabad and the maharaja of Bika- There’s a whole wall of brightly col-
COLLECTION AND IMAGE COURTESY DEVI ART FOUNDATION, DELHI
(above) ‘Flying Rug’, Chandrashekhar
Bheda with Mahender Singh, tapestry-
woven cotton dhurrie; (right) ‘Chintz 8’,
Renuka Reddy, hand-painted mordant
and resist-dyed cotton; and ‘Yatra
Kalamkari’ Berenice Ellena and Sri
Niranjan mordant-painted and dyed
cotton (‘kalamkari’).
remembered for their contribution
when India turns 100? The most important
We must bear in mind that work by
these iconic personalities received very development is that a lot of
long periods of public patronage. They artisans and craftspersons
achieved what they could with huge gov- from family lineages have
ernment support. We haven’t seen that
level of governmental involvement in a
become very successful
while . However, today, there are many entrepreneurs.
people who are doing very involved work,
and its impact will be felt in time to come. MAYANK MANSINGH KAUL
For instance, Juhi Pandey, who was earlier TEXTILE DESIGNER AND CURATOR
director of an organisation called Khamir
in Kutch, Gujarat, has now moved on to
Shillong, where she is heading a new
SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
oured serigraphs of Gandhi with inspi-
rational quotes. But on the opposite wall
the cartoons of Chittaprosad (whose
works were burnt by the British colonial
government) ask mocking pointed
questions of Gandhi and Nehru. “I
wasn’t explicitly thinking of those two
groups (of pictures) in conversation
with each other,” says Venkateswaran.
“But that’s what’s nice about exhibi-
tions. We can create connections in our
own heads when we visit them.”
Most provocatively, the exhibition
asks the visitor who they think might be
missing. It wonders about the artwork
that represented the Santhal revolt, the
role of Dalits and women. In an essay in
the catalogue, Maroona Murmu, profes-
sor of history at Jadavpur University in
Kolkata, writes that in Dalit nationalist
consciousness the 1857 war of inde-
pendence was triggered by the
“untouchable ‘Bhangi Matadin Hela’
who, after being refused water by Man-
gal Pandey, retaliated by asking him
what happened to his Brahmanism and
Hinduism when he bit the cartridges of
the Enfield rifle” (greased with cow/pig
fat). Mangal Pandey himself shows up in
a small, brightly coloured 1910 offset
print with his rifle pointed at a cowering
company soldier. It’s not great art, and
it’s unclear who made these prints and
why, admits Venkateswaran, but she
says it’s one of the few examples of art-
work that offers an “Indian view of the
events of 1857”. In contrast, there’s a
huge engraving of The Relief Of Luc-
know & Triumphant Meeting of Have-
lock, Outram & Sir Colin Campbell,
November 1857, marking the moment
when the siege of the British Residency
of Lucknow was lifted. The white fig-
ures are at the centre, heroic on horse-
back. The Indians are crowded around
the edges, many in gestures of supplica-
tion, arms outstretched.
Venkateswaran says “there is a base-
line where most of us look at a photo-
graph or a picture and think okay, this is
COURTESY GALLERY ART.MOTIF
Khadi centre for excellence, set up by the
government. During the pandemic, she
came together with various other organi-
sations to form a network for supporting
craftspeople. I have observed her work
and feel that her contribution to commu-
nity building will be significantly felt in
the decades to come.
There is also the emergence of private
museums, which is noteworthy—The
Shrujan Museum in Kutch and The Jig-
mat Couture Museum in Leh being exam-
ples, aside from study centres like The
Registry of Sarees, and so on. I myself am
involved with a new initiative called
TVAM Foundation in Pune, started by
Rasika Wakalkar, which is dedicated to
research on textiles of the Deccan. I feel
that such private-led efforts will be ampli-
fied in the near future. Then you have ate-
liers like Vastrakala in Chennai and the
Chanakya School in Mumbai. Though a
lot of their work is geared towards the
international market, in 25 years we will
hopefully get a chance to see their work in
a public space.
In your extensive travels across the
country for research, what are the
major changes you notice at the
grassroots?
The most important development is
that a lot of artisans and craftspersons
from family lineages have become very
successful entrepreneurs. Their children
are going to design schools and will forge
a new master craftsperson-artisan-de-
signer profile. This is welcome. Also,
master weavers like Gajam Govardhan in
Telangana are deciding to reserve their
best pieces for their own unique private
museums.
There is a lot of work being done on
New Delhi 05
what it is, but I hope this encourages
one to question that. One begins to see
that art is not necessarily true.”
Or, as Disha Subramaniam put it, we
can “unlearn a lot of things”.
Our approach to the independence
story has been to basically flip the good
guys and the bad guys. The terrorists of
British times became freedom fighters
in our retelling but the story still
retained an Amar Chitra Katha linear
simplicity. An old poster of a Shaheed
Bhagat Singh biopic starring Shammi
Kapoor, which says “this is the story
which everyone knows, this is the char-
acter which everyone respects”, might
well have been describing the history-
book version of the independence
movement.
The march to freedom was not quite
so linear or clear-cut. A section on impe-
rial monuments reminds us that the
courts, jails and secretariats from which
India was administered were also the
places from where Indians challenged
the authorities. A series of brightly col-
oured railway posters of Shimla, Sar-
nath and Jodhpur show how the British
were trying to shape and sell an idea of
exotic and colourful India. But the post-
ers do not tell us that the railways were
not really constructed to make it easier
for Indians to visit the Mehrangarh fort
or go on pilgrimage to Sarnath. They
were built to make it convenient to ship
raw materials to factories in England.
It’s a reminder, Venkateswaran says,
“that history is not just a thing that hap-
pens. It’s a thing that we shape.” And the
way we shape it, and then reshape it,
reminds us, as the exhibition does, that
just as our past was not inevitable, nei-
ther is our future.
Cult Friction is a fortnightly column on
issues we keep rubbing up against. San-
dip Roy is a writer, journalist and radio
host.
@sandipr
chintz in India, to separate it from its
colonial origins. Are there textile
forms that are waiting to be explored?
Wherever you go in the country,
numerous small to big efforts are amplify-
ing local forms and techniques. I was in
Ladakh recently, and it was exciting to see
a number of young designers, who have
come back after studying elsewhere and
are working with pashmina and local tra-
ditions. In the next decade, we will see a
reimagination of traditions by them.
Chintz continues to be fascinating,for it
involves lengthy processes of cloth treat-
ment, resist painting and natural dyeing to
achieve the levels seen in historical mas-
terpieces. When artists like Renuka
Reddy are able to triumph them, then we
know that such difficult traditions also
stand a chance for a new lease of life.
Is there an archive/private collection
that will be extremely significant in
the years to come?
Yes, Lekha Poddar’s collection is signif-
icant, and largely unpublished. She and
her son, Anupam, set up the Devi Art
Foundation, which has primarily focused
on contemporary visual art from across
India and South Asia. With every big cura-
torial project of theirs, they have tried to
address different aspects of the contem-
porary ecosystem in India, whether video
art or the vernacular. I myself co-curated
an exhibition, titled Fracture—Indian
Textiles, New Conversations (2015, at the
Devi Art Foundation), to look at the con-
temporary in Indian textiles with them.
This kind of interest in the contemporary
through special commissions has not been
seen in any other Indian art collector.
Even though hers is a small collection, it is
at the same time representative of the
period from 15th century onwards, thus
becoming a great reference point for
researchers, who would like an overview
of Indian textiles, the continuities and
changes within a broad time frame.
Could you talk about the highlights of
the Lekha Poddar collection?
Lekha has, until recently, been one of
the main patrons of the ASHA workshop
run by the eminent textile scholar Rahul
Jain, reviving 17th-18th century period
Safavid and Mughal textiles. Last year, the
late textile expert Martand Singh’s collec-
tion of the Sarees of India, which were
acquired under his trust, Amr Vastra
Kosh, and which he worked on with Rta
Kapur Chishti, has merged with hers. It
comprises almost 1,500 saris, dhotis and
unstitched apparel. With her plans to
open this up for study we will have post-
independent India’s first collection, which
will represent the rural mainstream of
what the country was wearing in hand-
looms until the early 2000s.
06 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi TASTE

A GERMAN ADVENTURE
ISTOCKPHOTO

IN THE THAI CAPITAL

In Bengaluru for a pop-
up, chefs Thomas and
Mathias Sühring of the
eponymous Bangkok
restaurant talk about
food and memory TEA NANNY
Shrabonti Bagchi
Shrabonti.B@livemint.com On the tea trail
G in Munnar
rowing up in East Berlin before
the Berlin Wall came down—
they were around 12 when that
happened—one of the things
the brothers Thomas and
Mathias Sühring enjoyed most was walking to Aravinda Anantharaman
a local store and buying bars of Hanuta. Manu-

factured by Ferrero, Hanuta Haselnuss-
Schnitte, a packaged confectionery with
hazelnut and chocolate cream sandwiched
between crispy wheat wafers, was, and contin-
ues to be, a popular snack.
Laced with nostalgia and childhood memo-
ries, it has now been reimagined in their menu
at Sühring, their eponymous Bangkok restau-
rant serving modern German food, as the
Enleta. With duck liver pâté and hazelnut lay-
ered between two wafers, it’s packaged like a
snack and presented to diners to enjoy
between courses or as an appetiser.
This is the kind of playful reinterpretation of
old favourites that has made Sühring one of
Asia’s top restaurants and earned it two Miche-
lin stars—it is currently ranked as No.7 on
Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and first entered
the list in 2017, within a year of its opening. On
a visit to Bengaluru to host a two-day pop-up
(5-6 August), showcasing a selection from their
menu at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, the Sührings
spoke about how their childhood informs their
food, what they mean by “modern German”
cuisine, and the curious fact of starting a mod-
ern German restaurant in Bangkok.
“A large part of our childhood memories are
about visiting our grandma’s house and farm
just outside the city. We visited it every year
during summer breaks and it was a lot about
foraging, about preserving because it was a
short summer season, and to us, it’s more
about using these techniques than (replicating
actual) dishes,” says Thomas, the more
talkative of the identical twins.
“That’s what we try to do with
our restaurant—we like to
showcase ingredients and
techniques and the culi-
nary heritage of Ger-
many. In today’s world,
with all the globalisation,
where you get everything
from everywhere within
one or two hours, it is
important to hold on to your
grandparents’ recipes and
your heritage, to probably pass it
on to the next generation, and they
can pass it on to the next generation,” adds
Mathias.
On the menu for the two dinners hosted by
the twins—sold out at ₹12,000, plus taxes, a
pop—were dishes that are both classic, with
the Sühring touch, or innovative interpreta-
tions like the Enleta. Starting with Zwiebelku-
chen, a savoury onion cake, and Lauch Tör-
Mathias and Thomas Sühring; (right)
Enleta, a duck liver pâté and hazelnut
snack; and sturgeon and buttermilk.
tchen, a leek tart, the menu includes more
daring dishes like Aal Sülze, a dish in
which smoked eel is encased in aspic along
with pike roe; Rainbow Trout Smoked
with Applewood; and, of course, the
famous German egg noodles spätzle—
served in a new avatar with black winter
truffle.
In keeping with the modernist move-
ment in food, the brothers embrace local,
seasonal ingredients, plated with a mini-
malist aesthetic and infused with memory
and whimsy. Their food falls under the
“Neue Deutsche Küche”, or New German
Cuisine tradition, they say, a departure
from the meat-heavy, functional
dishes usually associated with
German food—think breaded
schnitzel and currywurst.
“We saw the ‘modern’
movement early on in
France, and then in Scan-
dinavia with modern
Nordic cuisine. And we
were thinking that it’s
time for Central European
countries like Germany
and Switzerland and Austria
to also, kind of, update their
cuisine,” says Mathias. “And it’s
not just about moving away from pork
knuckles and potatoes... I guess to us it also
means moving away from big, heavy portions
to lighter food and—I don’t want to say, pret-
tier?” he says, laughing.
“Actually, it’s more like going back to the
roots, but showcasing the dishes in a more
minimalistic way without changing the fla-
vour profile, and with a story behind it,”
chimes in Thomas.
“The question we ask ourselves all the time
is this: Sühring in Bangkok is accepted, and it’s
appreciated. But how would it be if we opened
a restaurant in Berlin? Would it be the same?
Or would it be different?” Mathias adds, a little
soberly.
The person who inspired and encouraged
them to explore this aspect of German cuisine
and mine their memories to present German
food in a contemporised way was Thailand-
based Indian-origin chef Gaggan Anand. The
brothers met Anand, then at the helm of his
multiple award-winning modern India restau-
rant Gaggan, during their stint as chefs de cui-
sine at Mezzaluna, a popular restaurant on the
65th floor of the Lebua Hotel in Bangkok. The
brothers had started their careers in Germany,
working their way up the restaurant ladder to
the Ritz-Carlton in Wolfsburg. Eventually,
Mathias ended up at De Librije in the Nether-
lands with chef Jonnie Boer, while Thomas
began working under Heinz Beck at La Per-
gola in Rome. In 2008, he travelled to Bang-
kok for a pop-up with Beck and was offered
a job at Mezzaluna. This time the brothers
insisted the hotel hire both of them—“they
tried to make us share one salary”—and
stayed on for almost seven years before ven-
turing out on their own with Sühring.
Bangkok is home to the brothers today,
and they find the city’s cosmopolitanism
and enthusiasm for food invigorating and
encouraging. Both have married Thai
women. “In Germany, the lives of the peo-
ple don’t revolve around food…but in Thai-
land food is very, very important. When
you meet someone, the first thing you ask
as a greeting is ‘kin khaw laew rue yang?’,
have you eaten?’. Whether you are old or
young, rich or not, people are into explor-
ing new things, trying out new restau-
rants,” says Thomas.
While Thai food in Bangkok was always at a
very high level, international cuisine was not
up to the standard of European restaurants
when they arrived in 2008, the brothers say.
But that has changed in the last 10 years. “It
happened after the arrival of the Michelin
Guide five years ago. Also, (events announc-
ing) World’s 50 Best, Asia’s 50 Best were held
a couple of times in Bangkok. But the big
change happened with top international chefs
opening restaurants there—you have Blue by
Alain Ducasse and Côte by Mauro Colagreco—
and today the food community is growing,
with so many Michelin-starred restaurants,”
says Mathias.
The chef’s menu at the event was titled Süh-
ring Erlebnis—essentially, “Suhring Adven-
ture”, as a quick Google translation tells me. It
feels like a ridiculously apt name for the food
the two brothers create—an adventure in
terms of geography, as well as a way to bridge
diverse culinary cultures.
T
here are three things about Munnar that I love. It’s
cleaner than any hill station I have been to, it’s greener,
and not just with tea—you can see the grasslands and the
beautiful sholas. And the people are polite, ever ready to help.
I took a short trip there last week. Munnar has breathtaking
views of hills of forests and grasslands and tea; one of the most
important forests here is within the Eravikulam National Park,
said to have the highest density of the Nilgiri tahr, an endan-
gered wild goat species. For tea buffs, it is, of course, a town
steeped in tea history, much of it still visible.
There are two tea museums, one the Tea Museum on Nulla-
tanni Road run by Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Co. Ltd
(KDHP) and the other, the Lockhart Tea Museum, run by Har-
risons Malayalam Ltd. They tell the journey of Munnar’s tea
through the machines used over the years and introduce visi-
tors to the process of tea-making.
History is everywhere. In town, you come across stores that
are over a hundred years old, signboards reminding you of an
old ropeway that was created to transport tea. The centre of
town hosts the KDHP office: Once a railway station, its ground
floor now houses the Chai Bazaar, where people can enjoy
piping hot cups of teas.
Less famous cousins of the Nilgiri teas, Munnar’s teas don’t
enjoy geographical indication tags in the way Darjeeling,
Assam or Nilgiri teas do. Munnar is part of Idukki district,
extending along the Western Ghats. Tea came to this area with
the British in the late 19th century, when John Daniel Munro
founded the North Travancore Land Planting and Agricul-
tural Society.
Another piece of trivia connects it to the Nilgiris, and the
larger Indian tea story: In 1877, Henry Turner and his half-
brother arrived there from the Nilgiris and began tea planting.
Turner asked John Ajoo, a Chinese tea maker who had arrived
in India with Robert Fortune, a Scottish botanist who brought
tea saplings from China and was living in the Nilgiris, to come
there. Ajoo eventually settled in Munnar, becoming a planter
himself—his field, known locally as Chinaman’s field, is near
the Talliar tea estate.
Today there are some 13,000 hectares under tea cultivation
in this area, according to Indiatea.org. The bulk of it is CTC
tea, with orthodox black tea, green tea, and even small vol-
umes of white tea.
TEA TAKES
Opt for a tea bungalow stay (Kdhptea.com/tea-bungalows,
Harrisonsheritage.com, Teabungalows.com), visit a tea
museum, watch tea-making at the Madupatty tea factory and
don’t forget to shop for tea—KDHP’s Ripple Tea is easily avail-
able at their various outlets; Harrisons is also available as a
retail brand.
Tea Nanny is a fortnightly series steeped in the world of tea.
Aravinda Anantharaman is a Bengaluru-based tea blogger and
writer who reports on the tea industry.
@AravindaAnanth1

The green, green sauce of home

less than you usually do because people such as the Parsis use in patra ni mach- MULTIPURPOSE CORIANDER
OUR around you—at least my family, friends chi. This was a perfect base for a sauce AND MINT SAUCE
D A I LY and neighbours—keep sending ship-
ments of food.
that could be used for vegetables and
meat.
Makes half a cup

BREAD The generous yoga teacher upstairs Inspiration is often a matter of things Ingredients
sent us, over the days, spiced, mashed clicking in your mind, and that’s what 2 cup fresh coriander
SAMAR potatoes in a toasted-bread sandwich happened with this sauce. I added in 1 cup fresh mint
HALARNKAR (to be had with Tabasco sauce), a khichdi lime juice, a green chilli, and, to provide 1 tsp cumin seeds
made with dahi (curd), fluffy dhoklas some contrast, cumin seeds, something 1-2 green chillies, deseeded (depending
(she’s Gujarati) and a salad. they tend to do, I remembered, in north on how spicy you want it)

L
ast time, dear reader, I made a val-
iant effort—again—to dispel the
notion that I do not cook vegetar-
ian food. I trust I was somewhat success-
ful. I have since been trying to find com-
mon techniques and ingredients that
can be used for both realities.
These attempts were made easier
recently because I was housebound,
again, courtesy the virus of our times. If
it appears I have been writing a lot about
food and illness lately, you are right. But
since there has been no let up, kindly
bear with me.
After an operation, after both I and
the wife were struck down by covid-19,
it was the turn of our 12-year-old. So,
there we were, looking worried, as her
temperature stopped just short of 105
degrees. The good thing was that she
was lucid and reasonably cheery
through it all—I am uncertain why and
how—so we hunkered down and got
through it.
Now, the thing about being house-
bound for so long is that you cook far
My cousin down the road has always
been a provider but she stepped it up
during the recent isolations. As I write
this, I have just finished an egg-white
omelette stuffed with one of her mutton
cutlets. There are various other gifts—
chicken canapés, cheese canapés, fenu-
greek-and-cumin bread—but let’s leave
those aside.
Let’s not forget my mother, also down
the road, who sent over fried kane, or
silver fish, along with her usual chicken
soup and the daughter’s comfort food,
masaru anna, or curd rice.
This bounty was well and good and
we could have gotten by without cook-
ing at all, but the kitchen has been a
hub of activity in these housebound
days. There are endless rounds of
washing up and cleaning at every meal.
There is no escaping this because we
are very much a three full meals a day
family—sometimes more. The sink is
always filling up and utensils are for-
ever being put away.
While we are grateful for all the gifted
Multipurpose sauce can serve as a marinade, a garnish, and a chutney.
food, there are always blanks to fill in,
and sometimes you want food just the
way you want it. In my case, food that is
low on oil, light and fresh, easy to make
and easily shareable.
At a time like this, when you don’t
want to overthink what you cook and
put too much thought into the ingredi-
ents you need, it’s best to take a long,
hard look around. There wasn’t much in
the fridge by way of fresh ingredients,
except some lush-looking coriander.
That was a good start.
ISTOCKPHOTO
Trailed by the cat—who likes to
munch on lemongrass leaves (and
promptly vomit it out)—I searched the
wife’s kitchen garden for ingredients.
She is wary of my forays because of
course you need decent quantities to
cook with, and she is stricken when she
sees her herbs stripped bare.
The mint appeared bountiful, so I
grabbed a handful, threw it in with the
coriander. It all looked nice and green. I
thought of green chicken—a cafreal
came to mind—or green fish masala,
African sauces.
The sauce was a hit. I used it as a mari-
nade for air-fried chicken, a garnish for
roasted potatoes and carrots, and the
wife used it as a chutney atop lemon rice
and dal.
When illness visits your home, you
tend to feel kindlier towards your fam-
ily. I am sure there was extra oxytocin
being churned out and I made good use
of the extra love I felt.
The sauce appeared to be just fine
after three days and a little went a long
way. With the green sauce at hand, I
found it very easy to do the minimum
possible with vegetarian or non-vege-
tarian and yet make lunch appear rea-
sonably well thought out.
No-fuss cooking during an illness is
important but it should not come at the
cost of satisfaction. There is little need
to eat conventional sick-people’s food
when you are ill. A little thought can go
a long way in making you feel better and
getting you back on your feet.
And don’t forget that dash of love.
Juice of 1 large lime
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt to taste
Method
Grind all the ingredients together until
reduced to the consistency of a sauce.
Keep in the fridge for up to three days.
Use with roasted vegetables, steamed
fish or roasted chicken or meat. If you
are making roasted vegetables or meats,
my advice is to roast first with salt and
pepper, then toss in green sauce. If
steaming fish, apply liberally on fish
before steaming. You can also use the
sauce as a garnish, mixing it into rice
and dal, or rice and fish and chicken
curry.
Our Daily Bread is a column on easy,
inventive cooking. Samar Halarnkar is
the author of The Married Man’s Guide
To Creative Cooking—And Other Dubi-
ous Adventures.
@samar11

MAINTAINING MATERIAL
MEMORY The idea of preserving everyday objects as repositories of history isn’t
new. But storifying them to understand how the journeys of individuals
and companies are tied to that of the country, is quite different
Vangmayi Parakala
vangmayi.parakala@htlive.com
O
ne homesick night
in a Delhi Univer-
sity hostel, I stum-
bled upon a blog
post about memo-
ries of growing up in south India. I
bristled at the idea of clubbing the
lived experiences of four different
states (now five) into one but des-
perate for something that seemed
like home, I clicked on it anyway.
In addition to a smattering of
intangible memories—distinctive
calls from the hawkers we would
hear every day, the tight braids and
red ribbon bows that were manda-
tory in school—what really stood
out in that rather poetic account
was the common objects around us.
One standout example was the
almost ubiquitous olive green, or
brown, steel almirah.
While there may have been varia-
tions of these, it was popularly
known as the Godrej “bero”, or
bureau. Such objects, when seen
through the lens of personal histo-
ries, become a rich repository of public
memory, of how the people of an area,
even a country, lived. In retrospect, these
seemingly everyday objects, some even
dismissed as commercial products, can
speak of generations of family history if
accounts of their use, for example, are
detailed. They become, as they did for me,
triggers for memories and stories that at
once ground you, not just in nostalgia but
as reminders of so much more.
“The need to preserve is uniquely
human and we do it to maintain a sense of
belonging, a sense of self or community
worth and to create a shared history,” says
Deepthi Sasidharan, art historian, curator
and founder-director of Eka Archiving
Services. “With this perspective, anything
can become a trigger of storytelling and
history—it’s why we collect seemingly
nondescript things.”
While preserving objects to tell the story
of a certain time and place is, in essence,
the idea behind most museums, the insti-
tution has, in popular imagination, come
to be associated with a distant and hoary
past. There is an in-between, however,
with relatively newer private and corpo-
rate efforts to preserve and contextualise
objects which speak to a more immediate
present that may take on a new collective
meaning as times and technology change.
Godrej’s is an example of such an
archive, given that the company’s long
history—it was founded in 1897—and
reach across sectors, from consumer
goods to space, is tied not just to the his-
tory of India but the histories of her citi-
zens. For instance, the light, airy, springy
Ó In a recording that is part of Godrej Archives’ Oral History
Collection, G.K. Datar, former head of Godrej Process Equipment,
recalls developing the push-type hydraulic expander of 800T
capacity for Indian space agency Isro at less than ₹50-60 lakh, when
it would have cost around ₹4 crore if bought from a company in the
US. Above, a page from ‘Induspace’, a special publication from Isro,
published in April 1992, speaks of this effort.
and sturdy CH4 chair, with its strong asso-
ciation with dreary government offices,
tells the story of the people who used
these in the decades post independence.
The Tata Central Archives, the first cor-
porate archive in India, launched in 1991,
preserves the history of the group,
founded in 1868. India’s pharmaceutical
sector too—notably Cipla, set up in 1935,
and Dr Reddy’s, founded in 1984—has
been archiving and contextualising its
developments, part of an attempt to posi-
tion itself in tandem with the policies and
progress of a nation and its people.
“Archives are custodians of a company’s
history and journey. They are a reminder
of the interplay between our history and
that of post-independent India,” says Sat-
ish Reddy, chairman of Dr Reddy’s Labo-
ratories. “As we build our future, we must
remember what got us to where we are
today—the vision, priorities, successes,
challenges, key architects over the years.
Ó Seemingly inspired by the work of
Archives build pride and act as a binding
factor internally. They also reinforce
brand equity externally. For all these rea-
sons, archives are more than the sum of
the various collections,” he adds.
This is in line with what Sasidharan says
when she notes that “private and corpo-
rate players need to be aware that they are
part of a larger narrative, a part of the com-
munity and national narrative. This
awareness helps decisions that are fuelled
by a larger good”.
Private players too have begun looking
into peoples’ histories; working through
either PPP (public-private partnership)
models and/or crowdsourcing initiatives,
GODREJ ARCHIVES
ZOOM
Bauhaus designer Marcel Breuer,
the CH4 chairs, with woven backs
and seats, were a common sight in
offices, reception areas and
meeting halls. The weaving process
engaged the women in Godrej
residential colonies.
GODREJ ARCHIVES
SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 07
This joint Indo-Pakistan
passport, valid for one year,
was issued to Hanwant Singh
Hora, son of Prem Singh Hora,
on 13 August 1955 in Lucknow,
so he could be allowed to
retrieve valuables that the
family had buried in Pakistan
during Partition. Hanwant
Singh was issued a single-visit
visa for Lahore and Peshawar
district, with a validity of six
months from the date of issue
and a duration of stay not
exceeding three months. He
left Attari on 20 October 1955
and returned to India via
Wagah on 27 October 1955.
PARTITION MUSEUM ARCHIVES
they have begun archiving both tangible
and intangible memories. The art gallery
Chemould Prescott Road, established in
Mumbai in 1963, the 167-year-old Bhau
Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, and the Par-
tition Museum in Amritsar, Punjab (and
soon in Delhi), are heavily informed and
populated by objects that speak of peo-
ples’ histories and memories—be it of a
family, a city, or an event.
The Partition Museum is a particularly
notable example. It displays everyday
objects, like a planter’s chair, a ration card
or a passport, the stories and memories
Ó In 1955, Godrej’s first all-
Indian typewriter, Model
that they hold, and which acquired new M9, launched, the first such
significance after Partition. in Asia. When an iteration
Given the fast-changing nature of our was first shown to Pirojsha
world, such efforts at documenting the Godrej in 1954, he asked the
personal, which become an important engineers: “Is it as good as
part of collective memory, are crucial, says Remington?” Initially
Kishwar Desai, chairperson of the Parti- imported but later
tion Museum. “It may be an ordinary piece
of glass or clothing but (with its story,
manufactured in Calcutta,
and so popular there was a
often a personal story) you understand it six-month waiting period,
is vested with a moment we no longer Remington’s typewriters
have in real time,” she adds, stressing how were stiff competition. For
important it is to tell people’s histories Godrej, which mainly
through everyday objects of present manufactured products
(in)significance. involving fabrication, an
Sasidharan adds that “whether it is a let- intricate machine like a
ter, a chair, a costume, or any object really, typewriter, with hundreds of
the ability to communicate why it repre- parts and complex functions,
sents a moment in history makes it impor- was a challenge. A year later,
tant in telling the story of a people or, the engineers finally pulled it
indeed, a nation”. off. Their typewriter found
Here are six objects that mark some wide acceptance in India. Seen
moments in contemporary history and in the news clipping here is then prime minister Jawaharlal
acquire relevance for people born in a Nehru, trying it out in January 1955. GODREJ ARCHIVES
post-liberalisation India.
Ñ
The Partition Council set up in 1947
determined that museums should be
divided on the basis of territories,
except in the divided provinces, where
the collections would be shared. An
effort to partition culture had tragic
consequences. In an absurdly matter-
of-fact effort at equity, necklaces
belonging to Mohenjo-daro were
broken and an equal number of beads
were given to India and Pakistan. Even
giving either country one extra bead
had to be discussed formally on file.
COURTESY PARTITION MUSEUM ARCHIVES; IMAGES:
INDIAN HALF OF NECKLACE FROM THE NATIONAL
MUSEUM, INDIA, & PAKISTANI HALF OF NECKLACE
FROM J.M. KENOYER/HARAPPA.COM
Ó Korshed Gandhy, co-founder of Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai, often wrote
to dignitaries about things that weighed on her mind. She once wrote a letter to
Nehru—hand-delivering it to him as he boarded a plane—on negativity towards
Pakistan. “I feel compelled to share (his) response to my mother,” says Shireen
Gandhy, current director of the gallery. “To me this letter holds particular
poignancy in this moment of India’s independence.” CHEMOULD ARCHIVES
08 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi COVER

Cities of the
FUTURE As we celebrate 75 years of India’s independence, Lounge examines whether
the cityscapes of 2047 will allow individuals the freedom to live life to their
fullest potential—and what we would need to do to achieve that

Avantika Bhuyan
Avantika.bhuyan@htlive.com

hat will the world look like in 2047, 25 years from

W now, a year when India will be marking 100 years of

Kishore Shinde’s
compositions create
illusions, of high-rises
under construction and
bridges dissolving in air.
From the ‘Inner Life Of
Things Around Anatomies
And Armatures’, at the
Kiran Nadar Museum of
Art in Noida, Uttar
Pradesh. COURTESY KNMA
independence? Will it be straight out of a dystopian
science fiction movie, with floating cities, AI-pow-
ered pods and flying cars? Going by the news reports
of our times, some of the landmarks of the future
might be located not on Earth but on celestial bodies
far, far away. Architects around the world are already
working on extra-terrestrial architecture. The
US-based multiplanetary design agency AI Space-
Factory, for instance, has envisioned its space habi-
tat design, MARSHA, for Mars, 54.6 million kilome-
tres away, using materials available on that planet.
Not everyone, though, will be able to get on to
SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s spaceship, points out
Madhav Raman, co-founder of the Delhi-based firm
Anagram Architects. So what happens if you stay
back on Earth? Will the issues of the day—climate
change, overpopulation, to name two grave ones—
completely overwhelm society by then?
Certainly, it is becoming clear that architects will
have to reimagine the cityscape, assuming they have
the liberty to. Some have already begun doing this in
small ways, showcasing a return to traditional local
materials and designs melded with modern pro-
cesses and planning. For most of them, the future
lies in flexibility, “unbuilding”, harnessing resources
wisely— and greenery.
“The next generation will encounter unprece-
dented social, political and ecological challenges
and we should be prepared to deliver holistic solu-
tions for retrofitting and designing new buildings
that actively mitigate the risks and amplify positive
change,” notes It’s Alive: A Vision For Tall Buildings
In 2050, a report by ARUP, an architecture firm with
offices in over 30 countries, including India.
Indeed, architecture is not just about tangible
structures; it’s reflective of a way of life, a sociopoliti-
cal ideology, a marker of identity. In India, for
instance, the Hall of Nations at Delhi’s Pragati Mai-
‘Fly Over’ by Gigi Scaria, digital print on archival paper.
dan complex, designed by Raj Rewal, engineered by
Mahendra Raj and inaugurated in 1972, was
emblematic of a young, optimistic nation eyeing
economic and industrial growth; it has since been
demolished. As we celebrate 75 years of freedom,
one wonders what the landmarks of the future will
be, what built spaces will look like when India turns
100. Will we be looking at larger-than-life monu-
mental structures or will we seek greatness in mini-
malism? Will cityscapes be restrictive or allow indi-
viduals the freedom to live life to its fullest potential?
Two architectural scenarios are emerging—one
that looks at a business-as-usual scenario and the
other, at a more ideal situation. Noted architect
Gautam Bhatia reflects on the likely scary outcome
of the first scenario, if we continue to crowd cities
COURTESY THE ARTIST
with private housing and smart buildings, stretching
already overstretched towns into the countryside
and on to farms, extending highways till everything
is a dense mass of concrete. “Not-for-profits and
world leaders will still be trying to piece together a
treaty for climate change everyone can agree upon.
People will live in small barricaded houses or cheer-
less blocks, working on their own, stealing vegeta-
bles and livestock, fighting over water and electric-
ity,” he etches a dystopian picture.
It doesn’t end there. Bhatia imagines a world with
dried-up rivers and trees in a “plant zoo” that people
will visit from time to time to remind themselves of
a life that once was. “The surviving symbol of India’s
architectural heritage, the Taj Mahal, will still be vis-
ible but could be occupied by squatters as low-cost
housing,” he goes on.
There’s more. Delhi-based artist Gigi Scaria, underground farms are the source of all agriculture, Le Corbusier’s
whose practice revolves around imagined city- slow transport appears.” Capitol Complex
scapes, feels the landmarks of the future will be intel- He imagines cityscapes without cars or planes, in Chandigarh.
ligent, high-tech malls, with private enterprises rac- movement that is local and terrestrial, communities COURTESY ABHA NARAIN
ing to make the tallest one. “All public spaces will that are small but connected and permanent. “The LAMBAH
continue to be occupied by corporations and big saving grace of architecture for India at 100 will be
malls. A lot of investment is being pumped into spe- if it ceases to exist as a practising profession and sub-
cific parts of the city. If that collapses, then in 25 mits to a new order, both natural and technological.
years the city could be dotted by skeletons of failed Only the Taj Mahal remains (as a landmark), a monu-
malls,” he notes. ment to a forgotten time,” he adds.
The future need not be so dismal—if we course- While Bhatia is all for “unbuilding” and the revival
correct, and quickly. Bhatia, for one, is counting on of nature, Scaria hopes for sustainable and inclusive
serious introspection over the next couple of years landmarks. He imagines a non-assertive structure,
that could be followed by a massive shift—with the something on the lines of Sabarmati Ashram. “If the
old ideals of large houses, glass malls and private Hall of Nations was the landmark of a new India,
ownership of lands making way for new. He muses then a new model of Sabarmati Ashram could be
on the future: “People live either below the earth or symbolic of India at 100. Today, we look at people
raised high above. Urban populations are accommo- through the lens of religion and community. Even
dated in buildings that do not occupy much land; if those social hierarchies are taken away, money
STORY
acts as a gatekeeper to social spaces,” he says. Scaria
looks forward to a fluid architectural space, where
people can easily flow from one part to another with-
out any hesitation or restrictions.
The move towards unobtrusive structures that are
sustainable and responsible has already begun, in
fact. If you were to visit Nila House, a centre of craft
excellence and innovation in Jaipur, it could seem
like just another rambling house on leafy Prithviraj
Road from the outside. Within, though, you realise
how architect Bijoy Jain and his team at Studio
Mumbai have refurbished this haveli from the 1930s
using indigenous materials—and yet created a look
of minimal modernism. One can see stairs with a
grainy Tancha texture, typical of Rajasthan forts,
windows that let in natural light, a central courtyard
paved with sandstone. “Jute has been used on walls;
the mortar is a mix of jaggery, fenugreek and guggal
gondh (a type of gum) to increase the molecular
strength of the walls. Natural materials such as lime
plaster and local marble have been used in restora-
tion, with a small amount of indigo added as a natu-
ral repellent against termites and mosquitoes,”
reports a 2019 article in Lounge.
In other places, efforts are on to create climate-re-
sponsive architecture. The CEPT University Library
in Ahmedabad, designed by architect Rahul Mehro-
tra and his team at RMA Architects, is one such
example. The materials respect the existing ones on
campus. “…its modulated, louvred façades can be
manually adjusted to admit less light or more venti-
lation. First-floor reading rooms overlook the cam-
pus. Below-ground book stacks, carrels and study
spaces benefit from plentiful natural lighting via the
louvred façade and subterranean courtyard, as well
as the natural cooling effect of the surrounding
earth,” states a note on the Aga Khan Trust for Cul-
ture website, after the project was shortlisted for its
architecture award, along with 19 others, for 2022.
Mehrotra has worked on yet another project,
Hathigaon, a housing project for mahouts and their
elephants, at the foothills of the Amber Palace in Jai-
pur. According to the project brief on the RMA web-
site, the design first involved structuring the land-
scape, used as a sand quarry, to create a series of
water bodies to harvest rain runoff, the most crucial
resource in the desert climate. “With the water
resources in place, an extensive tree plantation pro-
gram was carried out together with seeding the site
to propagate local species,” it states.
Projects by Mumbai-based Architecture Brio,
helmed by Shefali Balwani and Robert Verrijt, are
based on future-proof structures. In a 2021 article,
Architectural Digest notes that The Other Side Stu-
dio in Alibag, Maharashtra, is built to be dismantled
and moved if sea levels submerge the land around it.
BACK TO THE EARTH
For both Raman and Samira Rathod of Samira
Rathod Design Atelier, water availability and climate
change are the two critical issues architecture in
India should start addressing. “In 2047, we will have
among the highest population numbers. We are
Gigi Scaria’s ‘Equator’, digital
print on archival paper; and
(below) Gautam Bhatia’s ‘Hotel In
A Suitcase’—a satirical take on
the future of architecture.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS
expected to be mostly urban by then. Meanwhile,
climate change would have progressed to the
extent that our water needs would not be met by
our perennial rivers as they are now,” explains
Raman. Like many, he believes the wars of the
future will be fought over water. “Water justice is
going to be the most significant aspect of our life.
So, will we need a Supreme Court of Water Justice?
I think we will, and that is likely to be a key land-
mark in the future.”
With India urbanising rapidly, Raman says
structures centred around water will become even
more significant 25 years hence. “If there is a shift
in the monsoons, you will find rivers change or dis-
appear from their course. Buildings that engage
with the fluidity of this cycle will become important
culturally and socially,” he believes.
Rural and indigenous water retention centres
such as baolis (stepwells) and community reservoirs
will become important as social spaces, albeit in a
new form. “Instead of ghats or spaces around flow-
ing water, it is collected water spaces that will
become significant,” he adds. In such a scenario,
building material will also have to adapt, with archi-
tects falling back on the oldest one available to
humanity—rammed earth. While space-age materi-
als such as carbon-fibre might seem attractive now,
25 years later the bulk of resources needed to pro-
duce those might not be available. “On the other
hand, glacial melt would be well on its way. One can
expect a lot of erosion along the rivers—this means
a significant amount of silt, sand, clay and ceramics,
which will be used instead of concrete,” says Raman.
Samira too believes local and sustainable materi-
als will be the order of the day. For her, the most
important aspect of architecture is the very antithe-
sis of a building. She hopes we would have created
more gardens in 25 years. If built public structures
are needed, she would go for schools. “That is the
most important landmark for any city. We need
schools for adults, about good toilet habits, about
parenting—basically a school of life. You don’t even
need a structure if a family decides to dedicate time
to teaching people around them,” she says.
Samira and her team have worked on two schools
and are working on a third project. At one of them,
located in a fruit orchard in Bhadran, Gujarat, chil-
dren spend their formative years prancing around
trees. “There are a plethora of small spaces to hide,
climb, roll, run in to and out of, to satiate the curiosi-
ties of a forming mind,” notes an article on Arch-
Daily. The form of the building, based on a study of
a child’s scribble patterns, features asymmetric
arches, lopsided vaults and irregular jack arches
spanning skewed beams. “It defies the conventional
form of architecture and nudges a child to question.
The structure is also sustainable, with water col-
lected on the roof, which comes down to recharging
wells. We need more such innovative spaces,” says
Samira.
FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE
ARUP creates quite an image of the building of the
future in It’s Alive report: complete with water
basins, an underground transport interchange, a
dashboard that tells us about building resource lev-
els—say, 26,000 hours off-grid, or two million litres
of water stored. The complex would contain schools,
daycare centres, vegetable patches, linear parks,
hydroponic-powered farms on the higher levels, and
robots as staff to repair and maintain the space.
“It is imagined as fulfilling multiple roles in
response to the changing needs of our society and
planet. As digital solutions (internet of things, or IoT,
Artificial Intelligence, 3D printing, Big Data)
become a pervasive part of the built environment,
there remains a need and desire for analogue, intui-
tive and resilient design solutions. Collectively these
enable a more human-centred, open and adaptive
building, ready to empower communities,” states
the report. The tall structure is designed as a mallea-
ble one, which can modify and morph as the situa-
tion demands. For example, unused office space
could double as a homeless shelter, made possible by
flexible and adaptable design solutions.
Such innovation may seem futuristic in a country
where basic infrastructure is a challenge. But archi-
tecture in India has always reflected the spirit of the
times, whether pre- or post-independence. Senti-
ment, politics and economics have stamped their
influence but going forward it will have to be about
people and environmental concerns. “Architecture
has the power to transform,” says Samira. “Look at
Japan, which is full of secret gardens. Look at small,
simple and accessible designs. There is greatness in
smallness.”
Looking to the past
for the future
Who are the architects who will shape the cities of the future? Conservation
architect Abha Narain Lambah feels it’s the smaller projects, currently working on
a local, sustainable vocabulary, that will be relevant
Ambedkar Memorial Park, formally known as Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Prateek Sthal, was constructed by the former chief minister
of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, in Lucknow. Made of sandstone brought from Rajasthan, it opened in 2008.
Avantika Bhuyan
Avantika.bhuyan@htlive.com
S
ustainability has been at the heart of every project handled by con-
servation architect Abha Narain Lambah: be it the restoration of
heritage sites like the Ajanta Caves, Golconda Fort, Crawford Mar-
ket, or the Lalbagh Palace in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. In an interview
with Lounge, she looks back at key moments and people that have shaped
India’s architectural heritage over 75 years and the transition from the
ideology-driven practices of the 1960s-70s to the aspiration-driven ones
of the 2000s. Will this shift to a climate-responsive, sustainability-for-
ward approach 25 years from now? Lambah hopes so. Edited excerpts:
You have often said architecture is a political statement. Why?
It is reflective of the politics and vision of a leader or regime. In India,
in the early phases of colonisation, we saw the emergence of neoclassical
architecture as a tool, for the British colonists were trying to impress
upon the natives the glory of European civilisation. Thus even though
the Parthenon was not an English building, its Greek classicism inspired
copies among early colonial structures such as the Asiatic
Library. Things changed after the 1857 mutiny and the
transfer of power to the British crown; the Indo-Sara-
cenic style was adopted for public buildings. Borrow-
ing elements of Sultanate and Mughal architecture,
this style was used by the colonisers to give the sub-
liminal message that the British crown was the
new power centre and the successor to the
Mughal empire as the rulers of India.
What about the post-independence period?
It is not a coincidence that in newly independ-
ent India, the choice of architect for Chandigarh
was a French and not a British architect—Le Corbus-
ier. By adopting modernism as the style for the capital
of Punjab, a state that was divided in Partition, Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of a modern India could be show-
cased. This was a conscious vision of a nation making a new begin-
ning, breaking away from the shackles of a colonial past. That heralded
the era of modernism, signifying the optimism of a newly forged nation.
It also reflected the coming of age of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as a leader,
creating a confident, economic and scientifically advanced nation.
If we were to view architectural history from the vantage point of India
at 100, the other major iconic buildings would be those created by
(Bahujan Samaj Party leader) Mayawati to represent an unsung commu-
nity. Even the present reconfiguration of the Central Vista, and the
urban interventions around the Kashi Vishwanath and ghats of Benaras
(Varanasi) bear a significant political message. One is related to the fabric
of Delhi, once a Mughal capital and then a British one that is now being
reconfigured by a new government and ideology, thus staking claim to
the Capital. The same goes for Kashi Vishwanath, which is like the sanc-
COURTESY TWITTER/@AISPACEFACTORY
SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 09
COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Abha Narain Lambah; (above) Balkrishna Doshi
and Le Corbusier at Shodhan House,
Ahmedabad; and (below) MARSHA by AI
SpaceFactory
tum sanctorum of Hinduism, a clear case of architec-
ture as a political strategy.
Could you talk about some of the most iconic archi-
tects India has seen in the last 75 years?
The influence of Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh had an impact on
an entire generation of iconic Indian architects like Kuldeep Singh, who
designed the NDMC building, and Shiv Nath Prasad—an almost brutalist
modern—who designed some of the most iconic post-independence
structures in the Capital, such as the Shri Ram Centre and Tibet House.
Then there was Joseph Allen Stein, a Jewish-American, who first came
to teach in West Bengal. His architecture is truly contextual and is
grounded in the textures and materials of India. His design of the India
International Centre and the Ford Foundation, set in the location of his-
toric Lodhi tombs, was very modern but also very respectful of the col-
ours, textures and scale of the monuments. This was in the 1960s-70s.
He set up a practice called Stein Doshi Bhalla—it featured B.V. Doshi,
who had worked with Corbusier earlier. Also, Achyut Kanvinde and Raj
Rewal, who created new iconic buildings, are among a list of eminent
masters that emerged in the architectural landscape of Delhi of the
1970s-80s . Charles Correa gave a new direction to Indian architecture.
He began to interpret ancient Indian concepts such as the Vastu Purusha
Mandala and the navagrahas in a very contemporary context.
What changed from the 1990s?
These larger-than-life architects gave way to more anonymous teams
of architects in larger practices. Collaborative models as well as corpo-
rate ones, with 300-400 architects, were also seen. These were not the
Howard Roark-rebel kind of characters that you almost see in Correa.
In the 2000s, there was an economic resurgence, corporate funding,
and the coming of private banks. Architecture began to be led by multi-
nationals. This was also an architecture of aspiration. Hafeez Contractor
started building houses for the upper-middle class in Powai which had
lobbies like five-star hotels. From being fuelled by ideology, architec-
ture began to be powered by aspiration. Unfortunately, this led to cook-
ie-cutter style architecture in tier 2 and 3 cities with pastiche facades,
glass facades and aluminium cladding. Today buildings in Lucknow look
the same as in Hyderabad or Dubai.
What kind of projects can fuel a change in the future?
There are certain projects that are emerging on the sidelines, which
are driven by ideology. Take, for instance, Abhikram, started by Parul
Zaveri and Nimish Patel; then there is the practice of conservation archi-
tects Kulbhushan and Minkashi Jain, who focus on craft. Several prac-
tices in Auroville and Bengaluru spotlight sustainability and some archi-
tects from Kerala have experimented with local material. In the last 10
years, such practices have emerged, which are not large or mainstream,
but smaller. They are driven by certain concerns and responsibility.
Especially interesting is Rahul Mehrotra’s work on the CEPT University
Library in Ahmedabad. It is not the mammoth trees but the smaller
grasses that are growing on the side that are meaningful. Given time,
they will forge a more local, responsible and sustainable vocabulary.
10 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi
The uncertain legacy of
Auroville, the city of dreams
Auroville’s struggles
over ecology and
governance point to
deep discord over
the future of
urbanism
Deepa S. Reddy
T
he year is 1999 in the fic-
tional landscape of Ernest
Callenbach’s self-pub-
lished 1975 novel, Ecotopia.
A new nation carved out of
the Pacific Northwest US by a green “sur-
vivalist” party is two decades old. A jour-
nalist visits and produces an account that
becomes this novel about a “stable-state”
economy built around ecological protec-
tions. Conservation laws are strict, biode-
gradable materials have replaced the non-
compostable, food-producing farms have
taken the place of urban sprawl. “(W)e dis-
agree on what is to be done, we only agree
on the root essentials,” explains a resident.
“I’ve noticed that—you’re a quarrel-
some lot!” quips the journalist.
“We can afford to be,” is the response,
“because of that root agreement. Besides,
that’s half the fun... trying to work through
different perspectives.”
Speed ahead to the present and it is
tempting to identify the consonances
between Callenbach’s imaginary Ecotopia
and a very real present-day Auroville.
Here, too, is a community apparently uni-
fied by ecological sensibilities—and
though it has had 50-plus real-world years
to Ecotopia’s fictional 20, it is striving in
many similar ways: to tackle waste, to
develop renewable energy sources, to
reintroduce native species and fulfil Auro-
ville’s food requirements via regenerative
approaches, and to balance all this with
the need for roads and other necessities of
urban development. As a result, descrip-
tions of Auroville as a “bioregion” or an
“ecovillage” with exemplary greenwork
practices abound. So obviously trans-
formative has Auroville’s ecological work
been, it could easily be taken as the com-
munity’s ecotopian coming of age.
Except that by itself, it’s not. Auroville
was never intended to be an ecotopia,
much less a utopia. The path to realising
Auroville’s “root essentials” has been
thorny from the start, the role of ecology
as unifying as divisive.
The recent flashpoint was the directive
by the Auroville Town Development
Council in December 2021 to commence
clearance work for the laying of high-ten-
sion cables on a strip of the proposed
“Crown corridor” which roughly circles
the central areas of Auroville—part of the
Master Plan approved by the Mother, on
whose vision the township was founded.
The strip had been blocked by temporary
and/or unsanctioned structures and forest
growth in three areas, Centre Field, Dark-
ali and Bliss/Youth Center, but it was the
last two that would prove the most con-
tentious: the Youth Center because the
arrival of JCBs for demolition set the stage
for a polarising stand-off between resi-
dents, and Darkali as the site of trees and
water catchment areas that would be dis-
turbed by the Crown passage.
In the abundance of reportage follow-
ing these events, the impression most pro-
jected was of a familiar confrontation. On
the one side were the heavy bulldozing
instruments of development and the
heavy-handed methods of industry and
government; on the other were people,
residents, children, participatory process,
transparency and collaboration all clus-
tered, Chipko-style, around the fragile
trunks of precious trees.
What was the Crown project trying to
achieve? Is Auroville an ecological project
or an urban development? Who makes
decisions about work towards the Master
Plan, who governs Auroville—and how?
These fraught questions are at the heart of
Auroville’s present crisis.
THE BEGINNINGS
Auroville was envisioned by a French-
woman born Mirra Alfassa but known as
the Mother: She was the spiritual collabo-
rator of the revolutionary freedom fighter
and yogi Sri Aurobindo, whose 150th birth
anniversary coincides with India’s inde-
pendence this 15 August. Hers was a
“dream” of a city transcending difference,
FOCUS
belonging to all
humankind, in which
each individual would
be a “willing servitor of
the Divine Conscious-
ness”. It was to be an
ideal city which strove
for what Sri Aurobindo
called “the perfect har-
mony of a collective
being”.
Her 1965 hand sketch
of Auroville demarcated
cultural, industrial, resi-
dential and international
zones: a conception with
no precedent in town
planning at the time. The
iterated version she
approved was French
architect Roger Anger’s
dynamic spiralling model: Auroville’s
iconic “Galaxy plan”. In this, the “Crown”
was the arterial passage interlinking all
four zones of the original city conception.
Mechanisms to provide for basic indi-
vidual needs were established; large agri-
cultural lands in the surrounding “green
belt” were to supply food. Aurovillians
were meant to lead simple lives aspiring
for beauty and perfection, without money,
private property or hired help. The city
was established in 1968 with a call to “all
men of goodwill” and pledges of support
from governments around the world.
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AUROVILLE.ORG
People near the gardens of
Matrimandir; the Galaxy
concept of Auroville city; and
Mirra Alfassa’s 1965 hand-
drawn sketch of Auroville.
ISTOCKPHOTO
ACCIDENTAL ECOLOGISTS
Ecological concerns drove much of Auro-
ville’s emergence from those early days.
Early photographs of the Auroville pla-
teau show a land barren as a moonscape,
with the odd group of palmyras standing
sentinel. The land needed restoration; the
first communities needed shelter, water
and food. It was their quests to meet
immediate needs that jump-started the
phenomenal return of green cover.
Writer Akash Kapur calls Auroville’s
early green workers “accidental ecolo-
gists”. Better To Have Gone, his memoir of
growing up through Auroville’s early
years, records early tension between the
“constructionalists” and the “organicists”:
those who planned and administered
from afar and those who tended the land.
This is an old conflict, now centred on
ecology but really encompassing so much
more: valuations of formal education ver-
sus experiential learning, an embrace of
urbanism in new hybrid forms versus a
back-to-the-land ruralism, staid conven-
tion against counter-cultural spirit, a def-
erence to governance (and government)
against a scepticism of it.
The early momentum of Auroville
belonged substantially to the organicists.
Over the years, they wrote the textbooks
on afforestation they never had. The
Mother’s ideal city continued to be impor-
tant, discussed and endlessly debated, but
almost as counterpoints to the fact of the
forests. The city was, after all, a thing of the
future, taking planning, process, land and
money that wasn’t always there. Trees
could grow now “without permis-
sion”, as one Aurovillian remarked
to Kapur. Cities could not.
OLD CONFLICTS, NEW FORMS
The imprint of these old divergen-
ces is evident in Auroville’s present
quarrels, which also centre on ecol-
ogy but encompass so much more.
It is as though the constructional-
ists and organicists are facing off, at
long last.
Disagreements over the demoli-
tion of the Youth Center and the
felling of Darkali forest trees went
quickly to the National Green Tri-
bunal (NGT). The move was oddly
reminiscent of the Auroville “rev-
olution” of the 1970s, when resi-
dents sought “independence”
from the control of the Sri Aurob-
indo Ashram body to which the
Mother had entrusted the administration
of Auroville. Following a Supreme Court
verdict, the 1988 Auroville Foundation
Act secured Auroville’s autonomy, vested
its land in the Union government, and put
a structure of participatory governance in
place. It was this governance structure
that was implicated in the confrontation
over the Youth Center, as Aurovillians
continued to wrangle over the mecha-
nisms by which their own autonomy
ought to be constituted.
The NGT’s decision came in late April.
While some part of the Crown work could
continue unimpeded, no future develop-
ment work in Auroville could proceed
without obtaining the requisite environ-
mental clearances. Auroville was to be
overseen by a new, external regime: that of
environmental governance.
BASELINES AND FAULT-LINES
Those who see this as a victory for the for-
ests still cannot disagree that ecological
sensitivity is a baseline for most Aurovil-
lians, including its staunchest urbanists. It
is, in fact, a “root essential” point of agree-
ment here, as in Ecotopia.
Beneath all the personal disgruntle-
ments and complaints are variances over
what governance style is best suited to
Auroville and what a collaborative, com-
munity-driven decision-making process
truly entails. These issues are deeply com-
plicated by a host of external pressures,
including sky-rocketing land prices and
the incursions of property developers.
Internal challenges are no less signifi-
cant. The property ownership Auroville
was meant to eschew becomes a de facto
reality when stewards of an area become
its natural heirs. Meanwhile, government
and private funds have been flowing in for
years and the urgency to build more
expressly towards the Mother’s vision of a
city of 50,000 (from its present 3,300) is
heightened.
Certainly, Aurovillians have tried over
the years to identify and address recurrent
issues. But the endless meetings, work-
shops and sharing sessions have had pro-
portionately insufficient outcomes, and
the extolled notions of self-governance in
the unfolding conflict have borne more
than a passing resemblance to anarchism.
Such realities point to an even deeper and
more unsettling discord over what the
Mother’s vision of a “place” in which
human unity can manifest should look
like, on the ground.
THE FOREST AND THE CITY
To those quarrelling even in 1966 about
what the political situation of Auroville
would be, the Mother was categorical: “It
would be better to build the city first!”
Aurovillians who continue to reject the
city idea or celebrate the trees as retorts to
the planners’ best efforts might therefore
be missing the forest for the trees: Auro-
ville was never imagined as a forest,
important though the forest is to Auro-
ville. The township’s greenwork has
become an end in itself, its popular “ecov-
illage” designation a self-fulfilling proph-
ecy. In this, Auroville’s very ecological
successes and certitudes have become
impediments on the community’s path
towards its own ultimate goals. The point
here is not just that fidelity to the Mother’s
vision is central to the building of Auro-
ville, but that the city is central to that
vision.
The earth, as it is, is increasingly com-
prised of cities, which pose questions of
“how to coexist” in the extreme. Chances
are, the ideals of human unity to which
Auroville aspires need the critical mass of
the city and the in-your-face proximities
of teeming, difficult urban life to emerge.
The earth as we know it, too, is poised to
become more overwhelmingly urban: The
United Nations assesses that 68% of peo-
ple globally will live in urban or urbanised
environments by 2050, by which year
India will have added 416 million to its cit-
ies, doubling its urban population in just
30 years. If cities will per force be our pri-
mary habitat, say experts, their long-term
viability will depend on their regenerative
capacities and their ability to become rich
ecological systems unto themselves. The
preservation of forests and other wild eco-
systems would remain paramount, but as
models for the cities of the future, not as
bastions against them.
Auroville can and should have answers
to such scenarios of the future, but even
ecological regeneration is hardly the ulti-
mate horizon. As much as Auroville needs
the forest, Auroville cannot become the
forest. The explicitly ordained spiritual
purpose of Auroville cannot be sidelined
amidst all the cries of foul and wolf over
environment and governance—politics by
any other name, whereby the Mother is
flattened to someone who “never
intended to destroy the green cover for
the purpose of making the construction”,
as in the NGT ruling. Remove the
Mother’s vision or Sri Aurobindo’s yoga
from the picture, or reduce them to plati-
tudes and lip service, and Auroville can
only be another ecovillage commune.
Especially on the 150th anniversary of
Sri Aurobindo’s birth, the spiritual mantle
given to Auroville in the Mother’s call for
a “radical change of nature” as the key to
transforming human life needs lifting,
well beyond city and forest.
Deepa S. Reddy is a cultural anthropolo-
gist and researcher with the University of
Houston-Clear Lake, US. She has lived and
worked from Puducherry and Auroville
since 2008.
For an extended version of this story, visit
lifestyle.livemint.com/news

WHY ‘THE SANDMAN’ IS
A DISAPPOINTMENT
Bibek Bhattacharya
bibek.b@htlive.com
T
he Sandman has always
been considered a difficult,
if not impossible, story to
film. Neil Gaiman’s cult
comics series, with its
dense and nuanced storylines, scores of
important characters and frequent jumps
in time and space, can be a challenge to
translate on the screen. It might seem like
a mug’s game to try and translate the rich
weirdness of the comics into a coherent
visual narrative. This, then, is the main
challenge of the new Netflix version of The
Sandman, which dropped on 5 August.
I have watched the 10-episode season 1
twice now (it covers the first two Sandman
books: Preludes & Nocturnes and The Doll’s
House) and it left me with mixed feelings,
to put it mildly. The second viewing, a
slower, more immersive affair, reveals
flaws, but also green shoots of improve-
ment. But before we get there, here’s some
basic information. Also, I might add, I am
assuming you have watched the series, so
be warned, here be (some) spoilers.
The Sandman universe is an original
mythological cycle dreamt up by Gaiman
and tells the story of Morpheus, the King
of Dreams. He is an anthropomorphic per-
sonification of his function, as the admin-
istrator of Dreaming and dreamers, and he
has family. His six other siblings—Death,
Desire, Destiny, Despair, Destruction and
Delirium—are beings like him: the End-
less. They are nearly as old as
the Universe, older than gods,
greater than gods, the most
powerful entities bar God and
the Devil.
They rule their own realms
and are incredibly powerful,
but, as a family, they are not
without their petty squabbles.
The 75 volumes of the comics,
serialised between 1988-96,
were something radically new:
the non-superhero comics. As
the writer Norman Mailer said
about it at the time, “Along with
everything else, Sandman is a
comic strip for intellectuals, and
I say it’s about time.” But the
story isn’t just about the End-
less; rather, it’s about ordinary
people, emperors, gods and ani-
mals, and how they interact with
the Endless, and their own lives
and their urges. From another
standpoint, it is about Morpheus
himself: a study in how set in his
ways an entity nearly as old as
time can be, and if he can change,
to what extent.
As you can probably tell, it’s all very
heady stuff, which is further enriched by
a rich and phantasmagoric visual style,
jokes, puns and an immersion in pop cul-
ture. The books have horror, love, tender-
ness, brutality, philosophical highs and
vulgar lows. With The Sandman, Gaiman
created a work of art that was perfect, a
self-contained arc of brilliance, and that is
a tough act to follow.
The show is enjoyable enough for non-
book readers and better than much else on
TV right now. But it is also deeply flawed,
‘Renaissance’: Beyoncé on the dance floor
LOW
FIDELITY
BHANUJ
K A P PA L
I
t’s nice to know that I am not the only
one who spent much of the pandemic
pining for the dance floor, chasing
that very specific dopamine hit that
comes from being in the middle of a
crowd of sweaty bodies, rolling faces
and strobe-lit clouds of dry-ice fog.
Beyoncé missed it so much that her lat-
est record, Renaissance—her seventh
studio album, and the first since 2016’s
internet-breaking Lemonade—is a love
letter to the best black dance music
scenes from the last quarter of the 20th
century.
Deploying the same curatorial pow-
ers that made Lemonade an art-pop tour
de force about black womanhood and
the aftermath of slavery, Beyoncé pulls
together strands from disco, Chicago
house, Detroit techno, New Orleans
bounce and trap music to craft a joyous
ode to the dance halls, ballrooms and
kiki-houses of underground club cul-
ture.
The club is not a new arena for
for the simple reason that one has to com-
pare the show to the books. At times, the
TV show runs like a mirror image of the
book’s plot, but an inferior one written by
someone with less talent than Gaiman.
The show is curiously flat, especially the
first half of the season. The wonder isn’t
transporting enough, the scary bits aren’t
terrifying enough, the jokes aren’t funny
enough. In order to make the TV series as
acceptable as possible to as many people
as possible, the heart of the stories has
been diluted.
This is a product of key decisions that
Beyoncé, whose reign on the dance
floor dates back to her Destiny’s Child
days (remember Bootylicious?) and who
introduced us to edgy, club-ready alter
ego Sasha Fierce all the way back in
2008. On Renaissance, she goes all-in.
There are no ballads—even its most
relaxed soul cut, Plastic Off The Sofa,
bounces along at a solidly upbeat
tempo—and the 16 songs are connected
by neat little interstitial segues, more
like a DJ set than a collection of discrete
tracks. And despite the painstaking
attention to detail attested to by the
record’s 170-odd songwriting credits,
Renaissance never loses its sense of
ecstatic spontaneity as it barrels
through decades of dance-music sub-
cultures, propelled by a jet fuel mixture
of left-field beats and black joy.
“My intention was to create a safe
place, a place without judgment (sic),”
Beyoncé wrote in a little note accompa-
nying the album on her website. “A
place to be free of perfectionism and
overthinking. A place to scream,
release, feel freedom.” And every sec-
ond of the record’s 62 minutes is a play-
ful exploration of that release in its
many manifestations—whether it’s the
1990s-house euphoria of lead single
Break My Soul, the Sunday stomp of
Church Girls or the f***-you strut of
Right Said Fred-interpolating cosmic
ballroom anthem Alien Superstar. After
CULTURE
the showrunners seem to have
taken, both in terms of the narra-
tive as well as the visuals. Let’s look
at the narrative first.
The Sandman has no villains.
Morpheus has many adversaries,
flitting in and out of the stories.
But no big, overarching nemesis.
If anything, Dream is his own
worst enemy. For reasons that
have more to do with creating
tension, the first season sets up
three villains: the renegade
nightmare The Corinthian, the
fundamentalist John Dee, and,
in one episode, Lucifer Morn-
ingstar—the Devil.
These characters are different
from the books not because of
how they look but because of
the motivations that drive
them. Thus, the TV version of
the maniacal John Dee—who,
in the book, just wants to
destroy the world and mess with people’s
heads for the fun of it—is turned into a
naïve man who is tired of being lied to, and
wants people to be truthful to each other,
no matter what the cost. David Thewlis
does such a fantastically creepy job as
John Dee though, it’s a shame the charac-
ter is so sanitised.
One great obstacle to the show’s story-
telling is the outsized space given to The
Corinthian. This suave, homicidal maniac
of a nightmare is first shown to tutor the
occultist Roderick Burgess as to the
nature of his captive, and later manipu-
lates John Dee into trying to destroy Mor-
Her new record, ‘Renaissance’, is a love letter to the best black dance music scenes.
two records that focused on the cere-
bral—issues of race, gender, contempo-
rary politics—Beyoncé turns her atten-
tion back to the body with an almost las-
civious hunger (or as Pitchfork’s
Julianna Escobedo Shepherd put it, Bey
has never been this horny in public).
A panel from ‘The Sandman’
comics, and (inset) a poster
for the Netflix TV Series.
IMAGES COURTESY DC COMICS
The show is curiously flat and
visually clichéd. The wonder
isn’t transporting enough, the
scary bits aren’t terrifying
enough, the jokes aren’t
funny enough
But just because Renaissance isn’t a
sociopolitical record in the same vein as
Lemonade or “Beyoncé” doesn’t mean it
isn’t a political record. It is one, in the
same way that the dance floor is a politi-
cally charged space: a historical safe
space where marginalised and vulnera-
SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
The long-awaited debut of
‘The Sandman’ comics as a
lavish Netflix TV series falls
short of greatness because
it lacks a clear visual and
storytelling style
pheus. So far, so ho-hum. A sure sign of the
show’s drift towards conventionality is the
fact that The Corinthian is portrayed as a
player of the long game. Whereas what
makes him so frightening in the comics is
that he is a creature of impulse—he does
horrific things because he likes it, because
it is his nature. The Corinthian doesn’t
plot anyone’s downfall. He just takes a
knife to their eyes.
In episode 4, A Hope In Hell, Morpheus
comes up against Lucifer Morningstar,
played with menace, grace, poise and just
the correct hint of vulnerability by the
amazing Gwendoline Christie. Although
gripping in its own way, the show ruins
the power of that particular story by
drowning it in a series of visual clichés
pulled out, seemingly, from Peter Jack-
son’s Lord Of The Rings movies and Game
Of Thrones (GoT). Lucifer and Hell have
a lived-in quality in the books: They
clearly have a life before and after we
encounter them. In the show, it’s as if
Hell has been cobbled together to pro-
vide Morpheus with an obstacle to over-
come; and the magnificent Morningstar
has seemingly been mooching about in
costumes borrowed from Daenerys Tar-
garyen, waiting for Dream to fall into her
trap. When Dream strides away victori-
ous, doing the slow-motion “hero” walk
to a swelling orchestral score, it is so far
away from the spirit of The Sandman that
it’s laughable.
The episode, however, also contains the
single greatest moment of the first season.
It is the look of utter despair and loss on
Christie’s face when Morpheus tells Luci-
ble people can build community,
express themselves without judgement
and just feel good for a few hours. In
particular, Beyoncé and her team of
songwriters and producers—which
includes mainstream mainstays like
The-Dream and Mike Dean and left-
field hookups like AG Cook and Skril-
lex—align themselves with black queer
and trans dance artists, through the
sounds they sample and celebrate and
the artists they collaborate with.
So Cozy—a grimy, propulsive house
track about feeling comfortable in your
skin—samples its bassline from Chicago
DJ Lidel Townsell and hip hop group
M.T.F.’s 1992 cut Get With U, and fea-
tures contributions by two black trans
artists: Chicago house producer Honey
Dijon and actor Ts Madison. Alien
Superstar not only successfully interpo-
lates lyrics from Right Said Fred’s 1991
Europop cult hit I’m Too Sexy but also
samples deep house proto-pioneer
Foremost Poets and references vogue-
ing and queer ballroom culture (which
pops up often elsewhere too). And the
Afrobeat-meets-house cut Move even
features a rare spoken-word cameo by
Studio 54 and new-wave icon Grace
Jones.
Elsewhere, A.G. Cook and Lady Gaga
producer BloodPop cook up a glitchy
deconstructed techno soundscape for
Beyoncé to strut her stuff, her voice
New Delhi 11
fer that she too is subservient to dreams:
the dream of Heaven. And this begs the
question, with a story so brilliant, with
lines that any screenplay writer would kill
to write, why do we need the contrived
tension? I can go on and on in this vein,
about the tone-deaf portrayals of pivotal
characters like Cain and Abel, Johanna
Constantine, Roderick Burgess, Hector
and Lyta Hall. But they are all symptoms of
the same problem.
There is a jarring tonal sameness to
most modern fantasy/horror TV, a trend
inaugurated by GoT nearly a decade ago.
While this underlit, grey-black tone might
have suited GoT, and even more recent
series like The Witcher, or The Wheel Of
Time, or Shadow And Bone, it feels a curi-
ous stylistic choice for The Sandman. It is
a dark and serious story, for sure, but what
heightened its effect for generations of
readers were the bright, sometimes diso-
rientating, shimmering colours used by
the inkers of the stories.
In the TV show, so many effective
moments fall flat because it’s all unre-
lentingly under-lit and uniformly drab.
What the showrunners clearly don’t get
is that the scope of The Sandman mythol-
ogy can contain all kinds of stories, and
thus many kinds of visual treatments.
Episodes could look like something out
of Breaking Bad, something out of The
Sopranos, a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Game Of
Thrones, or Love, Death & Robots. Dream
is the Prince of Stories, and all stories
reside in the Dreaming. Which is why,
every volume of the books, and some-
times different panels in the same story,
can look radically different.
This blandness extends to the Sand-
man’s depiction as well. Tom Sturridge
does a valiant job as Morpheus but he is
limited by the screenplay. The decision to
show Dream at all points like a propor-
tionally correct human being is highly
limiting when it comes to portraying the
extreme weirdness of Morpheus. Stur-
ridge’s lines, though taken directly from
the book, just don’t land as hard some-
times, because, to the viewer, it just
comes across as a human being saying
grand things.
Netflix evidently wants The Sandman to
be a hit, like Stranger Things is a hit. But
it’s doubtful if that will ever be the case,
given how truly dark, elliptical and meta
the story is. The show-makers should
ditch the attempt to gain broad popularity
and focus on telling the stories as well as
they can. This doesn’t have to mean slav-
ishly following the comics but developing
a distinct visual style that separates it from
the competition. Right now, The Sandman
is neither one thing nor another. As a fan,
the best thing I can say about the show in
its present form is that I am relieved that it
isn’t bad…just disappointing.
But there are some green shoots. The
second half of the season, covering the
plot from Book 2, The Doll’s House, is much
better than the first. Also, the show’s treat-
ment of some storylines—like Dream’s
friendship with the immortal Hob Gadling
or Mason Alexander Park’s pitch-perfect
depiction of Desire—gives hope that sub-
sequent seasons will be better. They better
be, considering the best stories of The
Sandman still lie ahead.
rough with playful desire as she prom-
ises to “make you mine”. And then
there’s the glorious Pure/Honey, with its
opening invocations of “Cunt to the fem-
inine, what!” (a vocal sample by ball
commentator and musician Kevin Jz
Prodigy) and generous sampling of
iconic club tracks by drag icons like
Kevin Aviance and Moi Renee. With its
sublimely swelling synths and hind-
brain-attack rhythm, the song com-
bines the illicit thrills of house and
vogue with the cinematic melodies and
shiny glamour of disco.
The album ends with Summer Renais-
sance, a nod to one of the most iconic
club tracks of all time—Donna Summer
and Giorgo Moroder’s disco-synth phe-
nomenon I Feel Love. With its lyrics
about dance-floor romance and the
power of the club, the song feels like the
apotheosis of Beyoncé’s creative renais-
sance—dance music’s past, present and
future brought together in a conversa-
tion that finally centres its transgress-
ive, trail-blazing pioneers. With label
promotions and a leaked online store
blurb describing the album as the “Act
I” of a supposed trilogy, it appears that
at 40, Beyoncé is embarking on her
most ambitious, edgy and fun album
cycle yet.
Bhanuj Kappal is a Mumbai-based
writer.
12 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
NEW DELHi
Children’s
Corner
Women
who led
Vangmayi Parakala
vangmayi.parakala@htlive.com
A
bridging a historical biography is
already an exercise in intelligent and
informed curation; doing this for
children can take a trickier turn, especially
keeping in mind all the discussion around
school history syllabi, what to include, or
not, and how much. And while there are, of
course, hundreds of women freedom fight-
ers who contributed to the independence
movement in a variety of ways, it might be
hard to find any big problems with the lineup
of 35 that find place in prolific children’s
writer Anu Kumar’s latest book, Her Name
Was Freedom.
It has very well-known names like Rani Lax-
mibai and Sarojini Naidu, relatively lesser-
known, yet famous, names like Muthulakshmi
Reddi and Aruna Asaf Ali, and names that
haven’t really found their place in popular nar-
ratives of the mainstream discourse on the
freedom movement, like Dhanvanthi Rama
Rau and Rani Gaidinliu.
The order of contents is interesting: Either
the account of one life has a brief cross-refer-
ence to another strong and fierce woman, on
whom a chapter follows, or Kumar begins a
new chapter with an opening line that segues
from the account that just ended. Yet each
biography has distinctly impressive and
inspiring facts: like reading, realising or
remembering that Durgabai Deshmukh was
only 12 when she single-handedly raised
₹25,000 to get Mahatma Gandhi to speak to
Devadasis. Around
the same time, she
also set up a school
for girls to learn
Hindi in her home-
town Rajahmundry
in Andhra Pradesh.
But such spunk
and sparkle is
dimmed by the tell-
ing, which is dry
and textbook-like.
This is ironic, since
the research that
backs Her Name Her Name Was
Was Freedom is Freedom—35
commendable, and Fearless Women
it is exactly the kind Who Fought For
of effort that ought India’s
to inform co-cur- Independence: By
ricular reading, that Anu Kumar, Hachette,
could light up a 224 pages, ₹499.
young reader’s
curiosity about the contributions that freed
and made her country what it is today.
There has been a lot happening in the space
of non-fiction for children, and given her con-
sistent efforts in this area, Kumar’s Her Name
Was Freedom should have made its mark in a
list of increasingly popular short biography
anthologies that are making up for what school
textbooks tend to lack—whether in terms of
content or in terms of how it’s presented. Biog-
raphies for children are also just the right spa-
ces to allow non-fiction to be more visual, per-
haps even playful in its approach.
That each of these women was admirable,
even great, is a given. However, all the chap-
ters are rather hagiographic. Especially as a
young reader, it helps to learn about a role-
model’s slip-ups—not everyone’s failures are
owing to betrayal by a trusted ally. This sort of
glamorised victimhood is passé and teaches, at
best, nothing. It would have also helped to
know exactly what it meant for these women
to defy convention, even if not how they went
about doing it. Anybody could say a late mar-
riage was “unusual in those days”, it is the biog-
rapher’s job to tell us—and more importantly,
a young reader—more.
ISTOCKPHOTO
The power of speeches
that moved a nation
‘Building A Free India’,
edited by Rakesh
Batabyal, describes the
independence
movement as a function
of its speeches
Aditya Mani Jha
A
t the risk of sounding dramatic, I
will say this: A good speech can
change the world. It is the basic
unit of influence, in a way, the most
elementary method of building
consensus; one person’s words affecting another.
Brick by brick, person by person, the edifice of
society is built and nations are dreamt into exis-
tence. The recent Speaking Tiger anthology
Building A Free India, edited and with an intro-
ductory essay by Rakesh Batabyal (who teaches
the history, theory and philosophy of media at
Jawaharlal Nehru University) is an admirable
project that documents the nation-building role
played by some of the greatest speeches delivered
in India in the first half of the 20th century.
The book is structured chronologically, more or
less—it starts with a section called The Critique Of
Colonialism And The Spirit Of The Modern Nation,
covering speeches delivered by the early national-
ists, in the 1901-10 period for the most part. It ends
with a pair of iconic speeches (by Nehru and S.
Radhakrishnan) delivered on the occasion of
India’s independence in 1947. In between these
two endpoints, we learn how the dominant politi-
cal leaders of the intervening decades spread their
ideas with strategically delivered speeches.
Batabyal describes this process during his
introductory essay: “Gandhi’s speeches, relayed
through his organs, Harijan and Young India, or
through other newspapers he wrote for, provided
people with a programme, both social and politi-
cal. What is more, this character of the speeches
also gave them a sense of involvement and confi-
dence and, significantly, direction. When, for
example, in the 1940s widespread communal
polarization for Pakistan was beginning to take
shape, Maulana Azad in his presidential speech at
the Ramgarh Congress in December 1940 bril-
liantly spoke on how there was no contradiction
between his Muslim and Indian inheritances
whereby he also countered the two-nation theory
which had come to be officially adopted by the
(Muslim) League recently.”
Some of the highlights of this section include
Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s “On the Official Secrets
Act of 1903”, Manu Subedar’s “On India Joining
the IMF and the World Bank” and Dadabhai Nao-
roji’s “The Poverty of India”. Each of these
speeches describes the lack of resources in early
20th century India with eloquence and compas-
sion; in their own ways, each suggests a blueprint
for the decades ahead. The latter sections move
on to distinct phases in the independence strug-
gle: the secular leaders’ position, the swadeshi and
non-cooperation movements, and, finally, the far
more radical voices through the 1930s and 1940s,
W A
hile the
inter-
play of
society, state and
markets has been
addressed by
economists and
academics,
philanthropist
Rohini Nilekani’s
speeches and
articles provide
an interesting, if
somewhat
didactic, perspective. 270 pages, free to read
on Samaajsarkaarbazaar.in.
A policeman’s ringside view of events
Chandrika Mago
chandrika.m@htlive.com
I
n a book that he describes as a “lockdown
child”, seasoned police officer Mukund Kaus-
hal outlines elements of his leadership and
management style as he looks back on his career
through a series of incidents and issues, and what
they taught him. Kaushal, who retired in 2001,
was commissioner of police in Delhi, director
general of the Central Reserve Police Force, and,
unusually for an Indian Police Service officer, sec-
retary (internal security) in the Union home min-
istry. Over nearly four decades, he worked with
governments of different political hues.
As Delhi’s police chief in the early 1990s, he
came across as unflappable, genial but firm,
seemed to have a phenomenal memory and an
eye for detail. These traits come through in the
book, Sailing On My Own Compass: A Policeman’s
Diary, formally launched in June.
BOOKS
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at the opening of the Bhakra Dam, in Bhakra village. GETTY IMAGES
as India moved closer to self-determination. expressions of Adivasi identity. To that end, I was multiple speeches by Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar,
In this latter phase, Bhagat Singh’s speech very happy to see the inclusion of a speech by Jai- as one might expect. No anthology about 20th
before the Lahore high court in January 1930 pal Singh in this volume. Singh (1903-70), known century India is complete without an excerpt
makes for particularly thrilling reading. The clar- popularly as Marang Gomke (great leader) in from Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste”, of
ity of thought and expression, the mixture of sen- Jharkhand, was the founder of the Adivasi Mahas- course. But there’s also Ambedkar’s speech in the
sibilities found in somebody so young…the mind abha that later became the Jharkhand Party. A Bombay Legislative Council from March 1927,
still boggles at what India was man of many talents, he also led where he criticises what he sees as the unchecked
blessed with, and what she lost with India to our first-ever Olympics gold commercialisation of education.
Bhagat Singh’s execution. in hockey in 1928. The Jaipal Singh “Education is something which ought to be
There have been other notable speech included here was delivered brought within the reach of everyone. The Educa-
collections of speeches published on 19 December 1946, just a few tion Department is not a department which can
in India over the last decade or so, months away from independence. It be treated on the basis of quid pro quo. Education
like the Rudrangshu Mukherjee- shows a mixture of confidence and ought to be cheapened in all possible ways and to
edited The Great Speeches Of Mod- apprehension about New India and the greatest possible extent. I urge this plea
ern India (2007). But where that what she holds in store for Adivasi because I feel that we are arriving at a stage when
collection sought to display the communities. the lower orders of society are just getting into the
range of intellectual traditions in “We do not ask for any special high schools, middle schools and colleges, and the
India as well as the diversity of protection. We want to be treated policy of this department therefore ought to be to
styles (you had Lord Curzon talking like every other Indian. (…) The make higher education as cheap to the lower
about monument protectionism whole history of my people is one of classes as it can possibly be made.”
and Vikram Seth speaking at his old Building A Free continuous exploitation and dispos- Today, as school and college fees skyrocket in
school), Batabyal’s objective is very India: Edited and with session by the non-aboriginals of every Indian city, Ambedkar’s cautionary note
clear from the beginning: This book an introduction by India punctuated by rebellions and feels more prescient than ever. Several of the
wants to describe the movement for Rakesh Batabyal, disorder, and yet I take Pandit Jawa- speeches in Building A Free India can be read in
Indian independence as a function Speaking Tiger, har Lal Nehru at his word. I take you this vein, actually, as though they were describing
of its speeches; as the tonality of the 368 pages, ₹599. all at your word that now we are far more recent developments. And while that’s
movement shifts, so do the going to start a new chapter, a new a good reason to pick up this book, it’s a grim
speeches. chapter of Independent India where there is thought in the context of the founding fathers’
In a brief editor’s note prior to the introductory equality of opportunity, where no one would be elusive aim, nation-building.
essay, Batabyal credits his childhood in Bokaro, neglected.”
Jharkhand, for his introduction to political There’s a lot of Gandhi in the book, as well as Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based writer.
NEW ON SHELVES
P T
novel set art of the he work of
in 1909, in Journey Of A an eminent
pre- Nation post-
Partition Bengal, series by Rupa independence
inspired by the Publications, this writer, Manohar
legal drama that book by cricket Malgonkar,
followed the writer Chandresh returns in new
news of the death Narayanan editions. The Sea
of the ailing chronicles 75 Hawk, set in 17th
second prince of years of India as a century India, is
the Bhawal sporting nation. It about how
zamindari, and highlights the Kanhoji leads the
the appearance of achievements of Maratha navy in
a mendicant, athletes and the fight against
claiming to be him, over a decade later. teams and revisits milestones on the world Europeans. HarperCollins India, 340 pages,
Picador India, 296 pages, ₹599. stage. Rupa Publications, 328 pages, ₹495. ₹499, available on pre-order; out 30 August.
Kaushal meticulously details some of his most typical Kaushal style, he doesn’t dwell on the ship tip, arguably, is “to learn to manage yourself”.
important assignments: from his role as “exposi- lows—so while he details how they admirably Policemen tend to get a ringside view of events
tion commissioner” during the exposition of the kept the peace in Delhi’s walled city in the days that shape national consciousness, informing and
holy relics of St Francis Xavier in following the Babri Masjid demolition, influencing its social fabric; they are also subject
1974-75 in Goa, to Delhi’s police the rioting in a north-east Delhi locality to tremendous pressures, so much depends on
commissioner in the 1990s; from gets just a couple how they handle these. Kaushal shows himself a
his initiative in clearing then of lines. master at this, whether it’s the way he contained
prime minister Narasimha Rao Sailing On My He names offi- the influence of a powerful trade union leader in
of allegations levelled by stock- Own Compass cials who come in Goa or clipped the wings of the Shahi Imam of
broker Harshad Mehta in 1993, —A Policeman’s for praise, prefer- Jama Masjid in Delhi. It wasn’t easy. After a Bhar-
to his situational report on the Diary: By ring not to name atiya Janata Party rally was disallowed in Febru-
arrest of two Union ministers by Mukund Kaushal, those shown in a ary 1993, the fallout ensured the police got 34
the Jayalalithaa government in Rupa somewhat uncom- breach of privilege notices from Parliament.
Tamil Nadu in 2000, which Publications, plimentary light. Though there are revealing, even startling
seems to have led to the transfer 288 pages, ₹495. The language is anecdotes, not everything will appeal to the gen-
of the governor; from negotia- simple, without eral reader. There is some amount of repetition
tions with militant and insur- dramatic flour- that better editing could have taken care of. But
gent groups, to the coordination ishes; the problematic actions of others the detailing of some crucial events in recent
of elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996. are related in deadpan, scathing fashion. As he national memory is valuable. There’s a lot to take
Most of the chapters are short, episodic, with outlines his thoughts on the shortcomings in the from the book—and a sense that much remains
their titles indicating his takeaways from each. In behaviour of public servants, the biggest leader- unsaid.
SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 13
14 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi NEWS LIVEMINT.COM

Syrma SGS
m MINT SHORTS
Grasim Industries’ net profit rises
IPO gets Factory activity moderates on
13% to ₹2,759 cr during June quarter
New Delhi: Aditya Birla Group firm Grasim Industries on Friday
reported 12.7% rise in consolidated net profit at ₹2,758.75 crore
subscribed
37% on Day 1
fading favourable base effect
for June quarter 2022-23, led by growth across its key businesses.
The company had posted a net profit of ₹2,447.97 crore in the
year-ago period, Grasim Industries said in a regulatory filing. FROM PAGE 18
Revenue from operations was up 40.77% at ₹28,041.54 crore dur- The growth figure, however, remained in double digits for the second straight month
ing the quarter as against ₹19,919.40 crore in the same period a dential Mutual fund, IIFL, Kuber
year ago. PTI India, Abakkus and BNP Paribas
as part of its so-called anchor Dilasha Seth to clock a year-on-year growth of
book allocation. The company dilasha.seth@livemint.com
Brakes on 7%-9% in July 2022,” said Sunil Kumar
Hero MotoCorp quarterly aims to raise ₹840 crore through
its public offering.
NEw DElhI
IIP growth moderated in June as
the favourable base effect faded. Sinha, principal economist, India Rat-
ings and Research.
Trade deficit
profit doubles to ₹585 crore % growth in industrial

I
Promoted and led by Sandeep
Tandon and Jasbir Singh Gujral,
Syrma is a technology-focused
engineering and design com-
pany engaged in turnkey elec-
tronics manufacturing services
(EMS) and specializes in preci-
sion manufacturing.
ndia’s industrial activity moderated
slightly in June after touching a
160 production year-on-year Manufacturing, which accounts for
77% of the index, reported a 12.5% hits record
year’s high in the previous month
as the favourable base effect faded,
120
growth in June compared to a 20.6%
growth in the previous month. $30 bn in Jul
but remained in double digits for Acceleration in manufacturing
the second straight month, official data 80
growth will have to come from addi- Ravi Dutta Mishra
showed. tional investments, but that is likely to ravi.dutt@livemint.com
40
The manufacturing and electricity 2.2 12.3 be a challenge with rising interest rates,

The company has seen its
revenues grow at a compound
annual growth rate (CAGR) of
20% between FY20 and FY22.
“Syrma is a leader in high-mix
low-volume electronics prod-
New Delhi: Hero MotoCorp Ltd on Friday reported over ucts, which finds application in
two-fold rise in consolidated profit after tax at ₹585.58 high growth sectors such as
crore in the first quarter ended 30 June riding on higher Industrial appliances, automo-
sales. The company had posted a consolidated profit after tive, healthcare, consumer prod-
tax of ₹256.46 crore in the same period last fiscal, Hero Mot- ucts, IT etc. Over FY20-22, the
oCorp Ltd said in a regulatory filing. Consolidated revenue average business contribution
from operations in the first quarter stood at ₹8,447.54 crore from the industrial sector was
as compared to ₹5,502.80 crore in the corresponding around 40%, while consumers,
period a year ago, it added. PTI automotive and healthcare con-
tributed 22%, 17% and 17%,
respectively, to total operating
Five of China’s state-owned giants revenue. Such wide product end-
use reduces the company’s
to delist from US amid audit spat dependence on any one sector
New Delhi: Five of China’s largest state-owned companies and provides a natural hedge
announced plans to delist from US exchanges as the two coun- against market instability,” bro-
tries struggle to come to an agreement allowing American regu- kerage company Choice Broking
lators to inspect audits of Chinese businesses. China Life Insur- said in an 11 August report.
ance Co., PetroChina Co. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. Investment banks Dam Cap-
all disclosed their intentions to delist in statements published in ital Advisors Ltd, ICICI Securi-
quick succession on Friday, along with Aluminum Corp. of China ties Ltd, and IIFL Securities
and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. BLOOMBERG Ltd, Choice Broking are man-
aging the share sale.
I
sectors posted sharp growth during the said M. Govinda Rao, chief economic ndia’s trade deficit swelled to a
0
month, but economists cautioned that adviser, Brickwork Ratings. record $30 billion in July, as
there could be moderation in industrial The monetary policy committee of imports of goods surged
activity with key indicators such as -40 the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) hiked despite curbs, and merchandise
power generation and exports easing. the repo rate by 50 basis points for the exports contracted for the first
The tightening of monetary policy -80
Apr 2020 Jun 2022
third time in a row on 5 August, taking time in 20 months to $36.27 bil-
may also impact investment in the Source: MoSPI the policy rate to the pre-pandemic lev- lion, amid fears of slowing
manufacturing sector. els of 5.4%. demand in large export markets
The growth in the index of industrial “Though the current economic such as the US and the EU.
production (IIP) moderated to 12.3% in ruary 2020. matrix looks encouraging, the RBI will The widening deficit is likely
June from 19.6% in May on a year-on- “On a month-on-month basis, the certainly wait for another month of to exert pressure on the Indian
year basis, data released by the National factory output de-grew by 0.12% in data to decide on its next steps. The currency, which has appreciated
Statistical Office on Friday showed. June 2022, indicating that a durable RBI’s FY23 inflation forecast is 6.4%, slightly against the dollar after
“As anticipated, the normalizing recovery is still some distance away. indicating some more rate hikes by the touching a lifetime low of 80.16.
base resulted in a fairly broad-based Though the revival of the pace of mon- RBI in the remaining part of FY23,” Moreover, economists said eas-
dampening of the IIP said Nish Bhatt, founder ing commodity prices could
growth in June 2022. LONG WAy FROM REvIvAL and chief executive of reduce the pressure on India’s
Given the moderation in real estate investment import bill.
the year-on-year per- THE overall IIP for ON a month-on- MANUFACTURING, consultant Millwood Key export sectors, including
formance recorded by June is 2.8%, higher month basis, the which accounts for Kane International. engineering, gems and jewellery,
than the pre-covid factory production 77% of the index,
most high-frequency level of February declined by 0.12% in reported a 12.5% IIP in the first quarter petroleum, and cotton yarn,
indicators in July 2022, 2020 June growth in June of the current fiscal grew recorded a decline in July
such as electricity gener- by 12.7%. This will con- because of dampening demand
ation and non-oil exports, tribute to the gross in western markets. Other factors
we expect IIP growth to ease to high soon in July 2022 is a good sign, mod- domestic product for the June quarter, that may affect exports include
single digits in that month,” said Aditi eration in power generation growth to which will be released on 31 August. India’s restrictions on selling
Nayar, chief economist, ICRA. a six-month low of 4.3% in July 2022 The capital goods sector grew 26.1% wheat, steel, iron and petroleum
The overall IIP for June is 2.8% indicates some moderation in indus- in June from 54.4% in the previous products overseas..
higher than the pre-covid level of Feb- trial activity. Therefore, we expect IIP month.

No GST when residential unit

rented to private person
UK declares drought Reserve Bank tells lenders to CPI-based
inflation eases
in vast parts of England rein in loan recovery agents to five-month
amid extreme heatwave Gopika Gopakumar
gopika.gopakumar@livemint.com
low in July
mumbaI FROM PAGE 18
Bloomberg National Drought Group.

T
feedback@livemint.com The UK is currently struggling he Reserve Bank of India per barrel on Friday and have
on many fronts. Surging energy on Friday tightened rules declined by 20% over the last

E
ngland is officially in a prices, that millions of house- for loan recovery agents two months, amid recession
New Delhi: The government on Friday clarified that rent- drought across vast holds can’t afford to pay, a shrink- following complaints of unfair fears and declining demand.
ing of residential unit is taxable only when it is rented to a swathes of the country, ing economy and roaring infla- recovery practices and strong- Vivek Rathi, director of
business entity and that there is no Goods and Services Tax the government’s environment tion are creating an acute cost-of- arm tactics, and told banks to research at Knight Frank India,
(GST) when it is rented to private persons for personal use. agency has announced, as living crisis that’s set to deepen ensure the agents do not harass said that the increase in fuel
“No GST even if proprietor or partner of a firm rents resi- another heat wave intensifies this winter. borrowers during collection. inflation despite government
dence for personal use,” the Press Information Bureau said and water companies impose The extreme weather is a stark “In view of concerns arising measures to curb fuel prices is a
in a social media post. STAFF WRITER restrictions on household use. reminder that a changing climate from the activities of the agents, concerning factor.
Parts of western, threatens not only it is advised that the REs shall “Currently, international
southern, central Parts of western, to weaken infra- strictly ensure that they or their crude and commodity prices
UK economy shrinks for the first and e a s t e r n southern, central and structure but also agents do not resort to intimi- The agents should also avoid calling the borrower before 8:00 have corrected; this should
England were put eastern England were to disrupt daily life. dation or harassment, either a.m. and after 7:00 p.m. further soften inflation in
time since covid-19 lockdown into “drought” sta- Houses are subsid- verbal or physical, against any India in the coming months.
put into drought
Mumbai: The UK economy shrank in the second quarter for the tus following a
status after a meeting ing as a result of person in their debt collection RBI has come down hard on payable to lending service pro- However, rupee depreciation
first time since the pandemic, driven by a decline in spending by meeting of the especially dry soil, efforts,” it said in a press note. illegal activities by digital len- viders should be paid directly which increases the import
households and on fighting the coronavirus. Gross domestic prod- National Drought of the National LV= General Insur- The central bank said banks, ders following a Chinese loan by the regulated entity and not costs and the fall in crop yields
uct fell 0.1% after an 0.8% gain in the first quarter, the Office for Group on Friday. Drought Group ance said this week. non-banking financial compa- app scam. On Wednesday, the by the borrower. Regulated due to uneven monsoon this
National Statistics said. A decline in covid testing and vaccinations England, normally It reported a 205% nies, cooperative banks, hous- regulator came out with a regu- entities will also have to offer a year poses a near-term risk to
as well as slower retail sales and the first drop in household con- associated with increase in subsi- ing finance and asset recon- latory framework for digital cool-off period during which inflation in India,” Rathi
sumption in more than a year were the biggest drivers. BLOOMBERG drizzly weather, recorded its dri- dence cases in June and July. struction companies should lenders. the borrowers can exit digital added.
est July since 1935, according to Supermarkets have stopped sell- ensure recovery agents desist RBI said regulated entities loans by paying the principal Annual inflation in FY22
the Met Office, and is facing a new ing disposable barbecues due to from publicly humiliating bor- must ensure that loan servicing amount and the proportionate slowed to 5.5% from 6.2% in the
ONGC standalone profit triples to reality of heat waves and pressure the risk of spreading fires. rowers or send inappropriate and repayments are executed costs without penalty. previous year.
on the water supply in the sum- However, the drought is not messages on mobile or through directly in their bank accounts In addition, regulated enti- After rising 20% since the
₹15,206 crore in April-June quarter mer months. only affecting England. Data social media. They should also without any third party pass- ties should also ensure all loan start of 2022, global food prices
New Delhi: State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) “The current high tempera- from late July shows that 47% of avoid calling borrowers before through or pool account. service providers engaged by have fallen about 10% since
on Friday reported a 250% rise in its standalone net profit for the tures we are experiencing have EU countries are facing drought 8:00 a.m. and after 7:00 p.m. The disbursements need to them have a nodal grievance early June.
first quarter (April-June) of FY23 at ₹15,206 crore. During the exacerbated pressures on wildlife warning conditions and 17% are at for recovery of overdue loans, be made in the borrower’s bank redressal officer to deal with India’s wholesale inflation
corresponding period of last fiscal, the energy major had and our water environment,” said alert levels, the European and making false and mislead- account, it added digital lending-related com- has been over 15% for three
reported a net profit of ₹4,335 crore. RITURAJ BARUAH Harvey Bradshaw, chair of the Drought Observatory says. ing representations. RBI said any fee or charge plaints. straight months up to June.

Amit Burman resigns as Dabur Paytm dives on proxy adviser’s push for new CEO
chairman, Mohit takes charge
FROM PAGE 18
revenues. The company has 13
plants in India.
In FY22, it had a dozen
brands exceeding ₹100 crore in
annual revenues, two brands
over ₹500 crore and another
four brands over ₹1,000 crore.
Other members of the Bur-
man family, too, are part of the
fast-moving consumer goods
(FMCG) business.
Mohit Burman, the son of
Vivek and Monica Burman, has
led the Burman family’s foray into
financial services, besides the
agriculture and retailing sectors.
He started his career with
Welbeck Property Partnership
London and then joined
Dabur Finance Ltd, a company
specializing in fund and fee-
based financial activities, as a
senior manager.
He also played a pivotal role
in expanding the group’s
FROM PAGE 18 with Paytm since 2016. He was loans (including interest)
previously with Citigroup aggregating ₹106.8 crore to
the market price on the grant Global Markets India. five entities, where repay-
financial services business into of covid, the world was hit by a date (fair value spread across IiAS further said in the ments have been delayed. The
asset management, life insur- consequential crisis of high the vesting period), the IiAS report that since listing, the nature of the relationship with
ance and pension by setting up inflation, which was further report noted. He was also company’s stock price has some of these entities is
an insurance company with aggravated by the recent geo- granted 46.5% of the entire fallen by 64% (from the issue unclear, it added.
UK-based insurer Aviva. political events, including the stock option pool, equalling price of ₹2,150), resulting in Earlier this week, SoftBank
He is also known for his role Ukraine war,” he said. 3.2% of the outstanding share wealth destruction for share- Group Corp. said it has marked
in acquiring Balsara’s Home and The recent months and capital. But there is no disclo- holders. down its invest-
Hygiene business quarters have sure regarding the vesting “Vijay Shekhar The proxy adviser ment in Paytm by
by Dabur India, Mohit Burman has seen a dramatic conditions, the report said. Paytm’s net loss widened to ₹644.4 crore in the June quarter against a Sharma has made also opposed a $400 million for
which helped the led the Burman surge in inflation, “His overall remuneration is loss of ₹380.2 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal. REUTERS several commit- proposal to the quarter ended
latter add brands family’s foray into which also began higher than the remuneration ments in the past reappoint Ravi June, adding to its
such as Odomos financial services, hurting con- levels of all S&P BSE Sensex the founder and managing also criticizing Adusumalli for to make the com- overall loss of
Chandra
and Promise to its sumer senti- companies’ CEOs—and most partner at Elevation Capital attending less than half of the pany profitable. $23.1 billion for
besides the Adusumalli as
portfolio. ments. of these companies are profita- (formerly SAIF Partners), an board meetings in FY22. However, these the period.
Addressing agriculture and “We combated ble. The company is seeking early investor in Paytm. While supporting Madhur have not played director The technol-
shareholders at retailing sectors these challenges shareholder approval for the “We note that Ravi Chandra Deora’s appointment as out. We believe ogy firm’s invest-
the annual general through a mix of proposed remuneration as Adusumalli is a member of the whole-time director, the the board must ment cost in
meeting, Mohit cost control meas- minimum remuneration— audit committee. We raise report raised a red flag over his consider professionalizing the One97 Communications was
Burman said the pandemic, ures and pricing actions,” he which will be paid to him even concern over the issues raised remuneration. management,” it said. $1.4 billion in 2017, made
along with high inflation, has led said. The company is “closely if the company continues to by the auditors, that loans and “We estimate Madhur Paytm’s net loss widened to through a mix of primary and
to unprecedented times. monitoring” the emerging situa- report losses,” the report advances extended have had Deora’s remuneration at ₹644.4 crore in the June quar- secondary share purchases.
“The beginning of the tion and will continue to make pointed out, opposing his delayed repayments, and that ₹358.5 million (₹35.85 crore) ter against a loss of ₹380.2 The fair value of its invest-
2021-22 fiscal saw the emer- sustained efforts to drive remuneration. the company, despite report- for FY23, which is high for the crore in the corresponding ment stood at $1 billion at the
gence of the second and most demand for brands by enhancing The proxy adviser also ing staggering losses, proposes size and performance of the quarter of the last financial end of 30 June, according to
devastating wave of the cov- the company’s rural footprint opposed a proposal to reap- to spend ₹100 million (₹10 business and not in line with year. its financial statement, indi-
id-19 pandemic. As we slowly and putting investments behind point Ravi Chandra Adusum- crore) annually on charitable peers,” it stated. The IiAS report also said cating an on-paper loss of
recovered from the aftermath its power brands, he added. alli as director. Adusumalli is donations,” the report noted, Deora has been associated that it is concerned about $400 million.
 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 15

RELIABLE VENTURES INDIA LIMITED

CIN : L22354MP1992PLC007295
REG. OFFICE : A-6, RELIABLE HOUSE, KOH-E-FIZA, BHOPAL, MP-462001
Tel.No.: 0755-4902458, Email : reliablegroup@gmail.com
Website : noorussabahpalace.com
STATEMENT OF UN-AUDITED FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR
THE QUARTER ENDED 30-06-2022
(Rs. In Lacs)
S. Quarter ended 3 months Quarter ended
No. 30th June, 2022 ended 30th June,
PARTICULARS
31st March 2021
2022
Un-Audited Audited Un-Audited
1 Total Income from Operations 447.67 529.22 203.38
Net Profit/(Loss) for the period (before Tax
2 23.11 104.39 -48.80
Exceptional and/or Extraordinary Items)
Net Profit/(Loss) for the period before Tax
3 23.11 1.69 -48.80
(after Exceptional and/or Extraordinary Items)
Net Profit/(Loss) for the period after Tax (after
4 16.61 1.69 -50.19
Exceptional and/or Extraordinary Items)
Total Comprehensive Income for the period
[comprising profit/(loss) for the period (after
5 9.17 5.41 -35.31
tax) and other comprehensive Income (after
tax)]
6 Equity Share Capital 1,101.29 1,101.29 1,101.29
Reserves (excluding Revaluation Reserve)
7 as shown in the audited balance sheet of the - - -
pervious year
8 Earning Per Share (of Rs. 10/- each for
continuing and discontinued operations) -
1. Basic : 0.08 0.05 (0.32)
2. Diluted : 0.08 0.05 -0.32
Notes :
1. The above Financial Results have been reviewed by the Audit Committee and approved by
the Board of Directors of the Company in its meeting held on 12th Aug, 2022.
2. This statement has been prepared in accordance with the Companies(Indian Accounting
Standards) Rules 2015 (Ind AS) prescribed under Section 133 of the Companies Act, 2013
and other accounting practices and policies to the extent applicable.
3. The company has only one business and geographical segment viz. hotel operation in
India, hence no further disclosures are requried to be made as per Indian Accounting
Standard-108 on “Operational Segments”.
4. The above is an extract of detailed unaudited financial results filed with the Mumbai
Stock Exchange Ltd. Under Regulation 33 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure
Requirements) Regulations, 2015. The full format of the results is available on the Website
of BSE “www.bseindia.com” and Company Website “www.noorussabahpalace.com”.
For Reliable Ventures India Limited
Media Soul

Sd/-
(SIKANDAR HAFIZ KHAN)
Bhopal : 12-08-2022 CHAIRMAN & MG. DIRECTOR

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GUJARAT URJA VIKAS NIGAM LIMITED
Sardar Patel Vidyut Bhavan,
Race Course, Vadodara-390007
PBX : (0265) 2310582-86, Web : www.guvnl.com
NOTICE INVITING TENDER
GUVNL invites tenders for setting up of Pilot Projects of 500
MW / 1000 MWh Standalone Battery Energy Storage Systems
in Gujarat through Tariff Based Competitive Bidding (Phase I)
followed by e-reverse auction. For tender documents please
visit the website www.bharat-electronictender.com and
www.guvnl.com. The last date of bid submission is 15.09.2022
Date:13/08/2022 General Manager (RE & IPP)

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16 SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi NEWS LIVEMINT.COM

ADIA to acquire 10%

in Aditya Birla Health
Torrent, Sembcorp in fray Centre set to
send medical
Insurance for ₹665 cr to buy Vector Green Energy device policy
for final nod
Swaraj Singh Dhanjal
swaraj.d@livemint.com Priyanka Sharma
MUMBAI priyanka.sharma@livemint.com
The deal is expected to have an equity value of ₹3,000 cr, enterprise value of about ₹5,000 cr NEW DELHI

T
he boards of Aditya Birla

T
Capital Ltd and unit Adi- he Department of Phar-
tya Birla Health Insur- Utpal Bhaskar maceuticals will shortly
ance Co. Ltd on Friday utpal.b@livemint.com circulate a draft note of
approved an investment of NEW DELHI the proposed new Medical
₹665 crore in the health insurer Device Policy 2022 for cabinet

T
by Abu Dhabi Investment orrent Power Ltd and Singa- approval that will seek to turn
Authority (ADIA). pore’s Sembcorp Industries India into a global manufactur-
The transaction valued Adi- Ltd are in the fray to buy US ing hub for medical devices.
tya Birla Health Insurance at The funds will be used to drive private equity firm Global All stakeholder consulta-
around ₹6,650 crore, accord- the health insurer’s growth. Infrastructure Partners’ (GIP) tions have been completed and
ing to a company statement. Indian clean energy platform Vector the government think tank
Aditya Birla Health Insur- ance began operations in Octo- Green Energy, said two people aware of NITI Aayog has asked the
ance is a 51:49 joint venture ber 2016. The insurer’s product the development, in what is set to department to prepare a mech-
between Aditya Birla Capital portfolio includes chronic care become one of the biggest clean energy anism to attract venture capital
and Momentum Metropolitan and incentivized wellness. It deals in India. funding and drive local pro-
Strategic Investments (Pty) Ltd, has a presence in over 4,800 Standard Chartered is running the duction of medical devices.
a unit of South Africa’s Momen- cities through branches, part- sale process for the transaction which is The aim is to make medical
tum Metropolitan Holdings ner offices, 14 bancassurance expected to have an equity value of devices one of the champion
Ltd. The deal is subject to statu- partners, and over 68,000 ₹3,000 crore and enterprise value of sectors and boost India’s
tory and regulatory approvals, direct selling agents. around ₹5,000 crore, the people cited 10-12% share of the global med-
including from the Insurance “We see significant potential above said requesting anonymity. ical devices industry.
Regulatory and Development in India’s health insurance sec- Vector Green Energy has 700 mega- The draft note envisages that
Authority of India. On comple- tor as penetration levels watt (MW) operational and 300 MW by 2047, India will be among
tion, ADIA will own a 9.99% increase, driven by higher under-construction wind and solar Vector Green Energy has 700MW operational and 300MW under-construction wind and solar energy assets. MINT the top five global manufactur-
stake, Aditya Birla Capital will awareness and broader eco- energy assets, besides another 1 gigawatt ing hubs in terms of value and
hold 45.91%, and Momentum nomic growth. Aditya Birla (GW) in the pipeline that is investment- appointing Standard Chartered to con- try undergoes an energy transition, and As per the scheme, dues of the discoms, technology for medical devi-
Metropolitan Holdings will Health Insurance has a strong ready. Some of these assets were duct the sale of Vector Green Energy electricity demand rebounds from the including late payment surcharges, will ces, and it will emerge as a
hold 44.1%. management team, a wellness- acquired from IDFC Alternatives in after the Andhra Pradesh high court declines seen during the deadly second be converted into equated monthly champion in critical compo-
The funds will first product 2018, and RattanIndia Group in Sep- ruled in favour of renewable energy wave of the pandemic. Peak electricity instalments (EMIs) ranging from 12-48 nents, cancer diagnostics, med-
be used to drive ADIA will now offering and a dif- tember 2020. developers over the state government’s demand in the country touched a record months depending upon the quantum ical imaging and ultrasonic
the health own a 9.99% ferentiated distri- Torrent and Sembcorp have been decision to reopen contracts they had high of 211 GW on 9 June. of arrears. The Vector Green Energy scans among others. India now
insurer’s growth. stake, Aditya Birla bution model. We active in India’s green energy space. signed under the previous N. Chandrab- Investor interest is also sustaining, deal is among several large clean energy ranks among the world’s top 20
“In recent Capital will hold look forward to While Torrent has an installed power abu Naidu government. “There are no given the government’s efforts to make deals in India that have either been final- global medical devices market,
times, health has partnering with generation capacity of 4.16 GW, of large green energy platforms or big state-run electricity distribution com- ized or in the pipeline. and is the 4th largest medical
45.91% in Aditya Aditya Birla Capi-
become a key which 1.06 GW is renewable capacity, assets left. Hence, the growing interest panies (discoms) financially stronger, Malaysia’s state-run oil and gas giant, devices market in Asia after
concern for all. Birla Health tal and Momen- Sembcorp’s India operations has a 5 Petroliam Nasional Bhd or Petronas Japan, China, and South Korea.
With its differen- Insurance Co tum Metropolitan GW portfolio through its units POwER SURGE in talks with ReNew Energy Global “We have received remarks
tiated Health- Holdings to sup- Sembcorp Energy India Ltd and PLC for setting up green energy from all the stakeholders and
First model, Adi- port the next Sembcorp Green Infra Ltd. Semb- PEAK electricity INDIA has 160.92 GW TORRENT has an SEMBCORP has a projects in India through joint ven- departments. They have
tya Birla Health Insurance is phase of Aditya Birla Health corp has a global portfolio of 15 GW, demand in the
country touched a
installed green
energy capacity
installed power
generation capacity
global portfolio of
15 GW, of which
tures. Also, private equity firm Actis accepted and supported the
well positioned to address this Insurance’s growth,” said of which 5.7GW is in renewable record high of 211 and 74.76 GW under of 4.16 GW, of which 5.7GW is in LLP has placed the winning bid for policy also. So, we have got a
concern while also protecting Hamad Shahwan Al Dhaheri, energy. A spokesperson for GIP in GW on 9 June implementation 1.06 GW is renewable renewable energy Kolkata-based Atha Group’s 400 very good response from all the
health through insurance. An executive director of the pri- an emailed response said, “As a mat- MW solar power assets at an enter- people,” said an official aware
investment from ADIA under- vate equities department at ter of policy, we don’t comment on prise value of around $270 million of the matter requesting ano-
scores the strong and unique ADIA. market speculation.” of investors,” said one of the two people with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as reported by Mint earlier. nymity. “In fact, NITI Aayog
business model of Aditya Birla India’s insurance sector has While a spokesperson for Standard cited above requesting anonymity. drawing attention to the ₹2.5 trillion Recently, a consortium led by the has told the Department of
Health Insurance and the fran- seen several private equity Chartered declined comment, spokes- India has an installed renewable worth of pending dues of gencos and world’s largest asset manager Black- Pharmaceuticals to raise the
chise we have created,” said investments over the years, persons for Vector Green Energy and energy capacity of 160.92 GW, with discoms. State-run Power Finance Corp. Rock and UAE sovereign wealth fund capacity of domestic manufac-
Vishakha Mulye, chief execu- attracted by the growth poten- Sembcorp Industries did not answer 74.76 GW under implementation. Ltd and unit REC Ltd are expected to Mubadala Investment Co. agreed to turing by exploring venture
tive of Aditya Birla Capital. tial, given insurance coverage is queries emailed on Monday evening. Global investors have been active in lend about ₹1.45 trillion to discoms invest ₹4,000 crore for a 10.53% stake in capital and private equity,” the
Aditya Birla Health Insur- among the lowest in the world. Mint reported on 28 March about GIP India’s green energy space as the coun- under the one-time settlement scheme. Tata Power Renewables. official said.

PFRDA allows NMDC explores mining lithium, nickel, cobalt abroad LIC invests ₹34k cr
payment via
UPI for pension
Rituraj Baruah
rituraj.baruah@livemint.com
in equity during Q1 ciated elements in Raichur dis- scheme for advanced chemis-
trict for the grant of prospect- try cells to boost battery manu-
NEW DELHI ing and mining operations. facturing in the country.
contributions According to the report, the On demerger of its steel Anirudh Laskar non-participating policies

N
MDC Ltd is exploring company had also submitted a plant at Nagarnar, Chhattis- anirudh.l@htlive.com (policies in which profits from
PTI opportunities overseas proposal to Jharkhand govern- garh, Deb said it is likely to be MUMBAI investments are not shared
feedback@livemint.com to mine lithium, nickel ment to reserve an area of 16.70 completed this quarter. Share- with policyholders). Our VNB

L
NEW DELHI and cobalt as the state-run iron square kilometre in Saraikela- holders and creditors of NMDC ife Insurance Corp. of (value of new business or the
ore producer looks to meet Kharswan district, of the state had approved the demerger of India (LIC) made net pur- exact value of business from

S
ubscribers of two pension
schemes of the Pension
Fund Regulatory and
Development Authority
(PFRDA) will be able to make
contributions through UPI as
well, the authority said on Fri-
day. Subscribers of National
Pension System (NPS) and Atal
Pension Yojana (APY) are
allowed to deposit their volun-
tary contributions under Direct
Remit (D-Remit) into tier-I/II
through net banking account
by using IMPS/NEFT/RTGS.
“Now, the contributions
through UPI is enabled to fur-
ther ease the process of depos-
iting contributions. The UPI
handle for the D Remit is
PFRDA.15digitVirtualAc-
count@axisbank,” the Pension
Fund Regulatory and Develop-
ment Authority said in a
release.
The PFRDA said contribu-
tions received before 9:30 AM
will be considered for invest-
ment on the same day, while
those after that will be counted
for next day investment.
The PFRDA-administered
strong demand in India which for grant of prospecting and the steel plant in June, which chases of shares worth sales of fresh policies) margin
is seeking to become a global mining operation will be subse- more than ₹34,000 crore from non-participating prod-
manufacturing hub for electric of copper, nickel, NMDC is also quently listed as from the equities market in ucts has increased. Growth in
vehicles. cobalt and molyb- exploring NMDC Steel Ltd. the fiscal first quarter, the new business is expected to be
Speaking to reporters on Fri- denum mineral. opportunities to Meanwhile, country’s largest insurer said good going ahead,” said M. R.
day, Sumit Deb, chairman and NMDC’s diversification strategies track India’s aim to boost The matter is mine gold in addressing a cur- on Friday, as it announced a Kumar, chairman, LIC.
managing director of NMDC, domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles. MINT being pursued tain raiser event sharply higher net profit of LIC’s profit would have
did not name the countries with the state gov-
Andhra Pradesh, for a conference ₹602.78 crore for the June been better had the insurer
where the company plans to NMDC’s diversification Limited, Hindustan Copper ernment to Tanzania and on Indian miner- quarter. not made a provisioning of
mine the three minerals, criti- strategies track India’s aim to Ltd and Mineral Exploration reserve the area, it Zimbabwe als and metals The state- ₹3,015.38 crore
cal to produce electric vehicle boost domestic manufacturing and Consultancy Ltd to acquire said. industry being owned insurer LIC made gross against diminu-
batteries. He said NMDC plans of batteries for electric vehicles. strategic mineral assets includ- India is looking organized by made gross pur- purchases of tion in value of
to start mining in Australia Lithium, nickel and cobalt ing lithium and cobalt overseas. to source minerals for manu- NMDC and FICCI on 23-24 chases of shares shares worth investments dur-
through Legacy Iron Ore Ltd. minerals are used in the pro- Deb said NMDC will also facturing EV batteries in a bid August in Delhi, Deb said that worth around ₹46,444 crore, ing the quarter.
NMDC holds 90.02% stake in duction of EV batteries. explore lithium reserves in to reduce dependence on given the vast mineral resource ₹46,444 crore, For the June
Australia’s Legacy Iron Ore Ltd. Other state-run companies India. In its annual report for China, the world’s largest base in India and the evolving while selling
while selling
quarter, the
NMDC is also exploring have also accelerated efforts to FY22, the company said it has maker of EV batteries, amid and easing business and regu- shares worth shares worth over insurer saw a
opportunities to mine gold in mine minerals abroad. In 2019, submitted a proposal to the geopolitical tensions between latory environment, interna- over ₹12,000 ₹12,000 crore 20.35% increase
Andhra Pradesh, and other Khanij Bidesh India Ltd was Karnataka government to the two nations. The govern- tional giants too are showing crore in the three in total premium
countries such as Tanzania and incorporated by state-owned reserve 24.95 square kilometre ment has also come up with a interest in the country’s mining months ended income to
Zimbabwe, he said Deb. National Aluminium Company area for lithium and other asso- production-linked incentive industry. June, said a company execu- ₹98,352 crore from ₹81,721
tive at a news conference to crore a year earlier.
announce the quarterly Expenses of management
results. LIC managed to (commission paid to agents
Most small drugmakers aren’t WHO-GMP certified sharply boost its net profit and other expenses) rose to
from ₹24.36 crore in the June ₹14,428.23 crore from
quarter last year by expanding ₹13,026.31 crore during the
its new business, changing the period under review.
Priyanka Sharma but only 2,006 pharma compa- minister of state for health and the Centre to launch the and become part of the global product mix and focusing Total premium income
priyanka.sharma@livemint.com nies are WHO-GMP certified. family welfare Bharati Pravin strengthening of pharmaceuti- supply chain. As part of the more on non-participating jumped 20.35% to ₹98,352
NEW DELHI The list is updated by Central Pawar is likely to participate in cal industries scheme. There are scheme, small drug makers are products. crore from ₹81,721 crore dur-
Drugs Standard Control Organi- person,” he said. over 80 pharma clusters across offered credit lines and interest “We continue to focus on ing the period.

C
two schemes NPS and APY are onsidering that only one- sation from time to time,” the In April, WHO India catering to subsidies for upgrading technol-
targeted towards organised and fifth of the small and official said, seeking anonymity. alleged that even The Centre has over 10,000 man- ogy, as well as up to ₹20 crore CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
unorganised sector employees, medium manufacturers “The Centre has started an Bharat Biotech started an ufacturing units. each for setting up facilities such
respectively. Introduced in of bulk and API (active pharma- outreach programme for such was not fully com- outreach The initiatives as research centres, testing labs Mint welcomes comments, suggestions or complaints about errors.
December 2003, it is manda- ceutical ingredient) drugs have SMEs operating in 10 locations pliant with the programme for under the scheme and effluent treatment plants
tory for central government been certified under the World for manufacturing world-class GMP norms for its are aimed at fur- across pharma clusters. Readers can alert the newsroom to any errors in the paper by
employees (except armed for- Health Organization’s good high-quality drugs so that they Covaxin manufac-
such SMEs ther enhancing “WHO-approval opens up emailing us, with your full name and address to
ces) who joined service from 1 manufacturing practices, the can become globally competi- turing unit in operating in 10 the capabilities of global opportunities for com-
feedback@livemint.com.

January 2004, to subscribe to
NPS. In May 2009, it was
extended to private and unor-
ganised sector on voluntary
basis. Corporate sector offers
NPS to their employees on
mandatory or voluntary basis.
Centre has launched an out-
reach programme to establish
India as a best-in-class pharma
hub, said an official in the know.
“As of now, India has around
6,790 SMEs involved in manu-
facturing bulk drugs and API,
tive and market leaders. Our
outreach programme is com-
pleted for SMEs in Bengaluru
and Ahmedabad. For the next
phase, Mumbai, Andhra Pra-
desh and Baddi in Himachal
Pradesh will be covered. The
India. Concerns locations the Indian pharma panies. It will be good for com- It is our policy to promptly respond to all complaints. Readers
over the lack of a sector through panies to participate in this ini- dissatisfied with the response or concerned about Mint’s journalistic
proper system to incentives, and tiative to upgrade quality stan- integrity may write directly to the editor by sending an email to
address such issues amid rising make it much more competitive dards for drugs and APIs,” said asktheeditor@livemint.com
demand for supporting existing in terms of both quality and cost Sudarshan Jain, secretary gen-
Mint’s journalistic Code of Conduct that governs our newsroom is
pharma clusters to improve pro- to help businesses get Schedule eral, Indian Pharmaceutical available at www.livemint.com
ductivity and quality, prompted M and WHO-GMP certifications Alliance (IPA).

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LIVEMINT.COM NEWS SAturDAy, 13 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 17

J&J to stop talc powder Canada Pension Plan co-invests around

$204 mn in India in April-June quarter
sales globally in 2023 Ranjani Raghavan
ranjani.raghavan@livemint.com
a net loss of $23 billion and a
negative 4.2% for fund returns
in the first quarter.

C
anada Pension Plan “Financial markets experi-
Investment Board has enced the most challenging
co-invested around first six months of the year in
Move comes years after firm pulled product in US, Canada amid continued lawsuits $204 million along with its pri- the last half century, and the
vate equity partners in India fund’s first fiscal quarter was
during the June quarter, not immune to the widespread
Bloomberg according to the pension fund’s decline. However, our active
feedback@livemint.com quarterly filing. management strategy – diver-
CPPIB made investments in sified across asset classes and

J
ohnson & Johnson said it plans to chemicals firm Sajjan India, geographies – moderated the
stop selling its legacy talc-based insuretech unicorn Acko and impact on the fund, preserving
baby-powder products globally in non-bank lender Kogta Finan- investment value,” John Gra-
2023, a move that comes amid con- cial (India) Ltd, it added. The pension fund has also acquired a 5% stake in Acko and a 9% ham, president and chief exec-
tinued legal battles and years after CVC Capital acquired the stake in Kogta Financial (India). ISTOCK utive, said in a statement.
the company discontinued the agro chemicals business of Saj- “The uncertain business and
product in the US and Canada. jan India in February for $700 by Multiples. It also invested investments in India and $800 investment conditions we
J&J said Thursday that it had made the million, out of which, CPPIB $333 million as a limited part- million was for startups in noted in the previous quarter
“commercial decision” to transition all its paid $120 million to pick up a ner in Sequoia Capital’s Asia Southeast Asia. Sequoia Capital continues, and we expect to see
baby powder products to use cornstarch 17% stake, it said in its quarterly Pacific fundraising, including has raised $9 billion across four this persist throughout the fis-
instead of talcum powder after conduct- report on Thursday. CPPIB’s funds for China, India and funds for investing in China, cal year. Our resilient portfolio
ing an assessment of its portfolio. The investment in Sajjan India was Southeast Asia. However, it did Bloomberg reported last week. is designed to create value over
health conglomerate, which maintains not publicly reported thus far. not provide a country-wise CPPIB also invested $150 mil- the very long term as demon-
the product is safe, has for almost a decade The pension fund acquired a split. The pension fund also lion in NewQuest Capital’s lat- strated by our continued strong
faced lawsuits accusing it of hiding cancer 5% stake for $50 million in backed Baring Private Equity est fund. Secondaries investor 10-year net return, even as we
risks tied to its talc-based baby powder. Acko and a 9% stake for $34 Asia’s with a $100 million credit NewQuest Capital is owned by expect to experience double-
“We continuously evaluate and opti- million in Kogta Financial investment for its $800 million the TPG Group, and typically digit percentage losses.”
mize our portfolio to best position the (India) as part of the transac- buyout of IGT Solutions. invests one-third of its corpus The results were driven by
business for long-term growth,” spokes- tions led by Multiples Private In June, Sequoia had said in India across companies and losses in public equity strate-
person Melissa Witt said in an emailed Equity. CPPIB is a general part- that it had raised $2.85 billion, private equity funds. gies, due to the broad decline in
statement. “Today’s decision is part of a J&J had sought bankruptcy protection for its newly created LTL Management LLC unit ner in several funds managed of which $2 billion was for Meanwhile, CPPIB reported equity markets, it added.
worldwide portfolio assessment, which last year after arguing it was struggling to contain the lawsuits . AP
evaluated several factors, including differ-
ences in demand for our products across stopped sales in North America more than unchanged.”
geographic regions and evolving con- two years ago. The delay in taking this step
sumer trends and preferences.”
Shares of the New Brunswick, New Jer-
is inexcusable.”
The health conglomerate has spent
years seeking ways to contain its legal lia-
Talcum powder has long been used in bilities. It faces 40,300 lawsuits in the US
Samsung heir wins presidential pardon
sey-based company rose less than 1% in baby products because the mineral keeps over its talc-based powders, according to
post-market trading and had fallen 2.3% skin dry and prevents diaper rash. The a company filing last month with the U.S. Bloomberg The decision clears the way complicate long-term plans alleged attempts to bribe a sit-
so far this year through Thursday’s close. mines that produce the powder, however, Securities and Exchange Commission. feedback@livemint.com for Korea’s most prominent for Samsung. ting president and win gov-
In May 2020, as J&J navi- J&J sought bankruptcy business scion to officially take Lee apologized to the ernment support for his suc-
TakIng a powder
S
gated thousands of lawsuits protection for its newly cre- amsung Electronics Co. the reins of the world’s biggest Korean public on Friday and cession.
accusing the product of caus- ated LTL Management LLC Vice Chairman Jay Y. smartphones- promised to “start The reinstatement will
ing some users’ cancers, the In May 2020, J&J The company put The health unit last year after arguing it Lee won a presidential mak. Lee’s return The decision anew.” “I will try allow him to rejoin the board
company pulled its talc-based pulled out its
talc-based powders
$2 billion into a trust
as part of the unit’s
conglomerate faces
40,300 lawsuits in
was struggling to contain the pardon from graft charges, is regarded as a clears the way for harder to give at the tech giant as well as
powders from the US and from the US and bankruptcy to the US over its talc- lawsuits. allowing him to formally take stabilizing force Samsung vice back to society travel overseas for deals.
Canadian markets, citing Canadian markets. resolve all talc claims based powders The company put $2 billion the helm of an electronics con- for a Korean chairman Jay Y. and grow “Samsung’s in a crisis as it
another “commercial deci- into a trust as part of the unit’s glomerate roiled by global economy buf- together,” Lee has lost its two strengths: tech-
Lee to officially
sion” based on declining bankruptcy to resolve all cur- demand and supply shocks. feted by inflation, said in a state- nology leadership and strict
sales. can also yield asbestos, a mineral once rent and future talc claims. In February, a South Korean President market disrup- take the reins of m e n t . The management,” said Park
“After decades of selling talc-based used in products such as building insula- judge said the case could proceed in order Yoon Suk Yeol cleared the heir tion from the the company 54-year-old Lee Ju-gun, head of corporate
products the company knew could cause tion that researchers have linked to can- to seek settlements, but his ruling is being to the country’s biggest com- Ukraine war and has been granted research at Leaders Index.
deadly cancers to unsuspecting women cers. Some consumer companies have appealed. pany of bribery charges, for logistics snarls a special pardon “There’s an absence of a con-
and men around the world, J&J has finally found corn starch can offer the same ben- Lawyers for former talc users have chal- which Lee spent 18 months in triggered by China’s Covid effective as of August 15, the trol tower making the right
done the right thing,” Leigh O’Dell, a law- efits of talc without the asbestos risk. lenged J&J’s move to have the unit seek prison before his release on lockdowns. Rising tensions country’s independence anni- decisions at the right time to
yer for former talc users, said in an J&J said Thursday that its “position on Chapter 11 protection to deal with the talc parole a year ago. Samsung’s between the US and China versary. He had initially been keep its leadership in the semi-
emailed statement Thursday. “They the safety of our cosmetic talc remains unit. shares rose 1.3% in Seoul. over chip technology also sentenced to 30 months for conductor industry.”
 New DeLHI, MUMBAI, BENGALURU, kOLkATA, CHENNAI, AHMEDABAD, HYDERABAD, CHANDIGARH*, PUNE* VOL. 16 NO. 193 Rs10.00 in Delhi-NCR; Rs11.00 outside Delhi-NCR. Mint is also available for Rs15.50 with Hindustan Times in Delhi-NCR only 20 PAGES

Saturday, August 13, 2022

Industrial production Johnson & Johnson to halt sales

livemint.com moderates in June uP14 of talc-based baby powderuP17

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Retail inflation eases Amit Burman resigns as Dabur

chairman, Mohit takes charge
DON’T MISS

to 5-month low in Jul Suneera Tandon

suneera.t@livemint.com
NEw DELHI
still overseas and recovering,
they said.
Amit Burman, the son of late
Cooling CPI-based inflation may allow RBI to go easy on rate hikes Gyan C. Burman, had spear-

A
mit Burman resigned headed Dabur’s foray into the
as chairman of pack- foods business by launching
Dilasha Seth aged goods company packaged fruit juices under
dilasha.seth@livemint.com
BENGALURU
HIttINg tHe BRAkeS Dabur India Ltd, with cousin
and vice-chairman Mohit tak-
the Real brand.
He had established Dabur
Reserve Bank tightens rules on
loan recovery tactics, agents
Inflation based on the Consumer Price Index cooled to 6.71% in July from 7.01% ing over the role. Foods as a wholly owned unit The Reserve Bank of India on Friday

R
etail inflation in India
dropped below the 7%
mark for the first time in
four months, easing some
pressure on the Reserve
Bank of India to pursue aggressive
monetary tightening.
Inflation based on the Consumer
Price Index (CPI) cooled to a five-
month low of 6.71% in July from
7.01% in the previous month, amid
improved supplies of vegetables
and easing edible oil prices, accord-
ing to data released by the ministry
of statistics and programme imple-
mentation (MoSPI) on Friday.
Still, retail inflation has remained
above the RBI’s upper tolerance band
of 6% for the seventh month in a row.
A Mint poll of 28 economists had
predicted the inflation at 6.78%
Economists caution that inflation
will likely inch up over the next
couple of months due to last year’s
low base, even as easing energy and
commodity prices would help cool
in June amid improved supplies of vegetables and easing edible oil prices. The former chairman, who of Dabur and took on the tightened rules for loan recovery agents
took over the position in July responsibilities as the chief following complaints of unfair recovery
Consumer Price Index-based inflation (in %) practices and strong-arm tactics, and told
8
2019, will continue as a non- executive of this venture. He
7.59 executive director. stepped down as the CEO of banks to ensure the agents do not harass
Amit Burman’s resignation Burman will continue as a non- Dabur Foods when the com- borrowers during collection. >P14
7
was effective 10 August, executive director at Dabur. MINT pany was merged into Dabur
6.71 Dabur India said in a regula- India in July 2007 and was
6
tory filing on Friday, when it Dabur India did not specify then appointed the vice-chair- ADIA to acquire 10% in Aditya
held its 47th annual share- the reasons for Amit Burman’s man of Dabur India. Birla Health Insurance for ₹665 cr
5
RBI's upper
tolerance limit
holders’ meeting. resignation, and queries sent Burman also set up the food The boards of Aditya Birla Capital and unit Aditya
4 for inflation Mohit Burman, the former to the company remained retailing venture, Lite Bite Birla Health Insurance Co. on Friday approved an
non-executive vice-chairman unanswered. Foods, which operates restau- investment of ₹665 crore in the health insurer by
of Dabur India, has been However, people familiar rant brands such as Punjab Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The transaction
3
Jan 2020 Jul 2022 appointed as the non-execu- with the development said the Grill and Zambar. values Aditya Birla Health Insurance at around
Source: National Statistical Office tive chairman for five years 54-year-old entrepreneur In FY22, the maker of Dabur ₹6,650 crore, according to the company. >P16
from 11 August. stepped down citing personal Chyawanprash and Vatika
NEAR-TERM TREND The company also named reasons. shampoo crossed ₹10,000
RetAIL inflation is above INfLAtIoN may inch eASINg commodity Saket Burman as the non-ex- In July last year, Burman crore in consolidated annual Author Salman Rushdie attacked
RBI’s tolerance band of 6% up in Aug and Sep due and energy prices may ecutive vice-chairman for five was hospitalized in London on stage in New York state
for a seventh month to last year’s low base help cool inflation years. following an injury. Burman is TURN TO PAGE 14
Author Salman Rushdie, whose writings made him
the target of an Iranian fatwa and numerous death
threats that forced him into exile, was attacked on
rice, she added. the previous month. stage ahead of a lecture on Friday in New York state.
Given the base effect, Nayar cau-
tioned that the next two CPI inflation
prints could rise slightly from 6.7% in
Edible oil inflation moderated to
7.52% in July from 9.36% in the pre-
vious month. The rate of price rise in
Call for CEO change hits Paytm Video footage posted on social media showed
people rushing to his aid after he was attacked.

inflationary pressures.
Nevertheless, further rate hikes by
the Reserve Bank of India’s mone-
tary policy committee (MPC) are
expected over the next few months.
RBI has projected inflation at 6.7%
July, “in spite of which we believe
that the average inflation for the
ongoing quarter will modestly trail
the MPC’s projection of 7.1%.”
RBI’s monetary policy panel
raised the repo rate for the third time
fruits, however, accelerated to 6.41%
from 3.1%.
“The near-term inflation outlook
remains highly uncertain, as the
uneven nature of this year’s mon-
soon and a weak rupee currency may
Joseph Rai & loan value grew more than six-
Shubhobrota Devroy fold to ₹2,090 crore.
“We continue to work with
NEw DELHI our partners to review the
evolving macro environment,
under pressure after Paytm’s
proposal to reappoint Vijay
Shekhar Sharma as the chief
executive officer for another
five years was opposed by
NMDC explores mining lithium,
nickel and cobalt overseas
NMDC Ltd is exploring opportunities
overseas to mine lithium, nickel and cobalt
as the state-run iron ore producer looks to

for FY23. “Fears of a global recession
and fresh geopolitical uncertainties
have led to a correction in commod-
ity prices from the peak seen in mid-
June, which bodes well for easing
domestic input cost pressures and
the core-CPI inflation in the next few
months,” said Aditi Nayar, chief
economist, ICRA.
In contrast, the robust domestic
demand for services poses risks,
given its significant share in the CPI
basket (of 23.4%), along with the
significant lag in kharif sowing of
in a row earlier this month, taking
the policy rate to the pre-pandemic
level of 5.4%.
The moderation in CPI inflation
was led by easing food inflation to
6.71% in July from 7.56% in June.
The consumer food price index,
which includes both manufactured
and non-manufactured food arti-
cles, showed inflation easing to
6.75% from 7.75% in the previous
month.
Inflation in the case of vegetables
eased to 10.9% in July from 17.37% in
lessen the effectiveness of govern-
ment efforts to contain consumer
price increases,” said D.R.E. Reddy,
chief executive officer (CEO) and
managing partner, CRCL LLP, a
food caterer.
Clothing and footwear inflation
eased marginally to 9.91% from
9.52% in June.
Fuel inflation also accelerated to
11.76% from 10.91%.
Brent crude oil prices eased to $99
TURN TO PAGE 14
S
hares of One97 Commu-
nications, the parent of
Paytm, fell nearly 5% on
Friday, following a report by an
advisory firm opposing its chief
Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s reap-
pointment as chief executive
and raising doubts on the com-
pany’s path to profitability.
Separately, in a statement to
the exchanges on Friday,
Paytm said its loan disbursals
in July grew fourfold to 2.9
million. However, the total
and, accordingly, slight mod-
eration may be expected in our
growth. That said, we continue
to see ample growth and upsell
opportunities in this business
and are focusing on the quality
of the book (given the possibil-
ity of macro headwinds),” the
disclosure noted.
However, this was not
enough for Paytm’s shares to
recover. Shares of Paytm fell
4.82% to ₹786 on BSE.
The company’s shares came
advisory firm Institutional
Investor Advisory Services
India Ltd (IiAS).
In a detailed report, the
advisory firm also flagged the
remuneration decided for the
post.
Sharma’s FY23 remunera-
tion is estimated at ₹796.28
crore, comprising 21 million
stock options at an exercise
price of ₹9, a deep discount to
TURN TO PAGE 14
meet strong demand in India which is
seeking to become a global manufacturing
hub for electric vehicles. >P16
LIC reports ₹602.78 crore net
profit for April-June quarter
Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC) made net
purchases of shares worth more than ₹34,000
crore from the equities market in the fiscal first
quarter, the country’s largest insurer said on
Friday, as it announced a sharply higher net
profit of ₹602.78 crore for the June quarter.>P16

Syrma SGS Technology has priced its public offering in

the range of ₹209-220 per share. HT

Syrma SGS IPO

gets subscribed
37% on first day
Swaraj Singh Dhanjal fied institutional buyers are
swaraj.d@livemint.com yet to put in their bids.
MUMBAI The reserved portion
of non-institutional

R
etail investors
flocked to the initial
public offering
(IPO) of Syrma SGS Tech-
nology, the first share sale
to hit the markets since
May, fuelling an overall
37% subscription on the
first day of the IPO.
Scorching inflation
and interest rate hikes
worldwide prompted
foreign investors to pull
out money from emerg-
ing markets in the last
few months, bringing
down stocks.
However, since July, the
Indian markets have seen a
strong upward momentum
as foreign investors turned
net buyers, allowing com-
panies such as Syrma to
launch their share sales.
The Syrma IPO’s retail
investor portion was sub-
scribed the highest among
all categories at 69%. Quali-
investors witnessed a
subscription of 13%. The
public issue will close on
18 August.
Syrma is a provider of
electronic design and
manufacturing services
for global and domestic
original design and equip-
ment manufacturers.
The company has
priced its public offering
in the range of ₹209-220
per share. The IPO con-
sists of a fresh issue of
equity shares aggregating
to ₹766 crore and an offer
for sale (OFS) of up to
3,369,360 equity shares.
Ahead of its issue open-
ing, Syrma SGS raised
₹252 crore from marquee
investors such as Nomura,
Eastspring Investments,
Franklin Templeton, Tata
Mutual Fund, ICICI Pru-
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