NEW DELHI, MuMbAI, bENGALuRu, kOLkATA, CHENNAI, AHMEDAbAD, HyDERAbAD, CHANDIGARH*, puNE* VOL. 16 NO. 205 Rs10.

Rs10.00 in Delhi-NCR; Rs11.00 outside Delhi-NCR. Mint is also available for Rs15.50 with Hindustan Times in Delhi-NCR only 16 pAGES

THE POWER OF MOHSIN

HAMID’S SENTENCES
SATURDAY, AuGuST 27 2022 With his new novel, The Last White
Man, out this week, author Mohsin
Hamid talks about the complexity of
race relations, how sentence struc-
ture can hope to influence mindset
change, and why love always
finds space between big
ideas in his writing
SEE PAGE 12

GET READY FOR HIGHER RATES, SIGNALS FED CHAIR JEROME POWELL | PAGE 16

CHECKING
INTO SPACE
IN juST AbOuT A DECADE, HuMANS wILL LIVE,
wORk AND HOLIDAy IN SpACE. LOuNGE TAkES A
LOOk AT THE TECHNOLOGIES bEING DEVELOpED
TO MAkE SpACE TRAVEL pOSSIbLE

GAME THEORy
Let’s debate the GOATs, but keep
nuance and curiosity alive
STyLE
How to add flair
to the male closet
TASTE
The little luxuries
of baked goodness
ZOOM
The art and science of
space photography
02 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi FIRST

WEEKEND
A NOTE FROM
THE EDITOR
NEW ON SCREENS As ‘The Walking Dead’ draws to a close, another
TO-DOs
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN
George R.R. Martin series spreads its wings

Out of
this world AN ECLECtIC ARt
ExPERIENCE

A
ISTOCKPHOTO hmedabad-based Iram
Art Gallery will be pre-
senting a group show,
Riyāz, in Delhi. Curated by Ina
Puri, it will feature artists such as
Manu Parekh, Amit Ambalal,
Madhvi Parekh, P. Daroz and
Ranbir Kaleka, besides the work
of masters such as the late K.G.
Subramanyan. Riyāz has been
divided into sections. Deepa
Parekh and Bapi Das showcase
textile and embroidery. Naveen
Kishore’s photographs from the
Performing The Goddess series
NEVER HAVE I EVER will be displayed alongside Man-
Never Have I Ever is back, and the love triangle is now almost a quadrilateral thanks to the addition of desi hottie Nirdesh. isha Gera Baswani’s series on
Inherent Oedipal complex notwithstanding, he is an interesting addition to a show that continues to draw on too many south artists and their studios. There
Indian stereotypes but is still fairly entertaining. While Maitreyi Ramakrishnan’s Devi continues to have a meltdown too will also be on-site installations
many and is disturbingly obsessed with losing her virginity, she also matures considerably this season. (Netflix) by Megha Joshi and Debashish
Almost every one of us—from the kid next door to Tencent Mukherjee. Bikaner House,
founder Pony Ma—has been obsessed with celestial phenomena Delhi, 31 August-4 September,
at some point in our lives, and maybe even dreamt of studying or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 11am-8pm
travelling among the stars. Space travel, as one of our stories The first episode felt like a familiar
explains this week, may not be that far in the future. In about 10 world, even though it’s set 200 years
years, we might be working or vacationing in space and returning before Game Of Thrones. Viewers didn’t
home to Earth. From India’s Gaganyaan programme to the US’ seem to mind, with the pilot, co-written
Artemis missions, scientists around the world are working on by George R.R. Martin, racking up
ways to send more humans into space. Space flight has been part record numbers. The series is about the
of human endeavour for decades, and now, researchers are bloody succession battles in House
developing everything from solar arrays to generate energy on Targaryen after King Viserys I names
the Moon to self-assembling tiles to build “homes” there. As we his daughter Rhaenyra his heir. (Dis-
discover in this issue, travelling in space isn’t just about the thrill ney+ Hotstar)
of the unknown, it could also make life on Earth so much richer.
Yet, almost every photograph of Earth, taken from space,
shows that this planet, right now, is the best place for us to live.
Don’t take my word for it: We have a story on space imagery, the
science and art that goes into photographing Earth and other RhYME ANd REASON
planets and galaxies. Each of these images—from “Earthrise” to

T
more recent marvels of colour and drama taken by the James he Bengaluru Poetry
Webb Space Telescope—tells a story about the diversity of Earth. INSIDE THE MIND OF A CAT Festival is back in a
Or as Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian citizen in space, continues This hour-long documentary, featuring cat researchers and trainers, throws physical format after a
to say—decades after he was part of an Indo-Soviet mission—it is light on many facets of cat psychology; for instance, cats are capable of picking two-year hiatus. To be held
only in space that one realises the value of the planet on which we up the cultural nuances of the country they are in. American house cats don’t over the weekend, this year’s
live. It’s a thought that many who have explored the outer feel nervous in new spaces; it’s the opposite with Japanese cats. Even if you event will see poets practising
reaches have echoed. Maya Angelou’s version of this truth is aren’t too fond of felines, you should find this Netflix documentary fascinating. in a variety of languages taking
more poetic: We, this people, on a small and lonely planet/ Travel- (Netflix) part, with performances in
ing through casual space/ Past aloof stars, across the way of indif- verse and song. “Bengaluru
ferent suns…. We must confess that we are the possible/ We are the Poetry Festival is coming with
miraculous, the true wonder of this world. THE WALKING DEAD songs and strange new
Lounge columnist Rohit Brijnath makes a similar point when The Walking Dead (TWD) has amassed a rhapsodies, with magic poems,
he says sports fans need to stop obsessing about GOATs and cult following since its debut more than a shock poems and poems that
player stats and instead be amazed by the sheer achievement of decade ago. The show, set in the aftermath whisper tenderly. Verse is
individual sportspersons. Mohsin Hamid discusses his latest of a zombie apocalypse where survivors flying at you,” writes Shinie
novel, talking about the nature of change, and how punctuation battle to stay alive, has reached its conclu- Antony, the festival director, in
creates a space to change perspectives in narratives. We also sion with season 11, which is divided into the press note. The lineup
have suggestions on what to watch, eat and do, and ideas to three parts of eight episodes each. TWD has includes Akhil Katyal, Anita
brighten up your wardrobe, whether you are planning a trip to lost some central characters along the way Nair, Deepti Naval and Priya
space or to the office. but has managed to keep viewers hooked. Sarukkai Chabria. Arunoday
While 16 episodes are available on the AMC Singh’s debut poetry collection
Write to the Lounge editor shalini.umachandran@htlive.com network, viewers in India can catch the first will also be unveiled at the
@shalinimb eight episodes. (Netflix) event. The Leela Palace, 27-28
August
Compiled by Uday Bhatia, Rashmi Menon, Nitin Sreedhar and Preeti Zachariah. —Compiled by Avantika Bhuyan

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ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH FROM ISTOCKPHOTO


Enough with this bleating about GOATs
GAME
THEORY
ROHIT
B R I J N AT H
L
ast week I met a dead man. His
name is Cornelius Warmerdam
and I had never heard of him till I
started reading up on pole-vaulting.
Armand Duplantis, the current world
record holder, told me at the Tokyo
Olympics that he had a pit in his back-
yard. Warmerdam started jumping in
the late 1920s while using a branch from
a peach tree.
How do you compare them?
One man lands on a plush landing
pad, the other fell on to sawdust.
Duplantis has Olympic gold, Warmer-
dam had none because his best coin-
cided with World War II.
How do you separate such people?
Duplantis, who makes the vault feel
like athletic poetry, breaks world
records with impunity now; Warmer-
dam jumped 43 times over 15ft when no
other man could and his outdoor record
lasted 15 years.
So who’s better? Can you even tell?
But don’t worry because someone
will casually slap the most overused
acronym in sport next to one name.
GOAT.
There are apparently one billion
goats across the planet and apparently
almost that many two-legged ones in
sport. There is no more trite, overused
four-letter word to be found these days.
We—yes, me too—have taken the beast
that drives Thor’s chariots, capitalised it
into G.O.A.T., squashed the sweeping
beauty of talent into ugly shorthand,
and stuck it on to every passing athlete
and coach we can find.
In just the past week, I found refer-
ences to Neeraj Chopra, Tom Brady,
Bill Russell, Tiger Woods, Serena Will-
iams, Babe Ruth, Amanda Nunes and
Bill Belichick as the Greatest Of All
Time. There are also Would-Be
GOATS and the Goatiest of GOATS and
I am terrified of looking further in case
I find Alex Honnold referred to as the
Mountain GOAT.
Medium Talk
Pet care at festival time
WIZARD OF PAWS
It’s best to restrict
access to spaces where
‘pujas’ are performed to
keep your pets safe
Nameeta Nadkarni
W
ith covid-19 restrictions lifted,
Ganesh Chaturthi will be cele-
brated in all its splendour after
a two-year gap. During the 10 days of cel-
ebration, one can count on loudspeakers
playing music constantly. Many families
also bring home a Ganesh idol, worship-
ping it for 10 days before immersing it.
For young pets, this may be both novel
and perplexing. Here are a few things to
keep in mind.
— Restrict access to the place where
you install the idol. Pets are curious by
nature and some of the items used in the
puja ritual can be harmful for them.
— To prevent your pet from accessing
the food offerings, you might need to cre-
ate collapsible barriers or use the furni-
ture you already have to limit access. You
can consider keeping the room with the
idol locked at night. Cats tend to climb on
furniture, so you might want to keep your
puja spread in an area they cannot reach.
— Betel nuts and camphor, in particu-
lar, can be dangerous when ingested.
Betel nuts cause gastrointestinal irrita-
tion in pets; they can lead to vomiting,
blood in stools, diarrhoea and loss of
appetite. Camphor may result in neuro-
logical symptoms like seizures, which
can be fatal.
— Don’t apply vermillion (tilak) on your
pet’s forehead. It can contain dangerous
amounts of lead, which can get absorbed
through the skin and have consequences,
though it is rare.
— The ornaments used to adorn the
altar can be harmful if consumed. Metal
objects can cause severe toxicity if swal-
lowed. Animals tend to nibble at the
polystyrene sheets used as a backdrop for
the pedestal, and this can be a choking
hazard. I once had to extract a Laxmi foot
sticker from a Beagle’s stomach even
though it had been firmly attached to the
floor in the puja room. It caused a stom-
ach ulcer.
— Loud noises can upset pets. During
the aarti hours, keep them in a private,
Debating skill is a joyous activity and
ranking athletes is essential to the con-
versation of sport. But mostly we under-
stood that this was just idle boasting
between pals about something no one
could be sure of. But now, in a time of
overstated labels, GOAT is like an edict,
as serious a compliment as a statue, one
athlete often elevated by effectively
diminishing another.
Ah, we say, but Federer didn’t win ...
We used to bring anticipation to the
arena, now we bring measuring tapes.
We put on TVs and pull out a slide rule.
We throw statistics as unthinkingly as
we do confetti. These days we insist
Rafael Nadal is the GOAT in June and
by January we claim it is Novak Djok-
ovic. The Greatest Of All Time changes
The smoke and noise during festivals can have adverse consequences for pets.
secure area in the home where they will
not be overwhelmed by the noise and
bustle. This area can be their haven if
they are unnerved by the guests.
— Exercise caution if your pet is nearby
during the aarti since the fire and
incense smoke can exacerbate illness in
asthmatic pets.
— If your pet suffers a burn injury,
douse the area in cold water and consult
a veterinarian.
— Although it is only natural to want to
give pets the laddoos and modaks specific
to this occasion, remember that their
digestive systems cannot process these
delicacies. Avoid laddoos that contain
raisins or other dried fruits. You should
be careful too about how many sweets
Though you may want to
share ‘laddoos’ and ‘modaks’
with your pets, remember
that their digestive systems
cannot process these
delicacies
FIRST
by the season.
The need to be immediately wise is
erasing wonder. How athletes play is
overshadowed by who won. Separating
them seems more urgent than what
they are fashioning. Is winning all we
get from sport?
As my remaining hair greys, I guess I
am just more crotchety, a scowling
defender of older athletes who tend to
get shouldered aside in the GOAT
debate. The dead have few defenders.
The retired always look slower. Rod
Laver had two Grand Slams. Two. And
he’s shrugged off with an Oh, Three Of
The Slams Were On Grass Those Days
and The Competition Was Thin.
This debate has been good for me
because it has made me read a little
More than small talk
ISTOCKPHOTO
you allow your pets. Too many might
lead to pancreatitis. Chocolate is poison-
ous for both dogs and cats. No treat
should contain the sugar substitute xyli-
tol because it can lower their blood sugar
levels quickly.
— The days of visarjan (idol immersion)
can be almost carnival-like. You may
need to alter your pet’s usual walk route
because the raucous sounds of a dhol can
make it anxious.
— Make sure your pets have current ID
tags, so that they can be helped to return
home if they bolt in fear. This is most
likely to happen with pandemic pets that
have no experience of such loud sounds.
— Close the windows at home if they
are afraid of loud noises. During a visar-
jan parade, playing calming music or
turning on the television may help dogs
who are afraid of noise.
— You could even consider putting
sensitive pets through a noise desensiti-
sation programme as the festival season
approaches.
— Don’t take your pet in a public visar-
jan procession unless you are certain it
can cope with the noise and crowds.
Nameeta Nadkarni is a practising vet-
erinary soft tissue surgeon and pet blogger
from Mumbai.
Great athletes deserve from
us what they bring to sport.
Nuance and curiosity.
Let’s keep arguing about
them but go easy with
our rubber stamps
Scan the QR code to
watch the full event.
Presented by: Powered by:
SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
GETTY IMAGES
Muhammad Ali knocked out Sonny
Liston during their title fight in one
minute in the first round in
Lewiston, Maine, US, in 1965.
deeper. Last week I started Unforgivable
Blackness, Jack Johnson’s biography by
Geoffrey C. Ward, and also discovered
Betty Robinson. The first Olympic
100m champion in 1928, Robinson was
grievously wounded in a plane crash in
1931 and was reportedly first taken to a
mortician. It took over a year for her to
walk properly again and she could no
longer bend for the start. So she won
gold in the 4x100m relay in 1936. You
think she should figure in any Greatest
Sprinter conversation?
The more I know the less sure I am.
Not just about who the Greatest Of All
Time is in anything, or if there is indeed
such a thing, or on what basis. Is it just
medals? What about eras and environ-
ment? In Ward’s book, he quotes
WATCH YOUR FAVORITE
STARS AT THE GREATEST
CELEBRATION OF STYLE
Tune in to our social media handles to watch some
of the country’s biggest celebrities being honored at
HT India’s Most Stylish 2022.
Dining Partner: Beauty Partner: Hospitality Partner:
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Charles A. Dana, editor of The New York
Sun, who warned in 1895 as Johnson
started emerging: “We are in the midst
of a growing menace. The black man is
rapidly forging to the front ranks in ath-
letics, especially in the field of fisticuffs.
We are in the midst of a black rise
against white supremacy.”
An athlete’s contribution surely is
more than cup and certificate and size
of trophy room. It is where they come
from and what they said and the auto-
graphs they gave and injustices they
fought and styles they owned and occa-
sions they rose to. Their stories are orig-
inal, their contributions different, their
motivations contrasting, their rise
unique. When we throw them into one
vast GOAT bucket, we judge them
through the same dull lens.
Are all runs the same? Slams, wickets,
baskets, gymnastic vaults? Is a 100m
butterfly Olympic gold and a mixed
doubles tennis gold equal in weight?
Modern athletes face greater depth,
harder tours, tougher scrutiny. Older
athletes had little money, used primi-
tive equipment and were told not to
drink water because it would bloat
them. Emil Zátopek trained in heavy
army boots and Jim Thorpe rewrote
decathlon records at the 1912 Olympics
while wearing mismatched shoes. If you
don’t factor history into it, sport just
looks hollow.
Great athletes deserve from us what
they bring to sport. Nuance and curios-
ity. Let’s keep arguing about them but
go easy with our rubber stamps. GOAT
is something athletes rarely say about
themselves, especially since their body
of work is unfinished.
Unless they are Muhammad Ali, for
whom every exception can be made.
But even he, after dismantling Sonny
Liston in 1964, only used one letter of
the GOAT. He came to the press confer-
ence and asked the sportswriters, most
of whom had thought he had no chance,
“Who’s the Greatest?”
It was a line for all time.
Rohit Brijnath is an assistant sports
editor at The Straits Times, Singapore,
and a co-author of Abhinav Bindra’s
book A Shot At History: My Obsessive
Journey To Olympic Gold.
@rohitdbrijnath
India’s Most Stylish 2022
Event designed & Entertainment
scripted by: Partner:
htTweets www.hindustantimes.com
04 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi
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ost great ideas start as
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mind, the entries for Nasa’s Space
Place Art Challenge take on new
meaning. The US space agency’s
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This month’s entries, based on a
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ritish-American journalist Jon
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internet era through the events that
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(he posted a politically incorrect joke
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t’s very difficult to find that “one”
favourite TV show or documentary,
given the embarrassment of riches
we all have on streaming platforms.
But one of my favourite travel
documentaries, Somebody Feed Phil, is
set to return for a sixth season on
Netflix. The popular food and travel
docu-series is hosted by Philip
Rosenthal, best known as the creator
of the sitcom Everybody Loves
Raymond. Rosenthal travels the world
—from Buenos Aires and New York to
Oaxaca—in search of different
cuisines. But the series is about more
than just food. Rosenthal’s love for
architecture and meeting new people
makes the series a happy watch even
for those who are not so keen on the
food trail. The sixth season, along with
the launch of a companion cookbook
around the series, is expected to
launch in October.
—Nitin Sreedhar
‘Crimes Of The
Future’: beautiful
on the inside
‘Crimes Of The Future’ is a grotesque and acidly
funny addition to the Cronenberg oeuvre
Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux in ‘Crimes Of The Future’.
Uday Bhatia
uday.b@htlive.com
T
here’s a scene in David Cronenberg’s ExistenZ (1999), with Jude Law
and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a Chinese restaurant. The server places a
large mutant amphibian of some kind in front of them. It looks vile. “I
have just lost my appetite,” Law says. “A shame,” the server replies. “Mutant
reptiles provide new and previously unimagined taste sensations.” And so
Law starts eating, breaking off pieces, sucking at the slimy flesh. As if in a
dream, he simultaneously fits the bones and exoskeleton in the shape of a
gun. Once it’s assembled, he shoots
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I would recommend watching this WORLD VIEW
scene on YouTube even if you don’t
want to watch ExistenZ. It’s not only A look at what’s making waves
disgusting, it’s hilarious and difficult on the global cinema scene
to dislodge from your brain. When I
saw it recently, I realised the scene works only because of the frank delight
Cronenberg takes in the physicality of what’s going on. As Law slurps and
crunches for two minutes, the viewer has no choice but to imagine what it
must taste like.
The same luxuriation in the body and its outer limits suffuses Cronenberg’s
new film, Crimes Of The Future (streaming on MUBI). Much of the director’s
work is lumped under “body horror” but this is an inadequate term. Cronen-
berg does not seem to feel horror at what bodies can do, or be. Instead, there’s
a sense of delight and exploration—whether it’s the mutant amphibian on the
plate in ExistenZ or the mutant organs in Crimes Of The Future. An unspeci-
fied number of years in the future, physical pain has been all but eliminated.
Surgeries can be performed on people without sedation—which is what
Caprice (Léa Seydoux) does on her husband, Saul (Viggo Mortensen), in front
of a live audience.
Saul, however, is not without pain. When we first meet him, he’s in a special
bed that resembles the hard brown shell of a crustacean, suspended from the
ceiling by thick shoots. We later see him in a chair designed to help him swal-
low food. These problems exist because of a condition in which Saul’s body
grows vestigial organs. It is these organs that Caprice removes in their trans-
gressive performance art shows, massaging a frog-like console attached to her
midriff which controls the machine that cuts Saul open.
Their performance is witnessed by Wippet (Don McKellar) and Timlin
(Kristen Stewart), bureaucrats with the national organ registry. They are toxic
superfans of Saul and Caprice’s enigmatic creators. Timlin, in particular, can’t
help herself, whispering “Surgery is the new sex” into Saul’s ear as his wife
looks on disapprovingly. She’s right, though—Saul does seem in a sort of
coital bliss when being operated on, or later, when Caprice, in the film’s most
blatantly provocative scene, fellates an
opening in his stomach. Saul’s
reply is weary (“Does there
have to be new sex?”) but
Cronenberg has always been
on the lookout for the new sex,
which is rarely sensual, and,
more often than not, linked
with pain and metamorphosis.
Saul, whose condition makes
him a cult hero of sorts, is
sought out by radical evolution-
ists, who have modified their
bodies to be able to digest plas-
tic. One of them offers his dead
son—whom we see eat a waste-
bin at the start of the film—to the
couple as a subject for a live
autopsy. They are conflicted—
but also tempted. The evolution-
ists eat purple bars made of syn-
thetic material, a clever variation on the famous conclusion to Soylent Green
(1973): Are those eating the bars even people?
Cronenberg and Mortensen are one of the underrated director-actor pairs
of the last two decades: the neo-noirs A History Of Violence (2005) and Eastern
Promises (2007) and the Sigmund Freud-Carl Jung film A Dangerous Method.
(2011). Cronenberg always seems to unleash something in the actor which
other directors don’t. Here he gives a tremendous physical performance,
punctuating his scenes with a series of hacking coughs, throat clearing,
wheezes and groans. Saul’s sardonic outlook is a nice match for Caprice’s
more emotional way of being, Seydoux, as always, finding her way to the
bruised heart of her character. But it’s Stewart’s performance that’s the bold-
est—and will most likely divide opinions. She takes all the nervous tics and
gestures that so infuriate her critics and crams them into the few scenes she
has. Her sentences emerge in a rush, like air escaping a balloon. It’s difficult to
tell if the character is supposed to unnerve everyone around her, or whether
it’s just everyone reacting to Stewart’s choices.
It might seem strange but Crimes Of The Future, along with being gross and
provocative as advertised, is a very funny film. Cronenberg’s last two films,
Cosmopolis (2012) and Maps To The Stars (2014), have their adherents but I
think Crimes achieves more convincingly in its deadpan tone. There’s a New
Vice Unit; Wippet jokingly announces their motto as “no crime like the
present”. There’s an “inner beauty pageant—for tattooed body organs. The
exchanges between Saul and Timlin have the pregnant pauses and awkward-
ness of cringe comedy.There’s a scene where she keeps advancing towards
him with her nervous fluttering energy. They end up kissing but then Saul
disengages, saying, “I am not very good at the old sex.”
Crimes Of The Future, like most Cronenberg films, lends itself to all sorts of
interpretations. I, however, kept losing myself in the film’s brilliant surface:
the pull and push of diverse acting styles, the brilliantly tactile beds and chairs
that look like torture devices. Meaning is found not just in metaphor. Some-
times it hides in plain sight, like a fish gun, or a young boy’s tattooed heart.
06 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi TASTE

THE LITTLE LUXURIES

ISTOCKPHOTO

OF BAKED GOODNESS
Why are Mumbai’s
premium dining
restaurants opening
bakeries, balancing
everyday staples TEA NANNY
with indulgent treats?
Jahnabee Borah
jahnabee.b@htlive.com
The golden
feel of home
T
hese are the best of times
for bread lovers in Mum-
bai, with multiple tempt- Aravinda Anantharaman
ing options for buttery

croissants, high-quality
sourdoughs and light-as-air puff pastries.
The bakery space, especially the premium
segment, has been expanding and evolv-
ing, with restaurants entering the space
too. This weekend marks the arrival of the
latest entrant: Aditi Dugar, founder of the
fine-dining Masque, is launching a baking
venture, the delivery-focused Twenty-
Seven Bakehouse.
Apart from everyday breads, it will have
alfajores (an Argentinian cookie sand-
wiched with dulce de leche), Goan chorizo
pot pies and za’atar croissants.
So far, the premium bakery space in Mum-
bai had been defined by brands like Le15 and
Theobroma, and, more recently, cafés such as
Subko. Now, stand-alone restaurants—like
Masque—are joining the party, with products
priced at an average of ₹250-300.
To some extent, the rise in popularity of
baked products can be traced to the pandemic:
People hemmed in by fear and disease took
refuge in small luxuries. Sourdough went
viral, breads from around the world found a
firm footing. Home bakers took over the con-
versation, with the Israeli babka emerging as
a hot favourite.
Restaurants began moving into
this space, premium hospital-
ity groups set up delivery-
only bakeries and cafés.
It makes business
sense. For, in the case
of stand-alone insti-
tutions with limited
access, especially in
the premium dining
space, a delivery-
only format enables
a wider audience
while keeping the
brand ethos intact.
Today, Mumbai is home
to the delivery-only Mag St
Bread Co. from the founders of
The Table, a fine-dining restaurant; last
year, they also set up a café, Mag St Cafe. The
Oberoi Group has marked its presence with
the premium restaurant-cum-café Cou Cou
and Seefah, one of the city’s most popular
Asian restaurants, has launched the delivery-
only Seefah Bakery.
Almost all of them offer breads from differ-
ent corners of the world—from pithivier (an
enclosed French pie) to kouign amman (a
sweet, sticky and buttery Breton cake) and
alfajores. Customers are gobbling it up.
“I think we have reached a point where we
want these small luxuries once or twice a
week. A lot of people have moved away from
that one big holiday a year, and, because of
social media influence, international trends
quickly catch on. Moreover, Instagram has
aesthetic value, and that’s how one justifies
spending ₹300 for a croissant and sharing it
on social media,” argues Mumbai-based free-
lance writer Aatish Nath, whose Instagram
posts on sourdough instantly trigger a craving.
One of the most popular products at
Mag St Bread Co. is the Korean
cream cheese garlic bun. At
Seefah Bakery, which rec-
reates breads from
7-Eleven stores, the
best-sellers include
the shokupan (a pil-
lowy soft Japanese
bread) and char siu
buns. These are not
necessarily “healthy
breads”; they are not
vegan, sugar-free or
gluten-free. But they
are fresh from the oven.
And they come with a
stamp of quality. “These are
pick-me-ups; foods that one can
enjoy maybe once a week or fortnight,”
says Nath, adding that they make for great gifts
too. A box of Viennoiseries lasts longer than a
cake. And brings joy.
For stand-alone restaurants, it’s all about
accessibility and scale. Gauri Devidayal,
founder of Mag St Kitchen, started The Table
in 2011; a few years later, she launched a B2B
(business-to-business) bakery venture. In
2016, they opened a large kitchen in Mumbai’s
(clockwise from top, left) Savoury and sweet treats from TwentySeven Bakehouse; Korean
cream cheese buns from Mag St Bread Co.; and ‘kouign amman’ from TwentySeven Bakehouse.
Byculla area for workshops, pop-ups and
shoots, even catering to cafés, like those run
by Blue Tokai. In 2020, the first lockdown
forced them to think on their feet and enter
the B2C (business-to-consumer) space.
“The orders were crazy. Every morning, we
would have 60-70 Scootsy guys waiting for
pickups,” says Devidayal. Encouraged, they
opened the Mag St Cafe in 2021.
The newest entrant to this field, Twenty-
Seven Bakehouse, has a similar approach. It’s
catering to B2B as well as B2C from a central
kitchen. There’s another similarity too—baker
Rachelle Andrade, who was with Mag St
Kitchen, has joined TwentySeven Bakehouse.
They plan to supply high-quality burger buns,
bagels and bánh mì breads to businesses and
regular buyers in Mumbai.
“One can be an amazing chef, but they need
the support of a baker to complete their
dishes. That’s where we come in,” maintains
Dugar.
Bakery products are easier to scale—but
they come with their own challenges of quality
control and freshness. Seefah Ketchaiyo, who
started Seefah Bakery, has in fact had to scale
down operations. When her first business, the
Asian restaurant Seefah, picked up after the
lockdown restrictions were lifted, there was no
kitchen space or manpower for a full-fledged
bakery. For the moment, she takes pre-orders
in small batches and remains closed on week-
ends. But demand from consumers as well as
businesses is “a lot”, she says, and she may look
at opening a “shop” next year.
For Dugar, who runs the multiple-award
winning Masque, it’s about “democratising
luxury”. She explains: “Take the case of macar-
ons that everyone would post on Instagram if
they went to Paris. But Pooja Dhingra (who
started the bakery chain Le15) made it accessi-
ble in India with her brand. I am starting to
look at my businesses from a fresh perspec-
tive. With Masque, I understood what luxury
means, but now I am thinking how to make
those ideas available to a wider audience. In
food, democratising luxury will become a
trend moving forward.”
T
his week, I am getting ready to move cities. Truth is, I
haven’t had to move very many times. I moved cities
once, when I was barely a teen, and all my worldly pos-
sessions fit in one bag. They were of no value—sentimental or
otherwise. The next big move came when I got married; I took
my dogs and books. This time around, I catch myself studying
my tea collection, wondering how much I can carry, what I will
definitely want to drink, what I will definitely feel the urge to
try, and, also, what will make a new place feel like home.
And nothing feels more like home than Assam tea. Earthy,
sweet, dark with deep aroma, it’s always reliable—and always
a pleasure. I usually go for a mix of orthodox and CTC, the
combination balancing both flavour and body. This season,
however, I decided to indulge.
The Mangalam Gold from Upper Assam, famous for its
orthodox teas, is a prized summer flush tea from the well-
known garden. Over a call with Gopal Kumar Sharma, presi-
dent of Jayshree Tea’s Upper Assam gardens, I learn that when
the current owners (Jayshree Tea) took over in 1955, there was
some extra land. Named Mangalam, it was planted with high-
quality clones, including the famous P-126, which is chosen
for its high concentration of tips, and for producing a light
liquor.
Tippy orthodox teas, he says, need a lot of pubescence, the
downy hair on the leaf surface. When the tea leaves are fired
during processing, the leaves almost turn black but the fine
hair turns gold, giving the tea both the flavour and the name.
Sharma says the bushes are pruned every year, with trained
hands plucking the leaves to ensure no shoots are left behind,
and the leaves don’t break.
The Mangalam Gold looks like a little bag of treasure. Made
of only coppery gold buds, it has a sweet aroma and is without
question a tea for the connoisseur, someone who appreciates
the hard work that goes into planting, tending tea bushes, fine
plucking and careful processing. It’s to be enjoyed without the
distraction of sugar or milk. With a dark, almost burgundy
liquor, it does represent the best of an Assam—rich, smooth
and malty. It’s a tea I plan to carry with me, even if only to
sprinkle like a bit of gold dust to an everyday cup, to remember
and to savour.
TEA TAKES
These teas are often picked up entirely by the export market.
However, with tea gardens choosing to retail directly to the
consumer, they are sometimes available on the producers’
websites. Look for Mangalam Gold on Jayshreetea.com. If you
would like to explore this speciality among Assam orthodox
teas, the clue is in the word “gold” in the tea names—check if
your favourite tea retailer has them.
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

A vegetarian Indian bowl for wary in-laws

I was never a great cook but my one morning to the grocery store to 1 tsp poppy seeds
OUR father-in-law, who runs a charming old- poke and prod the morning’s arrivals, 10 dried red chillies
D A I LY world hotel, insisted—and still does—
that I am a gourmet chef. Flattery
humming and murmuring to myself as I
thought about the produce at hand.
3 tbsp coriander seeds
For the seasoning: 1-inch piece cinna-
BREAD works, so I tend to spend more time in I sourced some tomato rice from my mon, 10 curry leaves, 1 tsp fennel seeds
the kitchen when they are here. mother and settled for mainly Tamil 2 tbsp oil
SAMAR The problem is that much of what I components, since that is vegetarian 2-3 cups of water
HALARNKAR cook regularly isn’t of interest to them. food they are unfamiliar with. I smashed Salt to taste
Essentially, they eat one chapati, a lit- a coconut, chopped tomatoes and
tle rice, dal, a vegetable and, perhaps, a onions, struggled to find split black Method

I
t is good for a man who cooks to have
in-laws. Let me rephrase that—it is
good for a man who cooks to have
in-laws like mine.
They are very easy to cook for
because even before I am ready with a
meal, they are appreciative of it. “It
looks very nice,” they will say. If I say
they should at least taste it first, they
reply, “Your food is always good,
Samar.” After that, of course, it is hard to
make an adverse comment, which
indeed they have never made and never
will. “Too good,” is the standard
response.
The reason for this fulsome praise
could be because my in-laws are, as I
have pointed out, Sindhi. In Sindhi fam-
ilies, it is hard for sons-in-law to do
wrong (unless perhaps there is murder
and cheating involved). They are put on
a pedestal and spoilt. In the early days of
marriage, my in-laws were aghast when
I paid restaurant bills, were hesitant to
visit because son-in-law would—hor-
rors—wash dishes or cook and were
generally wary whenever I sprung out
of my chair.
small piece of chicken or fish. They are
wary of unfamiliar food. They shun
pork, beef and other meats and spare
parts. South Indian food is about as
exotic as it gets for them, with the occa-
sional pasta or Chinese hot and sour
soup and fried rice.
Brought up right, they eat with a
spoon, using it even with idli and sam-
bar and chapati and dal. The wife tells
me her father would frown when he saw
elbows on the table. It took her some
time to eat dosas with her hands and she
still uses spoons liberally.
These foibles apart, one could not
wish for kinder, gentler in-laws, so I try
to make sure I alter my non-vegetarian
proclivities to cater to at least some of
their tastes.
At breakfast time, I like to make them
what they do not get back home, which
is their modest hotel room, where they
have lived for half a century. They
always welcome our morning staple,
home-made dosas and chutney. “Too
good,” they say. I may not have many
gifts but I do possess the ability to churn
out top-quality dosas, soft inside, crisp
Chettiyar brinjal curry.
outside—with minimal oil. It’s all about
maintaining the right temperature on
the dosa pan.
A whole roast fish or chicken may
appear formidable to my in-laws, and
they will take their little piece and wax
eloquent about it, but I really have to
put in effort to make their comfort food,
which is, as I said, based on familiar veg-
etables.
What could I do that might surprise
them and yet seem familiar?
SAMAR HALARNKAR
Perhaps I could create a little bowl for
them. My slap-dash, use-what-you-
have and do-it-quickly methods would
fail me, so I planned it.
The base would be rice, which they
often eat with their solitary chapati,
scooping dal and vegetable on to the
rice with a spoon, then shovelling it into
the chapati. I understand because I often
eat my fish or meat curry with chapati
and rice—without the spoon, of course.
For real inspiration, I wandered off
gram dal and poppy seeds. There is
always a pleasure in using uncommon
ingredients and watching them all
come together.
I made a cucumber pachadi, like a
raita, a Chettiyar brinjal curry—from a
classic book on Tamil cooking, Aharam,
by Sabita Radhakrishna—and some
fried zucchini (sprinkled with Mangalu-
rean bafat powder and salt) of my own
design.
“Well?” I asked the in-laws. I don’t
think what I cooked mattered but I
asked anyway.
“Too good,” they said.
CHETTiyAR bRiNjAL CuRRy
Serves 6
Ingredients
8 small brinjals, chopped into small
cubes
2 medium tomatoes, cubed
2 large potatoes, chopped into small
cubes
2 medium onions, finely chopped
10-12 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
2 tbsp grated fresh coconut
Make a powder by grinding dried red
chillies and coriander seeds. Make a
paste by grinding grated coconut and
poppy seeds, adding a little water if
needed. Set both aside.
In a pan, heat the oil and add the sea-
soning ingredients. When fennel seeds
start to sizzle and pop, add onion and
garlic. Sauté till onion begins to brown,
then add ground coriander and chilli
powder and sauté for two-three min-
utes, adding a drizzle of water if too dry.
Add potatoes, brinjals and salt and sauté
for about five minutes, until the brinjal
begins to soften. Add poppy seed and
coconut paste and mix well. Stir in
tomatoes. Add water, bring to a boil and
turn down the heat to a simmer until
cooked. Garnish with coriander leaves
before serving.
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

How to add flair to the
MALE CLOSET
The pandemic may
have buried the suit
but it has been
replaced by colourful
pocket squares, bow-
ties and cufflinks
Rahul Jacob
A
n epidemic of predictions
accompanied the covid-19
pandemic, about how it
would change our lives, in
ways ranging from the hol-
lowing out of commercial capitals such as
New York and London, to the end of busi-
ness and leisure travel. Most have proved
off the mark. But the drop in the primacy
of the formal business shirt forecast by
many looks like a trend that’s here to stay,
with a lot of people working at least part of
the week from home now. In March, the
UK, a country whose Savile Row suits have
long been a marker of style, dropped suits
from the basket of some 700 goods used to
calculate inflation.
One would have thought the steep
decline in sales of formal shirts and suits
would also have strangled the market for
men’s accessories, such as ties, bow-ties,
cufflinks and dressy socks, in India, as it
has in the West. The opposite seems to be
happening, in fact, with a wider variety of
accessories on offer than ever before, ran-
ging from underwhelming socks sellers
mushrooming on Instagram to high-end
launches of ties and bow-ties.
Jewellery to celebrate the mother-child bond
Niche jewellery brands
are creating pendants
and cufflinks from breast
milk to immortalise the
breastfeeding journey
Reem Khokhar
eher Malik’s striking nazar battu,
M
a shimmery blue and lumines-
cent white Turkish evil eye pen-
dant fringed with zircons, is a conversa-
tion starter. “When I tell them it is made of
my first batch of breast milk, people are
amazed,” says Malik, a movement mentor
and founder of Studio Banjara, a belly-
dance school in Delhi. She discovered
breast milk jewellery on Instagram
through a friend who specialises in creat-
ing such keepsakes.
Malik is one of many parents across the
world who have chosen to immortalise
their breastfeeding journey through a
piece of jewellery. For some, it is a way to
celebrate a short-lived experience; for
others, a symbol of the work that goes into
nursing a child.
Breast milk jewellery is not particularly
new, with reports suggesting American
artists were selling it in 2007. The tradi-
tion of preserving DNA material or incor-
porating it into accessories is not unusual
either. It is common for parents to pre-
serve their child’s first tooth or lock of hair,
to create accessories with hair, or get tat-
toos with the ashes of a loved one. In India,
however, the trend of making pendants
and bracelets and cufflinks from breast
In July, actor Rahul Khanna collabo-
rated with the menswear brand Chokore
to create a range of ties, bow-ties and
pocket squares. The pocket squares, of
fine Indian silk and linen, are intended to
be worn with Indian formal wear as well.
The ties are Italian-made. Khanna says the
range seeks to provide high quality with-
out the eye-watering prices many West-
ern brands charge. Also included are
quirky knitted ties that “once people start
wearing, they will realise they are fun and
make you feel as erudite as a professor”.
Unless they can demonstrate an IQ
boost for the person wearing them,
though, I remain sceptical about a resur-
gence in ties, especially in the workplace.
I have given away most of mine. The last
time I wore one, a richly resplendent pur-
ple and dark blue Audrey Buckner, was to
a meeting with the committee of a club in
Bengaluru I joined last year. My tie was
loosened as soon as I stepped out of the
interview at the otherwise informal Bow-
ring Institute, which admirably even
allows sneakers in the bar and dining areas.
Khanna and designer Kunal Rawal
make a plausible case, however, that
accessories will be used for evening wear,
and to weddings, as a subtle accent. While
office wear used to be more about fitting
in, in recent years we are all dressing with
a greater sense of individualism. “Today,
luxury is for yourself. There’s a celebra-
tion of micro motifs. Cufflinks are making
a comeback,” Rawal insists. When he
began working in fashion a decade and a
half ago, Rawal recounts, it was typical for
an entire family to show up to “help” a man
buy his own formal wear. Now, Rawal rev-
els in “starting a conversation with the
person wearing it”.
milk is just catching on.
Delhi’s Preety Maggo got interested in
breast milk jewellery when her child was
six months old. She first came across such
jewellery on a Facebook group sometime
in 2017 and then saw a German artist
doing it on social media. “I wanted to
make one for myself but I coudn’t find the
same standards of jewellery in India as
that German artist was doing. That’s when
I thought maybe I can do this and bring
international standards of keepsake jewel-
lery in India,” she says. Her medical back-
ground as an optometrist helped her
research and plan her jewellery line, she
says. She tested methods and raw materi-
als that would yield aesthetic and endur-
ing keepsakes, and, in 2019, when her
daughter was two, she started work-
ing full-time to launch Magic
of Memories. “I made pro-
motional samples from
my breast milk and
received initial
orders from Face-
book groups for
mothers,” she says.
“Some send in a
portion of their col-
ostrum, the first
milk. Those who are
weaning may send in
their last drops. Some get
emotional on the phone, as
this will never happen to them
again. There are also clients who have lost
their babies and want to remember them
through jewellery.”
It’s generally niche brands that create
such jewellery. Like all precious pieces,
they are made in the belief that they will
STYLE
While suits feel like a care-
fully rehearsed speech for a formal
occasion, accessories are the equiv-
alent of a witty aside. They can
seem like a punctuation mark, but
a crucial one. Flying home on Vis-
tara this week, I noticed that its
male flight attendants wear a mus-
tardy gold pocket square tucked
into the breast pocket of blue waist-
coats—far more practical than wear-
ing ties while serving in-flight food.
Khanna’s new collection includes
bow-ties one ties oneself; once done,
though, it is possible to preserve the
knot. With his impish sense of fun and
Peter Pan looks, Khanna makes even
wearing an untied bow-tie a fashion state-
ment. Few others would be able to get
away with it, however.
Yunus Ahmed, whose tailoring shop,
Y&O, in Bengaluru makes the swankiest
tuxedos I have seen in India, confirms that
bow-ties are flying off their shelves. His
sumptuous store even sells an Italian
brand of luxury umbrellas called Pasotti.
There is an opportunity for consumers
(above) Meher Malik
wearing a ‘nazar battu’
made using her breast
milk; a breast milk
pendant from Magic of
Memories; and (left)
customised cufflinks
by Mom’s Memoiirs,
created using breast
milk and the umbilical
cord stump.
While suits feel like a carefully
rehearsed speech for a
formal occasion, accessories
are the equivalent of a witty
aside. They are a punctuation
mark, but a crucial one
become heirlooms. The usual pieces on
offer are earrings, cufflinks, tie pins,
bracelets and matching accessories for
partners, at prices ranging from ₹2,000 to
a few lakhs, depending on the choice of
metals or design. If you want a piece of
this, you would need to send in about
20ml of breast milk. Each brand has its
own process of preserving, dehydrating
and mixing the milk with a non-yellowing
resin. Gold flecks, shimmer and sequins
can be added; shapes and sizes are cus-
tomisable.
Shangavi Rajendran, an architect and a
SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
and retailers
alike to mix and
match fancy
accessories to
enliven today’s
dress-casual
codes. Last week,
a friend’s mother
in Delhi gifted me
two silk pocket
squares of her late
husband’s. One,
with a stunning suzani motif, was from
Christian Dior and elevated an otherwise
unremarkable Fabindia light blue cotton
waistcoat the very next day.
Indeed, the other reason to believe a
rebound in the demand for accessories
may well outpace that for formal shirts is
that they make perfect gifts. While living in
Delhi, I bought half a dozen socks in fruit-
bowl colours for my late landlord, then 92,
who sold Indian-designed evening wear
for women to American retailers Bloom-
ingdale’s and Lord & Taylor in the 1950s
and 1960s. He coordinated them perfectly
with his pink, orange or red turbans.
gymnast in Bodinayakanur, Tamil Nadu,
discovered the concept through Pinterest
three years ago, when she had her baby.
She continued to breastfeed her daughter
for two-and-a-half years.
“I was not sure how to order this jewel-
lery in India. When a breast milk jewellery
brand sponsored my recent school alumni
event in Salem (Tamil Nadu), I contacted
them to find out more,” she says. She is
now the proud owner of a pendant in the
shape of a mother and baby elephant, an
animal she loves. She plans to pass it on to
her daughter.
Salem-based Kavitha Parameswaran,
who founded La Memoire in 2017, cre-
ated Rajendran’s necklace. “This is
about an emotional connection. One of
my customers is an autorickshaw driver
who ordered a piece for his wife,” she
says.
These jewellery makers say the rising
interest is reflected in the increase in
number of orders. “I receive 100-200
enquiries on social media daily,” says
Maggo. “When I began in 2019, I received
about two-three orders a month; now I
work on 30 orders every month.”
Parameswaran’s orders have doubled
from 30 a month pre-covid to 60 cur-
rently. Her customers find her largely on
social media though some are also order-
ing via her recently launched website.
Saakshi Mehra’s Mom’s Memoiirs in
Mumbai creates pieces in silver, gold and
silver-plated options, with prices starting
from ₹2,500. Mehra, who has seen a rise in
orders, from six-seven a month in 2018 to
40 now, intends to ramp up marketing. “I
have several customers who are keen to
have these sentimental keepsakes but
New Delhi 07
(clockwise, from above) A Kunal Rawal
lapel pin; a brooch and a pocket square
from Shantanu and Nikhil’s new
collection; unisex accessories from Jade;
and Rahul Khanna recently collaborated
with the Chokore label to create a range
of ties, bow-ties and pocket squares that
can double up as scarves.
I usually give away shirts gifted to me
because my cupboard is always overflow-
ing. Cufflinks are by far the gift I am happi-
est to receive but as the Financial Times
(FT) menswear columnist Robert Arm-
strong observed last November, “Most
modern cufflinks are crass.”
An exception is the cufflinks of Shang-
hai Tang. I have two pairs, gifts from the
then Asia editor of FT and another from a
young Chinese reporter at the paper.
Shanghai Tang is the luxury retailer that
reinvented Chinoiserie for the 20th cen-
tury—widely appealing, but also the per-
fect memento for someone leaving Hong
Kong to work in Delhi.
One pair is a miniature dragon in silver.
Hong Kong, whose blazing cityscape of
skyscrapers would be lit up as if it was
Christmas all year round, always seemed to
me like an Atlantis rising from the sea, so it
would be hard to conjure up a better meta-
phor for it in cufflinks than a mythical
beast. The other looks like it combines Chi-
nese symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphs, a
miniature labyrinth of gold lines against a
black background. Earlier this month, I
wore the silver Shanghai Tang cufflinks
with an ajrakh waistcoat and an off-the-
rack English shirt with double cuffs.
Among the cufflinks I treasure most are
a few pairs I discovered in my father’s
chest of drawers, after his death, more
than a decade ago. I had fallen into the
habit of buying his shirts and socks after
my mother died in 2004. He would gra-
ciously respond to compliments by
remarking that his youngest son bought
his shirts. Finding the antique cufflinks
underlined that he had plenty of style of
his own but indulged his finicky, foppish
gay son because he understood that it
made me happy. One is silver with a mala-
chite-like green stone at its centre. People
always remark on its elegance.
But it is also a humbling reminder that
I ought not to unduly foist my notions of
style upon others. I do anyway, but per-
haps more diplomatically than I used to.
Rahul Jacob was the travel, food and
drink editor for the Financial Times in
London and is the author of Right Of Pas-
sage, a collection of travel essays.
cannot afford the more expensive
options.”
Most customers order one piece; some,
however, want matching sets for partners
or a few different pieces for the family.
“My largest single order was a set for the
parents and grandparents,” says Mehra.
These pieces sometimes symbolise an
often-difficult journey for mothers. For
breastfeeding can be stressful, given the
societal norms on how long to nurse your
child, disapproval of breastfeeding in pub-
lic, insufficient infrastructure to make
public breastfeeding comfortable, and
offices ill-equipped to support nursing
mothers.
Jayshree Chatterjee, a content manager
at a B2B marketplace in Faridabad, Hary-
ana, has a mother-and-child-shaped
breast milk pendant she plans to pass on to
her daughter. Chatterjee is candid about
her challenging post-pregnancy journey.
“My understanding of breastfeeding
was very different from what I experi-
enced. Breastfeeding is not easy for all
women and does not come ‘automati-
cally’. I received a lot of help from a lacta-
tion consultant. You are made to feel inad-
equate when others say it’s not a big deal
and all mothers do it. Your discomfort is
insignificant,” she says. “This is my way of
bonding time with her. I got this piece of
jewellery made because this journey is
special and I did it for my daughter and
myself.”
“If an experience like this can be
immortalised, then why not?” asks Malik.
“We could pass these on as heirlooms. I
think that is beautiful and special.”
Reem Khokhar is a Delhi-based writer.
08 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi COVER

A
zero-
gravity
holiday In just about a decade, humans will live,
work and holiday in space. Lounge takes
a look at the technologies being
developed to make space travel possible

Nitin Sreedhar tems to magnetic, self-assembling tiles that could
nitin.s@htlive.com help create space habitats. Indian scientists have
even found a sustainable method for making space
Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that’s life- bricks with lunar regolith. And we are months away
enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live from the beginning of arguably India’s most ambi-
forever. tious space mission yet—the Gaganyaan programme
—Ray Bradbury, American science fiction author for human spaceflight.
and screenwriter Such developments also mean that the issues that
bedevil us on Earth will travel to space too: from reg-
stration mission, considered a big milestone,
is also slated for later this year. Abort demon-
stration missions test systems that can help
the crew escape from a spacecraft in case of
any failure.
“Personally, I am so thrilled (about Gagan-
yaan). I think every space enthusiast is look-
ing forward to it,” says Srimathy Kesan,
founder and CEO of Space Kidz India. “After

H
In the tray below are samples of
plants grown in volcanic ash lunar
simulant (right) and those grown in
actual lunar soil (left); and (right) a
plant grown during the experiment
being placed in a vial for genetic
analysis.
UF/IFAS PHOTOGRAPHS BY TYLER JONES
ave you ever tried to imagine what a lunar base
would look like? The European Space Agency (ESA)
has, with one rendering of its vision for a moon base
showing habitat modules with roofs that look like
the backs of armadillos, standing beside garages
designed to house lunar rovers, while more vehicles
continue the construction. These could be produced
and maintained with 3D printing.
That’s not all. There is also a launch site for space-
craft, solar arrays for energy generation and green-
houses for food production. Far away on the hori-
zon, you can see a bright planet, almost like a blue
marble, surrounded by thousands of stars. It’s prob-
ably Earth.
This visual could soon become a reality. In the
near future, astronauts could be living on the Moon,
mining for water and precious minerals. In just two
days, humans will take the first steps to return to the
Moon: US space agency Nasa’s Artemis 1 is set to
launch on 29 August. This will be the first in a series
of complex missions to build a long-term human
presence on the Moon, where no human, remember,
has been since 1972.
Maybe the likes of you and me won’t make it to the
Moon. But soon enough, space tourists—yes, that’s
a term now—will have other orbital destinations, like
a rotating space hotel and a space-based business
park to start with. Humans will live, work and holi-
day in space—and all this could happen within the
next decade. Sub-orbital flights are already taking
people, who are not necessarily astro-
nauts, to the edge of space.
In December 2021, a record 19
humans were in space at one
time. To make space travel
possible, researchers are
developing everything from
high-tech computing sys-
ulating activity to tackling growing quantities of Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma—he flew
waste. There is already discussion on some of this. from Russian soil (in 1984)—we haven’t had a
For most people, though, the excitement currently cosmonaut. India is doing so much in the
outweighs the concerns. space ecosystem. We should have our own
Technological challenges aside, the idea of travel- cosmonaut flying to space from India.”
ling to space is like selling a dream, one that looks Kesan says space is the future; there is a
more achievable than ever before. Space tourism buzz about space photography and space
took giant leaps last year. Now, even India is aiming tourism too, with the recent success of compa-
to develop indigenous capabilities for space tourism. nies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.
A big first step towards that is human spaceflight. “There is huge potential in suborbital flights,”
The first milestone is the Moon—before humans she says, adding that people in India would be
set their sights on Mars. In her 2020 book, Once willing to spend on something like this but don’t Bandla described her flight as “a perspective-chang-
Upon A Time I Lived On Mars, journalist and former have many options. “Imagine if an Indian company ing and transformational experience”, adding that
laser physicist Kate Greene writes: “Now, perhaps managed to do suborbital flights. Even a five-minute each person’s reaction to the experience of space
more than ever, conversations about space explora- flight to space and back would change people’s would be different. “People are going to come back
tion are opening up to new ideas and complexities. mindset.” energised. People are going to come back and use
The Earth is heating and crowding, resources are Sirisha Bandla, vice-president of government that opportunity to further positive change in what-
increasingly unevenly distributed, and there’s a affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic, ever projects they are pursuing.”
sense that, at least among some people, there should who was part of the space tourism company’s first
be a plan-B planet.” fully crewed spaceflight in 2021, has voiced similar KEEPING IT NEAT AND CLEAN
Susmita Mohanty, director general of Spaceport thoughts. In an interview with Lounge in July, During a talk on the value of human spaceflight and
SARABHAI, India’s first independent space think
tank, says if humans are to make space settlements
a reality, we will need to up our technology readiness
levels for bio-regenerative life-support systems, ter-
raforming, waste processing, off-planet sophisti-
cated medical interventions, 3D-printing, advanced
materials for spacesuits and space structures,
advanced modes of propulsion and transportation.
“By 2030, we will see human landings on the
Moon, and, by 2050, on Mars. I envision
human outposts on both the Moon and
Mars by this mid-century but do not
think that settlements consisting
of sizable human populations
will happen in the next 50
years,” Mohanty predicts.
CRUCIAL YEARS AHEAD
FOR INDIA
August is a key month in
India’s space history. It was on
15 August that the Indian Space
Research Organisation (Isro) was
formed in 1969, superseding the
Indian National Committee for Space
Research (Incospar) set up by the Union
government in 1962.
Just three years later, the space commission and
department of space were established. In 1975,
India’s first satellite, Aryabhatta, was launched. The
Indian space programme has come a long way
since—Chandrayaan-1 (2008) and the Mars Orbiter
Mission (2013) are a testament to that—slowly build-
ing its own identity in the global space race. In 2023,
India is also planning to launch the Gaganyaan pro-
gramme.
Two unmanned missions and one manned mis-
sion (this one is targeted for 2024) have been
planned so far as part of Gaganyaan. Isro says the
next step will focus on achieving capability “for a
sustained human presence in space”.
Earlier this year, the space agency also success-
fully completed a static test of a rocket booster for
the Gaganyaan programme. The first abort demon-
STORY SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 09

COURTESY NASA

A concept image of
an ‘Artemis’
astronaut stepping
on to the lunar
surface. COURTESY NASA
Artist’s illustration of TESSERAE
habitats in space. Shown in the
foreground is a self-assembling
COURTESY MIT
storage unit.
space exploration in 2008, the late astrophysicist food, rocket propellants and more.
Stephen Hawking had said that “if the human race
is to continue for another million years, we will have resource utilisation. “It’s a fancy term that space
to boldly go where no one has gone before”. But agencies use. But humans have essentially been
Hawking had also warned later that pollution and doing that for a long time—using local resources as
overcrowding were some of the biggest threats to they went from one continent to another,” says
human existence.
This principle also applies to space.
Orbital debris, leftover chunks and discarded (IISc), Bengaluru. “We are not that far away from a
rocket parts have already crowded Earth’s orbit. lunar base. It’s like looking in the side-view mirror:
There are more than 27,000 pieces of space junk Objects in the mirror are nearer than they seem…
A shift to
the East
T he 20th century saw the US and
erstwhile Soviet Union in a space
race. But now other nations have
made their mark. A Morgan Stanley
report estimates that by 2030, the global
space industry could be worth $600
billion (around ₹47.4 trillion now), gener-
ating revenue of over $1 trillion in 2040.
“The 20th century narrative was driven
largely by the Cold War in the initial
years, and, later, by Hollywood. Either
way, it had a Western bias and the east-
ern hemisphere was always in the blind
spot,” says Susmita Mohanty, director
general of the think tank Spaceport SAR-
ABHAI. “The 21st century narrative is
already starting to shift eastwards. India
made it to the Mars orbit in its first
attempt and is planning to launch its first
humans into LEO (low-earth orbit). China
is the new space power, having surpassed
the US in 2021 in the number of annual
launches, and has an extensive human
space programme that began in 1992.”
China carried out 55 space mission
launches last year and the US, 51. While
South Korea conducted the first launch
of its homegrown rocket in October 2021,
the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars
probe—launched in 2020—arrived on the
planet in February 2021. It became only
the fifth country to achieve this feat.
But there are growing concerns that
existing space laws may prove inade-
quate as space becomes more commer-
cialised. New military narratives too may
emerge in a polarised, conflict-ridden
world, says Mohanty.
The principles governing outer space,
including the Moon and other celestial
bodies, are listed in the Outer Space
Treaty of 1967. In 2020, the US and Nasa
introduced the Artemis Accords. These
accords are signed on a national rather
than an organisational level, on a vol-
untary basis. Twenty-one countries
have signed on so far, excluding India.
There are concerns, however, about
the provisions of these accords, spe-
cifically the establishment of “safety
zones” and the absence of any clear
mention prohibiting the installation of
weapons of mass destruction in space.
that are currently tracked by ground-based
radar and space surveillance systems. In the
past, these fast-moving parts of space debris
posed a threat to functioning satellites and
spacecraft like the International Space Sta-
tion (ISS). A recent study from Canada’s Uni-
versity of British Columbia has even warned
that rocket parts left in orbit from space
launches have a 6-10% chance of severely
injuring or killing a human being in the next
decade.
Once we clear this field of man-made
debris and reach, say, the Moon, lunar settle-
ments will need more than just oxygen and
water to sustain life. According to Nasa,
astronauts could collect local resources on
the surface of the Moon, and eventually
Mars, and transform them into breathable
air, water for drinking, hygiene and growing
All this would be possible through in-situ
Aloke Kumar, associate professor, department of
mechanical engineering, Indian Institute of Science
A vision of a future Moon base
that could be produced and
maintained using 3D printing.
COURTESY ESA/REGOLIGHT, VISUALISATION:
LIQUIFER SYSTEMS GROUP
We are not that far away from
a lunar base. It’s like looking in
the side-view mirror…. Mars is
a bit more of a challenge.
That challenge comes from
the idea of self-sustainability.
ALOKE KUMAR
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, INDIAN
INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Looking into
the future
BY 2030
† Space travel will be a collaborative,
multinational venture.
† You will know an astronaut.
† The human genome will change to
support human deep space exploration.
† We will successfully mine the Moon for
water.
† Growing and eating food in space will
become commonplace.
† Manufacturing in space will be real and
viable.
† Zero gravity will lead to new medical
conditions and new treatments.
Source: ‘30 Voices On 2030:
The Future Of Space’, a report by KPMG.
ble space structures in orbit. In an interview with
MIT News earlier this year, Ariel Ekblaw, founder
and director of the Space Exploration Initiative in
MIT’s Media Lab, explained that under the TES-
SERAE (Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Struc-
tures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adapt-
ive Environments) space architecture project, mag-
netic, self-assembling tiles—once deployed in space
—would connect on their own to create spacious,
habitable and reconfigurable structures. Loosely
put, structures that could build themselves—with a
little help from humans.
According to the MIT News article, the project
cleared a key milestone in April when TESSERAE
samples were flown up to the ISS with the Axiom
Space AX-1, the first ISS-bound mission to fly a fully
privately funded crew. During their 15-day stay, the
paying astronauts ran tests on TESSERAE and other
science projects aboard the space station.
“The first structure we’ve designed is based on a
buckyball geometry, which has one of the best sur-
face area-to-volume ratios,” Ekblaw explains in the
article. This buckyball could be either a single room,
around the size of crew quarters, or the galley for a
kitchen, or even a science lab, Ekblaw adds. “And
then you could stack multiple modules on top of
Mars is a bit more of a challenge. That challenge each other to create a station. Further in the future,
comes from the idea of self-sustainability.” we might be able to have a really grand, large bucky-
Two years ago, Kumar’s team of researchers at ball in orbit that has much more open space, and is
the IISc published the results of a sustainable pro- something more like a space cathedral or concert
cess for making brick-like structures that could be hall or gathering space.”
used to assemble habitats on the Moon. They used Other existing technologies on Earth could also
a lunar soil simulant, bacteria and guar beans to help in the future: 3D printing, for example, and
consolidate the soil into load-bearing structures. even innovative toilet designs. Nasa’s Lunar Loo
Earlier this year, the team, in collaboration with Challenge, which was conducted in 2020 and gen-
Isro, developed a similar sustainable method for erated its fair share of memes online, called for
making bricks out of Martian soil, using bacteria ideas and novel design concepts for compact toilets
and urea. While the previous method could only that could operate in both microgravity and lunar
produce cylindrical bricks, the current slurry-cast- gravity.
ing method can also produce bricks of complex The winning idea, called THRONE, involved a
shapes. The findings of this study were published in bladeless fan that would entrain waste; currently,
April in the PLOS One journal. astronauts use a suction/vacuum pump system. The
Lunar dust, or regolith, also has potential in other bladeless ring fan used in THRONE pulls the waste
applications. In May, Nasa revealed that for the first down, using concentrated air flow. This design also
time, scientists from the University of Florida were has a “genital guard” and retractable cover to make
able to grow plants in the nutrient-poor lunar rego- the toilet both safe and easy to use for astronauts.
lith, samples of which were collected by astronauts According to Nasa, the team behind THRONE “also
during the Apollo missions (from 1968-72). The plant came up with a system to minimise crew interaction
used in this research is the Arabidopsis thaliana, with waste bags, using a diaper genie-type concept
native to Eurasia and Africa, a relative of mustard to keep the waste bagged”, facilitating easy turn-
greens and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cau- around between uses.
liflower and Brussels sprouts. Owing to its small size “It seems trivial but this is an extremely impor-
and ease of growth, says Nasa, it is one of the most tant factor (for space travel),” says Kumar. “From
studied plants in the world, used as a model orga- brushing our teeth and using the toilet to how we
nism for plant biology research. build houses, we will have to rethink all aspects of
Scientists are also developing new ways to assem- our lives.”

CHECK INTO A SPACE HOTEL BY 2027

T
he idea of expensive private space flights is a
thing of today. But luxury space travel might
get new destinations tomorrow, like a space
hotel. In fact, the world’s first space hotel is not too
far into the future.
The Voyager Station, a flagship project of the
California, US-based large-scale space construc-
tion company Orbital Assembly Corp. (OAC), is
expected to open in 2027. This rotating space sta-
tion, when completed, may be able to accommo-
date up to 440 people. It will be designed to pro-
duce varying levels of artificial gravity by increas-
ing or decreasing the rate of rotation.
According to OAC, artificial, or simulated, grav-
ity is essential to long-term habitation in space:
“The station is designed to accommodate commer-
cial and manufacturing partners as well as national
space agencies conducting low gravity research.”
The Voyager Station will also provide luxurious
accommodation for tourists who want to experi-
ence an extended visit to space. In a recent inter-
view with CNN, Tim Alatorre, OAC’s chief operat-
ing officer, said: “The goal has always been to make
it possible for large amounts of people to live, work
and thrive in space.”
Don’t be surprised if the station’s design (see
image on the left) reminds you of Space Station V, an
orbiting station that featured in Stanley Kubrick’s
cult film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The European
Space Agency has described Space Station V as “a
large, international, rotating wheel space station,
used as a transfer point from Earth orbit to the
moon and other planets”.
The Voyager Station will provide accommodation for extended visits to space.
Once complete, the Voyager Station will have an
overall diameter of 200m. It will feature a docking
hub, which would be an arrival point for transport
spacecraft. People will also be able to see live views
of Earth and space on video monitors. The station
will have a total habitable space of 125,000 sq.ft and
44 emergency return vehicles, or lifeboats,
designed for autonomous landing.
ORBITAL ASSEMBLY CORPORATION
While the Voyager Station is expected to be
operational by the end of the decade, OAC has also
announced plans for a space-based business park
with gravity—the Pioneer Station. This free-flying,
habitable, privately operated facility in orbit, the
first of its kind, could be ready in just three years.
In case you are wondering, the technology to
work out of such stations is already being devel-
oped. One example is the Spaceborne Computer
developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)—
an edge computing system, a supercomputer of
sorts—that can function in the harsh environment
of microgravity. Its latest iteration, Spaceborne
Computer 2, was sent to the ISS in February 2021.
In an interview with Lounge in 2021, Mark Fer-
nandez, principal investigator, Spaceborne Com-
puter-2, at HPE, described the possibilities of
on-board computers as fascinating. “Self-sufficient
computing enables self-sufficient (space) explor-
ers,” he said, adding that reliable in-space comput-
ing could transform how research is conducted in
microgravity.
How realistic, though, are plans for a space
hotel? It remains to be seen. In the past, the Aurora
Station, slated for a 2021 launch, was envisioned as
the world’s first luxury hotel in orbit. The plan
never took off. Now, there is more interest in space
tourism than ever before. In an interview with
Lounge in July, Sirisha Bandla, vice-president of
government affairs and research operations at Vir-
gin Galactic, had said there is interest even among
Indian customers in what the space tourism com-
pany is doing.
Companies like Virgin Galactic are only
expected to scale up. The frequency of flights,
access to space will increase, Bandla said. “We have
over 800 people ready and excited to fly. As we
scale up, we have two spaceships now, we are going
to be manufacturing a fleet and getting to a
cadence of 400 flights per year out of the space-
port.”
10 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi ZOOM

A journey of
1968: The Earthrise photograph is the first colour image of Earth
from the Moon by a person (taken by astronaut William Anders
during the Apollo 8 mission). Anders clicked this picture
moments after fellow astronaut Frank Borman captured Earth in
a black and white photograph. NASA/BILL ANDERS

discoveries

2022: The Webb Deep Field image is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the
distant universe to date. This image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 shows thousands of
galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in infrared. NASA, ESA, CSA AND STSCI

Space imagery has Nitin Sreedhar

nitin.s@htlive.com
come a long way from

I
n October 1946, the US launched
rocket-borne a suborbital rocket from the
White Sands Missile Range in
cameras. High-tech New Mexico. This V2 rocket was
telescopes can now fitted with a DeVry 35mm black
and white motion picture camera. After
show us the universe reaching an altitude of around 105km, 2022: A new image of Jupiter captured by the Webb. In this stand-alone view, created
capturing a frame every second and a half, from a composite of several images, auroras extend to high altitudes above the planet’s
in much more detail the camera came hurtling down. Though northern and southern poles. NASA, ESA, CSA, JUPITER ERS TEAM; IMAGE PROCESSING: JUDY SCHMIDT
it was ripped to pieces, the film, kept in a
protective steel cassette, survived re-entry
and gave us the first picture—grainy and
hazy—of Earth taken from space.
Space imagery has come a long way
since. Images once captured with the help
of high-altitude balloons and other kinds
of aerial photography methods made way
for ground-based observatories. Ground-
based images of stars, however, are often
fuzzy, and even overlap sometimes,
because of the smearing effect of Earth’s 1946: First image of Earth from space, taken by the V2 No.13 rocket that was fitted with a
atmosphere. In 1990, the Hubble’s first 35mm black and white motion picture camera and launched from the White Sands
light image was roughly 50% sharper than Missile Range in the US. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
the image of the same region of the sky
captured by an observatory in Chile. Now introduced. Images taken by telescopes astronomer, on the Royal Museums
we are witnessing some of the most that observe at the “invisible” wavelengths Greenwich website. “Unlike Hubble’s
detailed images ever captured through are sometimes called “false colour images” field, this image was deliberately focused
space telescopes like the Hubble or “representative colour images”. That is on a specific galaxy cluster, named
(launched in 1990) and its technological because the colours used to make them SMACS 0723,” Brown writes. “Webb, with
successor, the James Webb Space Tele- are chosen to bring out important details. a much larger mirror and its focus on red
scope (JWST), launched last year. This is done through coloured filters and and infrared light, is better suited to see-
Processing methods have improved image analysis software. ing these distant galaxies than the much
remarkably too. One example is the com- The Hubble has captured countless smaller, blue-focused Hubble ever could.”
posite image of Jupiter, as seen by the images for space enthusiasts and astrono- Brown adds that while even the shortest
Webb, that the US space agency Nasa mers to marvel at. One was the Hubble Hubble deep field took over a week to pro-
released on 22 August. Deep Field image, released in 1995, which duce, “Webb needed to stare (at a part of
Even today, though, most space images captured thousands of remote galaxies. the sky) for only 12 hours to achieve an 1990: The Hubble’s first light image illustrates the telescope’s improved resolution when
are captured in black and white or gray- Earlier this year, the JWST went fur- image that almost certainly contains the compared to ground-based observatories. In this case, it is shown with a ground-based
scale. In fact, most astronomical data ther. In a fraction of the time, and far more most distant galaxy seen in infrared light”. picture of the same region of the sky from Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
reaches scientists in the form of ones and detail, it “surpassed” the deepest image of So, the next time you see a colourful LEFT: E PERSSON (LAS CAMPANAS OBSERVATORY, CHILE)/OBSERVATORIES OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF
zeroes, which are then translated into for- the universe ever taken, notes Greg image of a faraway galaxy, remember that WASHINGTON; RIGHT: NASA, ESA AND STSCI
mats, including images. Colours too are Brown, a Royal Observatory Greenwich it’s a result of both science and art.

1998/2022: A comparison of images of the Southern Ring Nebula (NGC 3132), captured by the Webb (left) and the Hubble. The near-
infrared image of the nebula was taken using the Webb’s NIRCAM instrument. NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, NIRCAM/THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM

LEOPARD HUNTING AT
LOCARNO 2022
Srikanth Srinivasan
T
he word on the street is
that the Ticinese town of
Locarno, Switzerland, only
comes to life during the
international film festival,
thereafter returning to general cultural
dormancy. The high-profile event
appears in August like a planetary body,
absorbing the local infrastructure and
economy into its orbit; businesses are
decked in the festival’s trademark yellow-
black leopard patterns, gymnasiums are
turned into movie halls and publicity
hoardings look to cinema for inspiration.
It’s indeed hard to divine the nature of the
town underneath this two-week masque.
The town, however, has its own ways of
asserting its identity. If the festival domi-
nates the visual landscape, the soundtrack
remains very much of the place. Motor-
bikes with infernal exhausts, Sisyphean
workers dragging trolleys up cobbled
pathways and helicopters and ambulances
zooming in and out of local hospitals are
constant reminders of the presence of a
thriving and often abrasive local life.
The helicopters and ambulances are
also reminders of health and sickness,
which Locarno, despite its paradisiacal
landscape off the Lake Maggiore, seems
animated by. It isn’t just in the fact of the
pandemic, belied by the unmasked
crowds and the nation’s now lenient
health regulations. It is also in that Ticino
is a pharmaceutical hub, a detail reflected
in the proliferation of hoardings for drugs
and health insurance.
Medicine, disease and death, as it hap-
pens, are also recurring elements in the
Reasons to celebrate the spirit of amateur photography
The show ‘Twin Sisters
With Cameras’ revisits
the early days of
photography through
the work of twins
Manobina and Debalina
Vangmayi Parakala
vangmayi.parakala@htlive.com
S
ome decades ago, Joy, the son of film
director Bimal Roy, would get mildly
annoyed at his mother: She would
always want to take photographs of him.
But he took it for granted, thinking most
mothers troubled their children with such
affection. It was only years later that he
realised his mother, Manobina, was not
merely expressing her love for him or
other members of her family, she was also
experimenting with light, reflections, sil-
houettes and angles in a frame.
This anecdote, displayed at the ongoing
Twin Sisters With Cameras exhibit at the
India International Centre in Delhi, cap-
tures the essence of the show. “This exhi-
bition is a tribute to the spirit of amateur-
ism and the love of photography that
(Manobina and her twin Debalina)
embodied,” write curators Sabeena Gadi-
hoke, Mallika Leuzinger and Tapati Guha
Thakurta in the introductory panel.
At a time when access to cameras is
commonplace, revisiting the idea of the
amateur photographer, what it entailed
films of Douglas Sirk, who received a
monumental 43-film retrospective at this
year’s festival, held from 3-13 August.
Once an accomplished theatre director at
the heart of the modernist movement in
Germany, Sirk left for the US in 1937 for a
chequered career in Hollywood. It was in
the 1950s, when he collaborated with Uni-
versal Pictures, that he made the series of
lush melodramas he is most known for
today, such as All That Heaven Allows
(1955) and Imitation Of Life (1959).
Curated by Bernard Eisenschitz and
Roberto Turigliatto, the retrospective
allowed audiences to not just observe the
evolution of Sirk as a film artist but also
find underexplored cross-currents
between different phases of his career. As
a result, the hard-edged mystery movies
he made in the 1940s, notably Sleep, My
Love (1948) and Shockproof (1949), seem to
contain the seeds of the later melodramas,
just as the melodramas pick up disturbing
undercurrents from the crime pictures. At
the very least, the retrospective should
prove instrumental in nuancing the exist-
ing critical line around Sirk as a maker of
Technicolor weepies.
“As far as I am concerned, heaven is
stingy,” Sirk once said. In Alexander
Sokurov’s Fairytale, the marquee entry of
the 17-film strong competition section at
the festival, four political figures from the
20th century try to see if they can get
entry to heaven. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini
and Churchill find themselves in purga-
tory in this hypnotic if elusive work. They
make petty quips about each other,
encounter doppelgängers and reflect on
the tragedies they have presided over.
Drawing from both classical painting and
(and still does), and the practice of shoot-
ing itself, becomes an important interven-
tion. For this, the twins’ work— first,
together as LinaBina, and, later, individu-
ally—provides just the right context.
Varanasi-based Manobina and Debalina
were barely 13 when their father, Benod
Behari Sen Roy, introduced them to pho-
tography. This was in the early 1930s,
when cameras were accessible only to a
privileged section—and within that, very
few women. Sen Roy bought them the
popular Kodak Brownie camera.
STUDIOUSNESS AND JOY
“It was not about only taking photographs
on their shared Brownie camera,” says
Leuzinger. “He had also organised a sort of
photography curriculum for them.” In a
piece about Manobina’s practice, pub-
lished in Trans Asia Photography in 2020,
Gadihoke notes that Sen Roy even built a
darkroom at home for them.
Currently, most serious photographers
complain that while digital processes have
given them more efficient and exciting
ways to experiment, they have also made
it easy for “amateur photographers” to
click without much thought. In contrast,
Debalina waited long minutes to shoot
even one seemingly simple, striking
image of a lone bench in an open park. She
titled it Solitude. Leuzinger shares an
anecdote from Gadihoke’s conversation
with Debalina: “People had wondered
why she didn’t just shoot a couple sitting
on the bench together…but for (the twins)
it’s really about sinking into a moment.”
Manobina, in turn, had an eye for geome-
CULTURE
AI-based imaging technology, Sokurov’s
digital chamber drama is designed like a
historical fever dream—only that the 20th
century slumber isn’t over yet.
Fairytale beholds the world’s horrors
from a melancholy, even amused distance,
but the wounds are still raw in Jan Baum-
gartner’s The DNA Of Dignity, a moving
documentary about the work of forensic
scientists involved in identifying victims
buried in mass graves during the Balkan
War. They excavate bones, assemble what
remains of them into a skeleton, carry out
DNA tests to ascertain identities and hand
over the remains to grieving families.
Baumgartner’s film is a fascinating picture
of how the abstractions of science eventu-
ally take form as human stories. Its success
lies in finding the right tone and distance
for a subject as grave and delicate.
“The war was first fought with bombs,
since then it has become silent,” says one
(left) Photograph of daughter Aparajita standing above the Bombay-Poona Highway, mid-1960s, by Manobina Roy; and ‘Solitude’,
London, 1959, by Debalina Mazumder.
tries in everyday sights, especially caused
by light, used to effect in moody portraits
of her daughter Aparajita.
The twins displayed a sincere studious-
ness towards the art of image-making—
but, in keeping with the spirit of amateur
photography, etched it with a happy and
light-hearted passion.
The learnings and meticulous habits
they had developed through their educa-
tion with their father and later involve-
ment with the Portfolio Club of the United
Provinces Amateur Photographic Associ-
ation, which offered “critical peer evalua-
(clockwise from top, left)
Douglas Sirk’s ‘Written On The
Wind’ (1956); Hilal Baydarov’s
‘Sermon To The Fish’ (2022); the
poster of Alexander Sokurov’s
‘Fairytale’ (2022); and (below) Jan
Baumgartner’s ‘The DNA Of
Dignity’ (2022).
tion”, stayed with them. Flip over any
image—there are albums, letters and
notes on display—and you will find copi-
ous notes: the type of camera and film
used, f-stop and exposure numbers, the
time of shooting, sometimes even the
quality of light. In some shots, possibly
given the feedback-heavy nature of their
practice, Manobina even leaves requests
for better or funnier captions.
Once they got married, the sisters
moved to different cities. Debalina, who
moved to Kolkata, went on to become the
chair of the Photography Association of
SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
This year’s Locarno film festival
had fare ranging from the
popular to the innovative. But
‘Matter Out Of Place’, its
inaugural Green Leopard
award winner, stole the show
grieving mother in The DNA Of Dignity.
The notion of war as a permanent condi-
tion, a state of mind, courses through
Azerbaijani film-maker Hilal Baydarov’s
Sermon To The Fish. A traumatised young
soldier returns to his village after the war,
finding it empty and desolate. Baydarov
weaves this premise into a spare landscape
film in which spectacular vistas of barren
countryside are punctuated by human fig-
ures prostrating or scrunched up, rarely
showing their faces. The film’s greatest
idea involves a photo-bombing dog.
Locarno’s own landscape is more mod-
est. Hemmed in by mountains, the town
comes across as intimate, almost claustro-
phobic. The festival venues are located a
few minutes from each other, a fact that
makes encounters with acquaintances
and friends pleasurably inevitable. The
steep, narrow lanes that house countless
restaurants all flow into the Piazza
Grande, the 8,000-seat open-air screen at
the heart of the festival that hosts screen-
ings every evening. The lineup at the
Piazza Grande tends towards popular
works such as Bullet Train (2022), the
Brad Pitt starrer that opened the festival.
Film festivals like Locarno are, how-
ever, paradoxical things. As beacons of
film culture, they are supposed to allow
audiences to get a sense of cinema’s future
and past. Yet the ideals of a festival often
crash against the everyday realities of par-
ticipation. Subject to unending screenings
and conversations, the mind wanders, the
films bleed into one another, frequently
losing context. The movies seek to take
the viewer on journeys to far-flung worlds,
existing and imagined, but the physical
reality of spectatorship resists easy trans-
portation. The sweat on your back as you
settle into your seat, the fight to get a half-
decent meal between screenings, the
gravity of undone laundry, all keep
reminding you of the here and now.
Moreover, the glut of films can result in
an audiovisual bulimia at loggerheads
with the goals of the festival. The state of
confused reflection that challenging films
leave you in is washed away, unfortu-
nately, in the stream of thoughts that the
Bengal and a member of the “Ladies
Forum” of the Federation of Indian Pho-
tography. Manobina, based in Mumbai,
travelled extensively with her husband.
A deep AttAChmeNt
In their later years, Debalina tried to teach
her daughter Kamalini photography. “She
had to keep her own journal and do these
experiments but she eventually stopped
because (the meticulousness) was too
much for her,” says Leuzinger.
Witnessing this kind of photographic
practice is especially illuminating when
New Delhi 11
next work provokes.
And the Locarno festival is known for its
mix of traditional and challenging pro-
gramming. If the films playing at the
Piazza Grande draw non-cinephilic audi-
ences from the region, the works premier-
ing in competition tend to be at the van-
guard of innovation. Last year, the festival
ended “Moving Ahead”, a sidebar devoted
to more experimental fare. The result was
that this year’s Cineasti del Presente, a
section showcasing 15 works from early-
career film-makers, was dominated by
features that may have otherwise made
their way to the experimental segment.
As part of its eco-friendly initiatives
under the banner Green Project, Locarno
also designated a Green Leopard award in
2022, intending to honour one feature
that “best reflects an environmental
theme”. The winner of the inaugural edi-
tion is Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Matter Out Of
Place, a remarkable work tracing the jour-
ney of objects not native to the environ-
ment they are found in. Shot in about 10
locations around the world including
Nepal and the Maldives, the film looks at
human-generated waste. Like much of
Geyrhalter’s work, Matter has neither
voice-over nor interviews, with the viewer
trusted with the task of navigating the
film’s implications.
Matter juxtaposes the work of waste
management personnel from around the
world but it does not offer glib answers.
Geyrhalter insists his films are not activist;
instead, they are documents for future
archives about how humans lived at this
particular point in history. Indeed, the
images in his new film are clear and sharp
but ambivalent, leaving the viewer both
amazed and repulsed by mankind’s capac-
ity to generate and manage vast amounts
of garbage in the remotest stretches.
Beauty and ugliness coexist in Matter Out
Of Place, which has the capacity to
sharpen our ecological consciousness
more thoroughly than most cine-pam-
phlets can. It’s an essential work.
Srikanth Srinivasan is a Bengaluru-
based film critic.
remembering Debalina and Manobina’s
context as “house-proud” wives and
mothers first. “If anything, it seems like
there were so many reasons they could
have (stopped shooting),” says Leuzinger.
As they aged, they had to contend with
failing faculties; Manobina even lost vision
in one eye. They didn’t stop, however.
They were so attached to their cameras
that Debalina said she found thoughts of
being without her camera unsettling.
“Maybe there is some payoff to paying
attention, to slowing down, to share that
with others, and to have conversations
about the things we see,” Leuzinger says.
“It is nice to have an example of people
doing that and (to see that photography)
brings them into contact with not just
their own circle, but also with other peo-
ple and other types of settings and cities.”
Today, as photography grapples with
the issue of power dynamics being skewed
in favour of the photographer, a study of
the twins’ work becomes even more lay-
ered—particularly in view of their class
and privilege. “...photography (is) more
than just images, (it is) slices of different
types of history,” notes Leuzinger.
“Whether as object histories of cameras,
film rolls and magazines, or as a history of
(a class of) women in 20th century in India
and what kind of options were open to
them.”
Twin Sisters With Cameras is on view
through today, 11am-7pm, at the Kamala-
devi Complex, India International Centre,
Delhi. There is also a Curator’s Walk with
Sabeena Gadihoke at 5pm today.
12 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
NEW DELHi
Children’s
Angami
Corner
folktales in
English
Jahnabee Borah
jahnabee.b@htlive.com
T
his is a story of how the hills, plains and
mighty rivers of the North-East came to
be. Written by the Naga professor and
poet Theyiesinuo Keditsu, with art by the Mizo
children’s book illustrator Alyssa Pachuau, the
luminous tale of love, longing and creation
from the Angami community in Nagaland has
been reimagined for young readers aged seven
and above.
The book’s eponymous heroine, Ukepenu-
opfü, is a woman with lustrous long hair. She
wears the sun and moon as earrings, day and
night being determined by the shoulder on
which she places her thick braid to hide or
reveal her ears. Her husband, “with flesh as
brown as earth and yawning dark caves for
eyes”, is a giant. Their two sons are kept away
from their terrifying father but the story’s tip-
ping point comes when the boys ignore the
warnings of the forest spirits and accidentally
discover him. This leads to a chasm in the fam-
ily. The father and one of the sons leave, walk-
ing down a mountain. Wherever he steps, the
tale goes, “his enormous feet flattened the hill-
sides into steps that became the first terraced
rice fields”. The bottom of the mountain,
where he lies down, is transformed into an
“expansive plain”. The couple’s sons go on to
become the forefathers of the hill and plains
people.
It isn’t a happily-ever-after love story but it
spins a layered narrative of how different states
in the North-East
came to be. And it
paints an evocative
picture of the birth
of the North-East, a
region largely
absent from chil-
dren’s literature.
Moreover, as any
good story ought to, Ukepenuopfü—An
it contains multi- Angami Folktale
tudes—from the Reimagined:
poignancy of rela- By T. Keditsu,
tionships to a rever- illustrated by Alyssa
ence for nature and Pachuau, Penthrill
new beginnings. Publication House,
The imaginative 17 pages, ₹650.
plot is brought alive
by captivating illustrations—my favourite part
of the book. I wouldn’t be surprised if children
poke their stubby fingers at a page, pointing to
far too many things and asking a whole lot of
questions. The drawings skilfully hold multi-
ple stories within the book’s 17 pages, even
mindful of details that signify the multiple
communities of the North-East, through dis-
tinct clothes and jewellery.
The book is also evocative of Keditsu’s keen
interest in the textiles of Nagaland and its
neighbouring states. She uses her Instagram
account @MekhalaMama to promote indige-
nous jewellery and clothes through personal
styling posts. Not surprisingly, these choices
seep into the book. Ukepenuopfü wears a
white Naga mekhala bordered with red and
black stripes similar to Keditsu’s wedding
mekhala set.
By reviving a little-known Angami folktale,
Keditsu draws attention to a mother—in
Angami, Ukepenuopfü translates into “the one
who birthed us” . It is indicative of the author’s
feminist leanings. In 2018, she published a col-
lection of poems, Sopfünuo, that portray the
plight of women in patriarchal Nagaland.
Ukepenuopfü is Keditsu’s first attempt at a
children’s book. And by rethinking the folktale
in English, she has unlocked it for young read-
ers from all corners of the world. Perhaps it will
find a place among the Eric Carles and Enid
Blytons.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ARNOLD ANTOO ON UNSPLASH
Tomy uses plants, birds and animals to set the mood.
Mohsin Hamid: shaping the
world, a sentence at a time
The author on how
sentence structure can
shape ideas, allowing
readers to experience
these unencumbered by
too much judgement
Preeti Zachariah
preeti.z@htlive.com
M
ohsin Hamid’s fifth novel, The
Last White Man, starts with a
distinctly Kafkaesque sentence:
“One morning Anders, a white
man, woke up to find he had
turned a deep and undeniable brown.” The short
but profound book is an allegorical tale of race,
loss, love, hope and mourning—relayed in beauti-
ful, paragraph-long sentences that force readers
to shape and reshape their ideas of the world.
Over the course of the novel, more people
change colour; their struggle to grapple with this
change and deal with the new world order it leads
to is at the heart of the novel. It is, also, a tight
domestic drama about a couple, Anders and
Oona, his father and her mother, set against this
backdrop.
Like his 2017 novel, Exit West, The Last White
Man too is an interesting blend of the real and the
extremely fantastic, set in an unnamed city at an
unknown time that uncannily mirrors our current
reality—think violence, race politics, irrepressi-
ble change, the desire for a lost golden age, and
conspiracy theorists.
“Some readers feel it is set in America, others in
Britain or Northern Europe or South Africa,”says
the Pakistani writer, who has always believed that
the relationship between reader and writer is cen-
tral to how novels work. This is clear in his first
three novels too: Moth Smoke (2000), The Reluc-
tant Fundamentalist (2007) and How To Get Filthy
Rich In Rising Asia (2013) all use a second-person
narrative to build an intimate relationship
between reader and text. “The novel is fluid about
these things (because) it leaves a lot of space for
the reader to imagine their version of the novel,”
Hamid adds, referring now to The Last White Man.
Ahead of the book’s release on 29 August, the
author speaks to Lounge on Zoom about the gene-
sis of the book, how the pandemic fed into it, and
how the many commas—36 in one place—allow
readers to experience the various ideas in the
novel, unencumbered by too much judgement.
Edited excerpts:
Let’s talk about the idea of whiteness. When
Anders wakes up brown, you are playing
with the cultural construct of whiteness and
the identity built around it. How did your
post-9/11 experience shape this?
Whiteness in a place like the US, the UK or
Europe (means) that you just get to be a person,
there is no additional suspicion, threat, inferiority
or ostracisation (attached). Whiteness is the
default; everything else is something less than, or
different from, the default.
When 9/11 happened, I was 30 years old and
T D
he death of
a local
gossip, a
few friendly
neighbours who
mean well, and an
old-buddy-
turned-
policeman with
selfish motives,
all light up this
comically
absurdist novel
by Pashupati
Chatterji, a multi-hyphenate author.
Hachette India, 280 pages, ₹450.
A deeply humanistic saga of the forest
Karthik Shankar
N
estled in the forested mountains of Waya-
nad, dissected by the Kabini river and its
tributaries, is the Edenic village of Kallu-
vayal—the setting for Sheela Tomy’s dazzling
debut novel, Valli. Translated from the Malaya-
lam original by Jayasree Kalathil, Valli, a sensory
jumble (and jungle) of the ecological, ethno-
graphic, sociological, folkloric and Biblical, offers
something for disparate readers. After all, the
polysemous word that makes up the novel’s title
means vine, earth, young women and wages.
Valli’s narrative is structured as a novel adapted
from the diary that Susan, an architect, leaves her
daughter Tessa. The unnamed author (whose
identity the reader figures out only towards the
end) incorporates fragments such as the letters
exchanged between Susan and Tessa, news
reports, even poems and divine invocations.
The multigenerational chronicle begins in
BOOKS
Mohsin Hamid at the 2012 Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar.
had lived 18 of those years in the West—mostly in
California and New York—gone to elite universi-
ties, and had a well-paying job. Discrimination
was (not) one of my main challenges. But after
9/11, suddenly, I was being stopped at the airport,
questioned at immigration for hours, and seeing
people getting nervous when I got on to a
crowded bus carrying a backpack.… I hadn’t
changed, but, almost overnight, this new racial
and ethnic category had been imagined on to me.
This has very real effects. The emotional jump-
ing point (for The Last White Man) was this experi-
ence but it is not my story.
NEW ON SHELVES
ipping into
15 years of
research,
anthropologist
Nayanika
Mathur’s new
book looks
beyond both the
colonial and
conservationist
narratives to
examine how and
why the climate
crisis is shaping
human-big cat relations in India.
HarperCollins India, 224 pages, ₹499.
1970, when schoolteachers Thommichan and
Sara elope to Kalluvayal to escape the wrath of her
family, which thinks he is below her station. At
Kalluvayal, they not only encounter pristine land-
scapes and rich local lore but a
sharply delineated class system,
one in which the indigenous Pani-
yars are bonded labourers toiling
away for jenmis, the landed gentry.
Valli, however, is truly egalitar-
ian, a saga that documents the
despair of marginal existence
among more than a dozen charac-
ters. Multiple people meet grim
fates. They are washed away by
floods, clubbed on the head, (self)
poisoned and trampled by ele-
phants. The novel, however, is deeply humanistic,
preoccupied not with the grisliness of death but
the affirmation of life.
The degraded and desiccated landscapes of
The Last White
Man: By Mohsin
Hamid, Penguin
Random
House India,
192 pages, ₹599.
the Sufi tradition of love poetry, a living tradition
about a particular sort of love that helps us tran-
scend limits. The idea that when you consider
love, it has the potential to make us less focused
on the self. Every religious and philosophical tra-
dition has ways of reminding us that over-invest-
ment in the self is not a (successful) strategy
because the self ends. This Sufi idea of love has
always been present in my writing.
In this novel, there is the love between Anders
and Oona, between Oona and her mother (who
have differing views), and Anders’ father, who is
upset about what happens to Anders. These are all
different love stories against the backdrop of this
social and racial change.
You have paragraph-long sentences with
many commas within which so much hap-
pens: Different ideas, voices and perspec-
tives all flow effortlessly.
All punctuation is a kind of pause and each is a
different kind of pause. Parenthesis are two
pauses that lean towards the other. A full stop is a
pause where you really stop.
But a comma is a pause that slows you down
without stopping. When encountering ideas
that may seem strange, troubling, or something
you may disagree with, a comma (may slow you
down but invites you to) keep going past the
thing that may have troubled you or bothered
you.... Long sentences built on commas allow the
reader to agree to suspend their judgement of
the sentence until a few seconds after. I think
that is useful.
Also, the point of view shifts within sentences.
You may be in Anders’ head as he goes to see his
father, then in his father’s when he sees Anders,
and later in a third-person perspective, all in one
sentence. This gets the reader accustomed to the
idea of points of view changing.
Hopefully, the effect is to create a space where
perspectives can change, where judgement is not
done away with, but is slightly slowed down.
GETTY IMAGES Did the pandemic influence the novel? The
premise of something going wrong with one
Big ideas of race, religion and nationalism person, patient zero, so to speak, and it then
are always central to your writing. But there spreading to others feels similar to how the
is also a focus on love, loss and family. great plagues and diseases of the last 1,000
This comes down to how I think of my origins years, including covid-19, have spread.
(and influences) as a writer. There is this whole The thing that is common between the pan-
strand of writers like Saadat Hasan Manto, Chinua demic and the novel is the ripping open of this
Achebe, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and gash in what we imagine to be reality. Schools
thinkers like Edward Said, all who thought that were all shut, millions of people were going back
fiction could play a political role. Then the for- to their villages, flights were banned and offices
mally inventive modernist writers like Franz were closed—who could have imagined that? It
Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus or Italo Calv- reminded us that what we called reality was just
ino; they have had a big impact too. a thin veneer that could change in a moment. The
(In addition, I have always found interesting) book was in conversation with that feeling.
I N
n a candid, oted
wise, even thinker
funny memoir, and writer
renowned Rajmohan
dancer, actor and Gandhi revisits
activist Mallika India’s journey
Sarabhai talks from
about the grief of independence in
losing her parents 1947 to study
—space scientist what citizens
Vikram Sarabhai need to do to
and dancer ensure the
Mrinalini country remains
Sarabhai—and an inclusive and
battling body-image issues. Speaking Tiger, vibrant democracy where nobody feels
224 pages, ₹450. oppressed. Aleph, 136 pages, ₹399.
Kalluvayal are ecologically resurrected. Tomy est deity, is both Sita and the Virgin Mary.
uses plants, birds and animals to establish a mood Tomy deftly compresses social and cultural his-
that can be described as jungle gothic. Occasion- tory. “Migrants from the lowlands came into the
ally, wry humour sprouts too. forest, their bullock carts crawling up paths
Much like the two classic works it ref- carved out by the footfalls of travellers, traders
erences—Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s and mendicants, and tracks where once echoed
Chemmeen and O.V the hoof-beats of warhorses and drumbeats of for-
Valli: By Sheela Vijayan’s Khasakkinte est folk.” Kalathil’s superlative work preserves
Tomy, translated Itihasam—the line Tomy’s fabulist style, conveys the rhythmic lilt of
by Jayasree between the realms of Paniya poems and retains the novel’s pathos.
Kalathil, the cosmic and the The final chapters are too self-consciously
HarperCollins natural vanishes in pruned, the melodrama and full-circle moments
India, Valli. Local histories feel like the literary equivalent of stumbling from
420 pages, ₹699. and folklore come a jungle to an artificial grass turf. Tomy’s biggest
alive, unfolding or feat of empathy, though, is allowing the reader to
mirroring themselves feel as deeply as she does about the loss of Kallu-
within the contemporaneous world of the vayal’s nature, culture and history. I too yearned
text. Eighteen rivers burst forth from the rubies of to return to a village I have never visited.
Unniyachi, a devadasi dancer. Karinthandan, a
Paniyar man, is resurrected in a tree. Kalluvayal’s Karthik Shankar is a Chennai-based writer and
cosmology is syncretic too. Chedettilamma, a for- editor.
LIVEMINT.COM NEWS SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 13

Essar Steel
m MINT SHORTS
Air India to restore staff salaries to
to sell infra Operational creditors lead
assets to
pre-covid level from 1 September
New Delhi: Air India will restore salaries that were cut in the wake
of the coronavirus pandemic from 1 September, according to a
ArcelorMittal in filing bankruptcy cases
communication. The loss-making airline, which was taken over by
Tatas in January this year, has also decided to revise crew layover Nippon Steel
allowances and meal arrangements from 1 September. In the com-
munication to the employees, Air India CEO and managing FROM PAGE 16
director Campbell Wilson said the airline “will be restoring the sal- Small vendors and suppliers initiated 51% of all IBC cases, while financial creditors make up for the rest
ary reduction for all employees with effect from 1 September.”PTI Essar Capital, added, “Essar is
now repositioned for growth and
resurgence. After consolidating Shayan Ghosh Raj Bhalla, a partner at law firm MV Kini.
Parliament panel grills Twitter our businesses over the last four shayan.g@livemint.com Bhalla said an operational creditor,
years, we have entered the next who is not entitled to a voting share in
officials over data security growth phase focused on help-
MuMBAI
the committee of creditors, files a peti-

AP
ing build a sustainable energy
future that will impact lives and
livelihoods for a greener world.”
Essar added that with this
deal, the group would conclude
its planned asset monetization
programme and complete the
debt repayment plan of $25 bil-
lion (₹2 trillion) with the Indian
banking sector.
Essar Group will have aggre-
gate revenues of $15 billion (₹1.2
trillion) and assets under man-
New Delhi: A parliamentary panel on Friday questioned agement of $8 billion (₹64,000
top Twitter officials over a whistle-blower’s revelations on crore), comprising assets
its India operations, and gave them a dressing-down as their spread across India and over-
replies on issue of data security and privacy were “not satis- seas, the statement said. These
factory”, sources said. Top Twitter executives including sen- include a 10 mtpa refinery in
ior director (public policy) Samiran Gupta, director (public the UK, 15 TCF reserves
policy) Shagufta Kamran deposed before the Parliamentary (including some producing
Standing Committee on Information and Technology fields) of unconventional
chaired by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. PTI hydrocarbons in India and
Vietnam and a 1,200MW
power plant in India.
Azad quits Congress, says party “Essar has planned signifi-
cant investments in its core sec-
is ‘comprehensively destroyed’ tors of energy, infrastructure,
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Fri- metals & mining and technol-
day resigned from the party ahead of organizational elections, ogy & services. While ongoing
terming it “comprehensively destroyed” and accusing the lead- businesses will provide opera-
ership of committing “fraud” on the party in the name of “sham” tional stability, our renewed
internal polls. Delivering another blow to the embattled party focus will be to transition exist-
that has seen a series of high profile exits, including that of Kapil ing assets to green and invest in
Sibal and Ashwani Kumar, in the recent past, Azad wrote a five- sector-transforming clean
page, no holds barred letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, businesses,” the Essar group
detailing his grievances. PTI statement said.
O
perational creditors, espe- tion for insolvency under Section 9 of
cially small vendors and IBC, with the intention to reach a settle-
suppliers, are increasingly ment with a company, despite being
initiating corporate insol- aware that they might not get anything
vency resolution pro- in the resolution plan. This tendency to
ceedings against corporate debtors. settle through insolvency proceedings
According to the latest available data, a is clear from the IBBI data. Over 19% of
majority of insolvency cases under the all insolvency cases initiated by opera-
Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) tional creditors have been closed via
are being filed by operational creditors appeals, reviews or have been settled.
seeking to recover dues for goods and The number is 9% for financial credit-
services provided to companies. ors, the data showed.
As a result, some experts are con- Other legal experts said the IBC in its
cerned that this will go against the basic present form is not operational creditor-
tenet of the IBC, which they say is a reso- About 80% of all insolvency resolutions with an underlying default of less than friendly and even if their claims are
lution, not recovery, mechanism by put- ₹1 crore were initiated by operational creditors, showed data. REUTERS admitted, the payout, more often than
ting firms under pressure to clear their not, is nil. Operational creditors, there-
dues. However, the aggressive stance by tion 9 of the IBC, Bajaj added. In fact, about 80% of all insolvency fore, issue threats to initiate insolvency
operational creditors also points to While operational creditors have ini- resolutions with an underlying default proceedings, which, leads to companies
increasing delays in payments to small tiated 51.2% of insolvency resolution of less than ₹1 crore were initiated by settling the dues.
suppliers and vendors, worsening their cases since the inception of IBC, 42.8% operational creditors, while about 80% “Stressed operational vendors do not
financial distress. were initiated by financial creditors or of those with a default of over ₹10 crore have the ability or wherewithal to await
“Yes, small vendors and were initiated by lenders. delayed recovery through regular civil
suppliers are stressed RECOvERy MEChANISM “In recent times, opera- or arbitration proceedings. Therefore,
because of the delays in tional creditors have been they take this shortcut to enforce some
recovering receivables LOwER application 332 cases were OvER 19% of such observed to be initiating sort of recovery. This is the reason we
and, as a result, have fee of ₹2,000 is a admitted under IBC cases have been insolvency process to are witnessing a surge in operational
major reason for the in April-to-June closed via appeals,
started opting for IBC large number of against 139 in the reviews or have recover the debt owed to creditor filings cases more than financial
mechanism to recover cases year-ago period been settled them. The petitions creditors,” said Abhishek Swaroop, a
their dues,” said Sandeep before the NCLT partner at Saraf & Partners.
Bajaj, managing partner, (National Company Law Meanwhile, the 332 cases admitted
PSL Advocates and Solicitors. lenders. The remaining were by compa- Tribunal), show a tendency to use the under IBC in Q1FY23, is well above the
Another reason for the large number nies declaring themselves insolvent, law by small creditors as a debt collec- 139 in the year-ago period, but far below
of cases by operational creditors could showed data from the April-June news- tion tool rather than for rehabilitation of the 2,000 cases in FY20, showed an
be the relatively lower fee of ₹2,000 letter of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy non-performing assets by the banks, analysis by Kotak Institutional Equities
needed to file an application under Sec- Board of India (IBBI). thereby undermining its objective,” said in a report on 24 August.

Packaging firm Ansapack

makes its second acquisition
BLOOMBERG
Theobroma eyes 200 stores Powell warns rates Delhivery to
Varuni Khosla Venture bought a significant will stay high for now hire about
varuni.k@livemint.com
new deLhI
minority share, committing
about $20 million, which was
released in tranches. FROM PAGE 16 trend growth and a weaker
75,000 to
meet festive
T
heobroma plans to Theobroma closed FY20 labour market, Powell said.
expand its store count to with a revenue of ₹120 crore, to another large rate rise next “While higher interest rates,
175-200 from the current and doubled it to about ₹254 month. slower growth, and softer
100 and hit an annual revenue
of ₹600 crore by FY25, a top
crore in FY22, Gour said,
driven by several things
“Failure to back that up with labour market conditions will
another 75 basis point increase bring down inflation, they will
season rush
executive at the popular cafe including store expansion. would cheapen his talk,” Spin- also bring some pain to house-
and patisserie chain said. There has also been a del said, noting that Powell holds and businesses,” he said. PTI
Bengaluru: Ansapack Pvt. Ltd (APL), a producer of Backed by private equity diversification of channels, took pains to quote former “Powell delivered a concise feedback@livemint.com
packaging materials for the pharmaceutical segment, firm ICICI Venture Funds, he said. Before the pan- chairs Alan Greenspan, Paul but clear message: that the Fed MuMBAI
has decided to acquire Teximco Group’s Pharma Flexi- Theobroma Foods Pvt. Ltd demic, delivery accounted Volcker and Ben Bernanke, is ready to hold rates tighter

bles manufacturing facility in Sikkim for a consideration operates in five cities, and
of around ₹100 crore, two people close to the develop- plans to enter five more
ment said. BEENA PARMAR including Chandigarh and
Chennai, chief executive offi-
cer Rishi Gour said. Later, it
Audi all set to enter Formula One will expand into tier-2 mar-
kets.
as engine supplier in 2026 season Theobroma does not have a
Belgium: German car manufacturer Audi will become an engine franchise model, and operates
supplier in Formula One for the first time in the 2026 season, all its 100 stores on its own,
chairman Markus Duesmann announced on Friday. Audi will Gour said in an interview. In
announce the team they will supply by the end of the year the two years of the pan-
although it is widely expected to be Sauber, who presently race demic, the company, which
as Alfa Romeo with a Ferrari engine. AFP operated about 50 outlets
across Mumbai and Delhi,
doubled its store count and
DreamFolks IPO subscribed also entered Bengaluru, Pune
and Hyderabad.
56.68 times on last day of offer “What the pandemic did
New Delhi: The initial public offer (IPO) of airport service aggre- was unique and unprece-
gator DreamFolks Services was subscribed 56.68 times on the last dented. Overall from a busi-
day of subscription on Friday. The IPO received bids for ness perspective, we have
53,74,97,212 shares against 94,83,302 shares on offer, according come out ahead. We are prof-
to data available with the NSE. The IPO was entirely an offer-for- itable now,” Gour said.
sale (OFS) of 1,72,42,368 equity shares. PTI Founded by former Oberoi
Currently, Theobroma has
nearly 100 stores in the big
metros including Mumbai and
New Delhi.
Hotels pastry chef Kainaz
Messman, the patisserie was
born as a single outlet in
Mumbai’s Colaba and
remained a family-run busi-
ness till 2012-13, with about
four outlets in the city.
Theobroma outlets sell
products like brownies,
crackers, cookies, pastries
and sandwiches.
“In some senses, Theo-
broma became a destination
in Mumbai, and people from
all over visited the place.
Around 2012-13, it was felt
that the brand should be pro-
fessionalized further,” Gour
said. That was when ICICI
for about 30% of sales, which
has shot up to 62%. Recogni-
zing this, the company has
set up its own delivery ser-
vice, apart from using net-
work partners. It has also
created cloud outlets and
stocking points that are
much lower in terms of capi-
tal expense, and in areas that
are delivery-intensive.
Theobroma is also tying up
with companies like Amazon
Fresh and similar delivery
services to sell its pre-pack-
aged, longer shelf-life items
which can be retailed from
any platform.
According to the National
Restaurant Association of
India, In FY22, the Indian
food services industry will
reach more than 85% of pre-
covid estimates to ₹4.7 tril-
lion.
L
invoking the Fed’s Hall of for longer. Whether the Fed ogistics firm Delhivery on
Fame to bolster his message. will repeat the mistakes of the Friday announced its
“Restoring price stability 1970s—the lessons he plans to hire over 75,000
will take some explained omit- staff for seasonal jobs over the
time and requires Powell’s remarks ted one impor- next one-and-a-half month
using our tools at the retreat tant one—the and expand its parcel sortation
forcefully to importance of capacity by 1.5 million ship-
bring demand
come as US
having accurate ments per day.
central bankers
and supply into assessment of the Of these, over 10,000 peo-
confront the
better balance,” economy’s ple will be off-roll employees
Powell said in highest inflation p o t e n t i a l across Delhivery’s gateways,
remarks that in 40 years growth,” said warehouses, and last-mile
were set to be Anna Wong, chief delivery, the company said.
live-streamed for US economist at The hiring is aimed at meeting
the first time from inside the Bloomberg. the expected higher volumes
lodge where the event has Powell’s remarks at the in both parcels and express
been held since 1982. retreat, which gathers top pol- part-truck load business dur-
Other Fed speakers in icymakers from around the ing the festive season, it added.
recent days have also pushed world, come as US central The company’s fully-auto-
back against expectations that bankers confront the highest mated mega gateway, which is
the Fed would raise rapidly to inflation in 40 years. Officials equipped with the automated
a restrictive policy stance and were slow to spot the risk and parcel and hub sortation at
then begin to ease. Restoring are now moving aggressively Tauru became operational in
price stability will require a to keep prices from accelerat- April this year. The company
“sustained” period of below- ing further. said it will also double down on
its various partner pro-
grammes by onboarding indi-
vidual bikers, local retailers,

RIL is mystery buyer Sebi tightens disclosure rules for rating agencies business partners and trans-
porters with plans to roll out a
revenue payout of ₹150-crore

in Dubai realty deal Priyanka Gawande

priyanka.gawande@livemint.com
under the Sebi scanner for its
₹2,500 crore investment . The
and report it in a press release
while withdrawing the rating.
across all programmes.
Delhivery said it will hire
50,000 last-mile agents under
MuMBAI bank’s AT1 bonds worth ₹8,415 Moreover, the circular clari- its Last-Mile Agent pro-
FROM PAGE 16 jobs and spending their money crore were written off as part fied that rating agencies must gramme alone, which offers

glitzy clubs, spas, restaurants
and splashy apartment towers
with breathtaking views of the
Persian Gulf’s blue waters. Its
construction began in 2001,
with the first residents moving
in around 2007.
Dubai’s property market,
which contributes around a
third of its economy, is recover-
ing from a seven-year slump,
thanks to the city’s nimble han-
dling of the covid-19 pandemic
and initiatives aimed at giving
expatriates a bigger stake in the
economy. Under new rules,
investors can obtain a 10-year
visa if they buy property worth
at least 2 million dirhams.
Foreign residents make up
more than 80% of the popula-
tion of the United Arab Emir-
ates and have been a mainstay
of the economy for decades,
doing mostly private-sector
on property or shopping in
some of the world’s largest
malls. Indians, in particular,
have consistently ranked
among the top buyers of Dubai
real estate.
The global property market
has been on fire lately. Swiss
billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli
was said to be buying a home in
London’s exclusive Belgravia
district for about £92 million
($108 million) in June, and the
Financial Times reported ear-
lier this month that an estate 20
miles west of London sold for
£125 million.
In the US, Joe Tsai’s Blue
Pool Capital recently acquired
a New York penthouse previ-
ously owned by Dan Och for
$188 million, while Asia’s most-
expensive apartment per
square foot sold in Hong Kong
for HK$640 million ($82 mil-
lion) in November.
T
he Securities and
Exchange Board of India
has enhanced the rules
on disclosures by credit rating
agencies, and put in place a
framework for rating with-
drawals of perpetual debt
securities.
In a circular issued on Fri-
day, Sebi said in order to facili-
tate withdrawal of perpetual
debt security ratings, that are
listed or are to be listed on the
bourses, a credit rating agency
may withdraw a rating in case
it rated these securities con-
tinuously for at least five years,
or received an undertaking
from either the issuer or other
agencies that a rating is availa-
ble for such bonds.
Perpetual (perp) bonds have
no maturity date, and are
treated as equity. Issuers pay
coupons on these bonds ‘per-
petually’, and do not have to
As per the current regulations, ratings of securities, like AT-I
bonds, cannot be withdrawn unless the asset is redeemed.
redeem the principal bond
cash flows. According to cur-
rent regulations for rating
withdrawals, ratings of securi-
ties, like AT-I bonds, cannot be
withdrawn unless the asset is
redeemed. This often results
in the bond issuer not cooper-
ating with a rating agency.
To bring in more transpar-
ency and make the disclosures
by rating agencies more use-
ful, Sebi has repeatedly asked
MINT
agencies to disclose them on
their websites either in excel,
or machine readable formats.
Sebi’s new guidelines come
after AT1 bonds issued by Yes
Bank were written down to
zero in March 2020 as part of a
restructuring plan, which led
to huge losses to several inves-
tors. In fact, Nippon India
Mutual Fund, which had
invested in Yes Bank’s risky
additional tier 1 bonds came
of the RBI’s restructuring plan
following the scam, rendering
the bonds worthless.
Yes Bank had raised around
₹2,000 crore by issuing these
bonds to institutional inves-
tors such as Nippon India MF,
Franklin Templeton India,
Barclays and Kotak Mutual
Fund. Nippon invested about
20% of total issuance. Many
investors were surprised by
RBI’s action considering that
in a bankruptcy case, bond-
holders are often given prior-
ity over shareholders.
Pertaining to rating with-
drawals, the market watchdog
clarified that unless there are
outstanding obligations under
the security ratings or a com-
pany whose security is rated as
wound up, merged, or amalga-
mated with another company,
a rating agency must assign a
credit rating to that security
compare two consecutive rat-
ing actions to standardise the
computation and disclosure of
a “sharp rating action”. “A CRA
shall disclose the sharp rating
action, if the change between
two consecutive rating actions
is more or equal to 3 notches
downward... The applicability
must be by first half of finan-
cial year 2022-23,” Sebi said.
Sebi also said that rating agen-
cies must have a detailed policy
on the non-submission of quar-
terly financial and performance
results, or audited financial
results, within prescribed time-
lines. This policy must include
current and past operational
details, including details about
capex plans, debt obligations
along with repayment details and
other issues that is appropriate,
according to internal assessment
or as laid down by a credit rating
agency’s internal policies.
flexible earning opportunities
to all self-employed individu-
als, students, and retired pro-
fessionals, among others. The
company said it will also
strengthen its other ongoing
programmes and extend
capacity with an additional
over 15,000 last-mile riders.
It will onboard truckers,
fleet owners, and brokers
through its BP business part-
ners to expand part-truckload
capacity by 50% over the
next few weeks. “Alongside
building delivery capacity, we
have expanded our infrastruc-
tural footprint by a million sq ft
in the first quarter of FY23.
Additionally, we are beefing
up our pan-India parcel sorta-
tion capacity by 1.5-million
shipments a day to meet the
heightened customer
demands,” said Ajith Pai, chief
operating officer at Delhivery.
14 SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi NEWS LIVEMINT.COM

Sequoia
US urges India
to join Russian oil
India Inc sees decarbonizing Capital
price cap coalition as primary sustainability goal pares stake
in Zomato
Gireesh Chandra Prasad & Joseph Rai
Rituraj Baruah joseph.rai@livemint.com
Companies realize greening alone won’t do, while laying emphasis on research and innovation NEW DELHI
NEW DELHI

S
equoia Capital India has
Swaraj Singh Dhanjal

V
isiting US deputy secre- pared its stake in Zomato
tary of treasury Wally swaraj.d@htlive.com Ltd by selling shares in
Adeyemo on Friday said MUMBAI the open market, joining Tiger
Washington is keen to rope in Global, Uber and Moore Stra-

I
India in a global coalition to ndia Inc. needs to sharpen its focus tegic Ventures among inves-
impose a price cap on Russian US treasury official Wally on the wider ecosystem of decar- tors who have either fully or
oil. This, he said, will help lower Adeyemo said the move will bonizing businesses instead of only partially sold their holdings in
energy cost for Indian consum- cut energy costs for Indians. concentrating on using green the online food delivery aggre-
ers and also meet the Biden energy, said Anish Shah, managing gator in recent weeks.
administration’s goal of limit- services such as shipping insur- director and chief executive officer of Sequioa, which first
ing oil revenues to Russia ance to export of Russian oil. Mahindra group, as companies make invested in Zomato in 2013,
which is in a war with Ukraine. The price cap seeks to make rapid strides towards adopting renewa- sold 171 million shares, or
Earlier in the day, Adeyemo a carve-out to allow oil trade ble forms of energy. 2.01% stake, in the startup
met finance minister Nirmala below the price level to be set “Everything we have done so far is between September 2021 and
Sitharaman and exchanged by the coalition. about greening ourselves. But we have this August, the venture capi-
views on global economic and The price cap will allow to go beyond that and decarbonize tal firm said in a regulatory fil-
financial sector issues, India’s European and US firms to offer industries,” said Shah, speaking at the ing.
G20 presidency in 2023 and services for the purchase and Climate Tech Convening India event in Sequoia offloaded 66 mil-
enhanced India-US partner- transportation of Russian Mumbai on Friday, organized by the lion shares in Zomato between
ship, Sitharaman said in a Twit- crude on the sea so long as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a 6 September and 14 October, it
ter post. Adeyemo also paid a price is below a certain level. US non-profit group focused on climate said, adding that the remain-
two-day visit to Mumbai earlier That level, Adeyemo said, change. ing 105 million shares were
this week during which he met would help deny Russia the “For example, an average automobile sold between 27 July and 25
Reserve Bank of “extreme profits” will generate 35 tonnes of carbon in its August.
India governor The price cap will it has made due to lifetime. If we look at an EV (electric The same urgency seen in covid-19 vaccine rollout globally is needed to develop climate technology, an executive said. BLOOMBERG Consequently, Sequoia’s
Shaktikanta Das allow European price surge amid vehicle), it will generate 27 tonnes of car- stake in Zomato has fallen to
and top execu- and US firms to the Ukraine war. bon in its lifetime. That’s not a big “What we have seen is that what’s opment of technology and access to case in many areas as yet. However, it 4.4% from 6.41%, it said.
tives of private offer services for “It is in the best change. The product alone is not good for the planet is good for the busi- finance. We need to show the same was far from the case in renewables less Sequoia also that it received
companies.
the purchase and interest of our enough; the question is what is the ness as well, not just in the IRRs (internal urgency as seen in the global covid-19 than 5 years ago,” said Mehta. 45 million incremental equity
“Indian policy people to get source of the energy. For an EV, it is 27 rate of returns) that you get from the vaccine rollout and related technology Amanda Leland, executive director of shares of Zomato on 10 August
makers that I met transportation of energy at the low- tonnes because the energy source is still project. It’s also the consumers that you transfer. Industry needs to invest more EDF, said India is well-positioned to following the latter’s acquisi-
with are very inte- Russian crude est cost possible largely fossil. If we go to 100% renewable attract, the brand that you build and the in R&D. We need deeper partnerships decouple emissions from growth. tion of quick commerce firm
rested in learning and also to deny energy source, then it is seven tonnes. ecosystem around it,” he said. between governments, industry, “India recognizes what is at stake and Blinkit (formerly Grofers).
the details beca- Russia avenues So, then, we still have to take care of the Sanjiv Mehta, managing director and research organizations and investors,” today, there is considerable and credible Sequoia was also an investor
use ultimately the primary they can use to prop up their remaining seven tonnes, which is work being done to meet ambitious in Blinkit.
objective is that India is able to economy and further the war in steel, transportation, etc. and that FOCUSED ON CLEANINg ENERgY commitments. There is a broad con- Shares of Zomato have cor-
buy energy at the cheapest pos- Ukraine. Our goal ultimately is needs an ecosystem-based focus,” sensus on the strategic and eco- rected nearly 70% from the
sible to make sure they can to build a coalition that is going he said. MAHINDRA SHAH said not just HUL’S Sanjiv Mehta EDF’S Amanda nomic rationale for sustainable highs seen soon after its block-
meet the demand for Indian to join us in implementing the Shah added that as part of Mahin- Group’s Anish Shah
said profitability and
products but also said it is vital to
energy sources need accelerate
Leland said India
can decouple
development,” said Leland. buster listing last year.
consumers and businesses. price cap,” he said. dra group’s efforts towards decar- sustainability are not to be clean for development of emissions from “India is a rich breeding ground of On Friday, the stock closed
That objective is aligned to our Emails sent to the finance bonization, it has recently launched mutually exclusive decarbonization climate technology growth innovation with companies and 0.25% lower at ₹61.9 apiece on
objective which is to reduce ministry, petroleum ministry, India’s first residential net zero car- investors who see the value proposi- the BSE.
Russia’s revenue,” he said. the Prime Minister’s Office and bon community. tion of hastening the transition to a Several investors have
He said that the concept of a the external affairs ministry “We are contemplating if we can CEO of Hindustan Unilever and presi- said Mehta. He said technological jumps clean economy in India. And in India, either exited or pared their
price cap is introduced in the Friday seeking comments commit to a date by which every single dent of industry body Ficci, said it is vital happen in leapfrogs and economies of there are clearly high-impact options holdings in Zomato in the past
context of a new round of Euro- remained unanswered till press project that we are launching will be net to accelerate development of climate scale can be quite dramatic in green open to investors across the risk spec- few weeks, after a 12-month
pean Union sanctions against time. Email queries to IOCL, zero carbon,” he added. technology while also easing access to technologies. “We know that invest- trum. An ecosystem of innovation, tech- lock-in period for pre-initial
Russia on oil trade taking effect RIL and Nayara Energy also Shah added that it is a myth that prof- finance to foster technological innova- ments made by businesses for renewa- nology and finance will help India make public offering (pre-IPO)
early in December that also remained unanswered. its and sustainability are mutually exclu- tion. ble transition—both capex and opex— meaningful progress on climate shareholders ended on 23
bans EU firms from offering gireesh.p@livemint.com sive choices. “It is essential to accelerate the devel- pays back in 3-5 years. This is not the change,” she said. July.

Blackstone to Loan pact lessens possibility of white knight for NDTV Moderna sues
file IPO papers
for $2.5 billion
Jayshree P. Upadhyay
jayshree.p@livemint.com
Pfizer, BioNTech aggregating to 99.99% of the
fully diluted equity share capi-
the consent of the other par- 26%. They both need to be
ties,” says clause 6.3 of the read together,” said Raju.
tal at the time of conversion of agreement. NDTV says a November
mall portfolio MUMBAI
the borrower (RRPR) at any “If this clause is taken at face 2020 Sebi order prevents Bloomberg

A
dani Enterprises Ltd time during the tenure of the value, Adani could be asked by them from transferring shares. feedback@livemint.com ing a lawsuit filed Friday in the
Bloomberg said on Friday that the loan or thereafter without a judicial forum to pare the However, Adani Enterprises NEW DELHI US District Court in Massa-
feedback@livemint.com contentions raised by requiring any further act or warrant conversion to 25.99% on Friday said, “[P]erformance chusetts. “Ultimately, how-

M
NEW DELHI NDTV’s promoter entity deed on the part of the lender,” of equity share capital of of obligations by RRPR pursu- oderna Inc. sued ever, Pfizer and BioNTech dis-
RRPR Holding Pvt. Ltd are said the loan agreement. NDTV,” said a second corpo- ant to the warrant exercise Pfizer Inc. and BioN- carded those alternatives and

B
lackstone Inc. is plan-
ning to file as soon as
next month for an ini-
tial public offering of its
Indian shopping mall portfo-
lio that could raise about
$500 million, people familiar
with the matter said.
The private equity firm has
been interviewing advisers
for the Mumbai listing of a
real estate investment trust,
according to the people, who
asked not to be identified
because the information is
private.
Blackstone’s Indian retail
portfolio, which is held
through its Nexus Malls unit,
could be valued at about $2.5
billion, the people said. The
REIT could be listed as soon
as 2023, they said.
Preparations are at an early
stage, and details of the listing
could change, the people said.
A representative for Black-
stone declined to comment.
Nexus Malls operates 17
shopping centers across 13
Indian cities and has about 10
million square feet of retail
legally untenable and devoid
of merit. It asked the broad-
caster to immediately fulfil the
contract obligation to allot
equity shares. Returning the
original loan and warrant cer-
tificates will have no impact
either, it said in a regulatory
filing.
The basis of Adani’s argu-
ments lies in key clauses in a
loan agreement signed by
RRPR and Vishvapradhan
Commercial Pvt. Ltd (VCPL)
on 21 July 2009, parts of which
have been reviewed by Mint.
RRPR, named after NDTV
founder-promoters Radhika
and Prannoy Roy, holds
29.18% of NDTV and has
pushed back against the Adani
PMJAY to cover 50 gender transformation surgeries
Priyanka Sharma
priyanka.sharma@livemint.com
NEW DELHI
Gautam Adani, chairman and
founder, Adani Group. MINT
Group’s takeover bid, claiming
a regulatory order prevents
them from transferring effec-
tive ownership of part of the
company’s shares.
As per the loan pact, VCPL
has the sole right to convert
warrants into shares during
the loan tenure or even after.
“At the sole option of the
Lender (VCPL), the warrant
may be converted, into such
number of equity shares at par
surgery and treatment for
transgenders.
On Wednesday, health min-
ister Mansukh Mandaviya
“Even if the loan is repaid
today, VCPL’s rights granted
due to the warrants is abso-
lute,” said a senior corporate
lawyer declining to be named
since he advises one of the par-
ties in corporate matters. This
means even if RRPR gets a
white knight to repay the loan
owed to VCPL, it wouldn’t stop
the warrant conversion.
The agreement could also
cap Adani’s purchase of NDTV
shares, by way of the warrant
exercise, at 26%. “The lender
(VCPL) and its affiliates shall
not purchase shares of NDTV
which will increase their hold-
ing in the aggregate to more
than 26% of the paid-up equity
share capital of NDTV without
insurance scheme.
“Apart from existing packa- anonymity.
ges for PM-JAY, we have made
a list of 50 Sex Reassignment has 1,949 treatment procedures
rate lawyer who too declined notice will not result in viola- Tech SE, claiming the copied Moderna’s patented
to be named cit- tion of the Sebi technology in their covid-19 technology.”
ing conflict. The basis of Adani order as there is shot infringes on its patents, a Moderna said it’s also filing
However, Enterprises Ltd’s no, direct or indi- move that sets the stage for a suit in Germany. That com-
according to arguments lies in rect, dealing in massive legal clash between plaint couldn’t immediately be
Praveen Raju, a loan agreement any securities of the vaccine titans. verified. Pfizer said it has not
partner of Spice Mr Prannoy Roy Moderna accused Pfizer and been served with a lawsuit and
Route Legal, this
signed between or Mrs Radhika BioNTech of violating intel- couldn’t comment. Repre-
is where the RRPR and VCPL Roy pursuant to lectual property rights on key sentatives for BioNTech didn’t
nuance comes on 21 July 2009 the exercise of the elements of Mod- immediately
into play. “It warrants by erna’s messenger Moderna said it respond to a
appears there are VCPL allotment RNA technology had patents from request for com-
certain clauses that give VCPL of shares by RRPR.” in developing the 2010 to 2016 on ment.
the absolute right to exercise The first of the two lawyers Comirnaty vac- the mRNA Pfizer shares
warrants up to 99.99% of cited above said, “This agree- cine. Cambridge, fell 0.8% in early
equity in RRPR, which should ment is between two unlisted Massachusetts-
technology that
trading before US
mean 29.18% of shares of entities and predates Sebi based Moderna made its Spikevax markets opened,
NDTV need to be allotted to order (2020) which makes it said it had patents shot possible while BioNTech’s
Adani group. On the other highly unlikely that the regu- from 2010 to American deposi-
hand, there is this clause lator needs to give a nod for 2016 on the tary receipts fell
which caps share purchase at allotment of shares.” mRNA technology that made 2.1%. Moderna shares were lit-
its Spikevax shot possible but tle changed.
that the other two companies Moderna said it’s not asking
copied the technology without the courts to pull the Pfizer-Bi-
permission. oNTech covid vaccine from
Pfizer and BioNTech “took the market nor to block future
four different candidates into sales. The company is seeking
clinical testing, including damages for the period start-
one of the officials, requesting “Gender transformation options that would have ing 8 March of this year and
procedures like male to female steered clear of Moderna’s says it will not seek damages
So far, AB PM-JAY scheme and female to male, hormonal innovative path by using for Pfizer’s sales to 92 lower-
therapy, laser procedures for unmodified mRNA,” accord- and middle-income countries.

I
space, its website shows. The n a first, the National Health announced including trans- Surgery (SRS) for from all special- hair removal, voice surgery,
group bought its first mall in Authority (NHA) has genders under the ambit of AB transgender indi- NHA is now in ties such as cardi- breast augmentation etc are CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
Gujarat in 2015. The company included 50 Sex Reassign- PM-JAY to help them with viduals under the process of ology, oncology, being included in the list dedi-
acquired seven malls from ment Surgery (SRS) under health cover of up to ₹5 lakh per PM-JAY and we compiling paediatrics, sur- catedly for surgery and treat- Mint welcomes comments, suggestions or complaints about errors.
Prestige Estates Projects Ltd. Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya transgender beneficiary per are in the process comprehensive gery, orthopae- ment transgender people
as part of a deal agreed in Yojana for transgender benefi- year following the signing of a of finalization. dics and neurol- under PM-JAY,” said a second Readers can alert the newsroom to any errors in the paper by
2020. ciaries, said two officials from memorandum of understand- Once finalized,
package master ogy. Over 37.5 official, adding that NHA will emailing us, with your full name and address to
Blackstone is the biggest NHA. ing (MoU) between NHA and eligible transgen- for transgender million hospital now generate Ayushman Bha-
feedback@livemint.com.

commercial real estate owner
in India. It’s a backer of
Embassy Office Parks REIT,
the first property trust to con-
duct an IPO in India. The
vehicle raised 47.5 billion
rupees in 2019.
NHA is now in the process of
compiling comprehensive
package master for transgen-
der category, including the
existing Ayushman Bharat
PMJAY scheme (AB PM-JAY)
and specific packages like SRS
the ministry of social justice
and employment (MoSJE).
According to the govern-
ment, there are 480,000 trans-
gender population who are eli-
gible for free and cashless treat-
ment under the national health
der beneficiary category admissions cost- rat TG Plus Card to ease the It is our policy to promptly respond to all complaints. Readers
can avail free ing ₹45,000 cro- treatment process for all veri- dissatisfied with the response or concerned about Mint’s journalistic
treatment and res have been fied transgender beneficiaries. integrity may write directly to the editor by sending an email to
surgery at any empaneled hos- authorized under the scheme Queries emailed to a health asktheeditor@livemint.com
pital across the country. This is so far through a network of ministry spokesperson did not
Mint’s journalistic Code of Conduct that governs our newsroom is
a great step for the welfare of 25,000 empanelled healthcare elicit any response till press available at www.livemint.com
transgender population,” said providers. time.

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LIVEMINT.COM NEWS SAturDAy, 27 AuguSt 2022
New Delhi 15

Hitachi Energy looks United Spirits stops selling whiskey in

some states to press for higher prices
at acquisitions in India Bloomberg
feedback@livemint.com
tastes and craft beverages, are
also a profitable opportunity.
Diageo—which owns
Rituraj Baruah

O
ne of Hina Nagara- brands including Johnnie
rituraj.baruah@livemint.com jan’s first moves at the Walker and Smirnoff—needs
new delHi helm of liquor giant about 200,000 permits each
Diageo Plc’s Indian arm is a year to navigate rules that

H
itachi Energy will look at standoff with government offi- often change at little notice.
acquisitions and partnerships cials over price caps that have That includes in the capital,
in India to foray into newer already cost the company New Delhi, where more than
areas such as technologies for almost $9 million in sales, and 100 liquor shops have closed
battery storage and other some say might backfire. this month after the local gov-
emerging areas in the energy space, said United Spirits Ltd. has halted ernment rolled back licensing
Claudio Facchin, CEO, Hitachi Energy. whiskey sales in a number of introduced last year to liberal-
In 2020, the Zurich-headquartered states yet to budge on price Diageo needs about 200,000 permits every year to navigate ize alcohol sales.
company acquired of a majority stake in caps despite rising inflation. rules that change frequently without prior notice. HT Currently, each state sets its
ABB Power Grids, creating a new business, The move to stop sales own alcohol prices.
Hitachi Energy India. In an interview, Fac- Claudio Facchin, CEO, Hitachi Energy (left); and N. Venu, MD and CEO, Hitachi Energy, rather than see margins con- and union territories in a such as Haryana, Rajasthan, Nagarajan said Diageo is
chin and the MD and CEO for Hitachi India and South Asia. tinue to erode is a risky bet, country where alcohol is still West Bengal and Uttar Pra- lobbying for a mechanism to
Energy, India and South Asia N. Venu said analysts at Mumbai-based sometimes seen as forbidden. desh, have already imple- allow pricing to rise with infla-
the company would also increase its invest- supply is needed and that’s where we can have technologies and competence and Dolat Capital wrote last “In the short term there will mented hikes. tion, which the company
ments in the country. On Tuesday, it inau- step in and support with our technology capabilities that are best in class to inte- month, that could complicate be some impact on market Diageo’s difficulties are expects to remain heightened
gurated a new facility of power quality that reliability, resilience of those systems. grate the battery storage systems into this the firm’s pivot to premium share,” she said in an interview emblematic of a market where for the next two quarters, as
products manufacturing in Doddaballapur, Are you planning to diversify your new future energy system that will require products. in the southern city of Benga- a high potential for growth for well as inclusion in India’s
Bengaluru. In the interview, the top execu- product portfolio? that storage. We continue to look into It also means a mounting luru, adding that she hopes alcohol makers is complicated nationally applied goods-and-
tives also spoke about the significance of Facchin: Yes. If you look at what we those areas both organically, with our own loss of revenue across its port- pricing issues will be resolved by tradition and taboo. service-tax.
India amid the push for net zero and impor- inaugurated recently in the power quality research and development teams and inor- folio while costs rise at a dou- by the end of September. Mahatma Gandhi wanted to The latter would help
tance of simple and clear space, it is a pillar for tech- ganically as well. As some of the areas, we ble-digit pace. Discussions are “going well” rid the country of liquor and streamline the process, though
regulatory frameworks. m INTERVIEW nology. Some of that tech- have the competence to develop them. We “I didn’t realize how difficult with up to five states, she said. some states, such as Bihar and she said it might be a long way
Edited excerpts: nology that we look at... need to also look at either partnering or it is,” 57-year-old Nagarajan “We are working with them, Gujarat, do ban alcohol. But a off, with states unwilling to
What can we expect in flexible AV transmission acquisitions that will help us accelerating said, referring to the maze of we are showing them the data growing class of urbanist India relinquish control over a lucra-
terms of expansion in India? systems, there were technologies which we and expanding the portfolio at the edge of red tape that spans 36 states and the right facts.” Others drinkers, seeking out new tive revenue source.
Facchin: If you look at the Hitachi port- introduced in the market along with HVDC the grid.
folio globally, 80% is already localized and and that whole area of power quality is How do you see the Indian market in
available in India. That said, as per our becoming more and more relevant to man- terms of regulations?
strategy for 2030 we will expand our port- age this complexity, to make sure that the Venu: Coming to the utilities, in which
folio globally and therefore there is an grid system is able to deliver the power both states and Centre are present, we see South films regain 80% of pre-covid biz
‘
opportunity of course to leverage India to quality but also reliably and efficiently. changes are happening at the state level.
expand the portfolio. Not only in terms of There is more on the Now the government has
quantity but also scope, technologies, and power electronics space. announced a policy Lata Jha ners. Now, Telugu producers producer, trade and exhibition other hand, not only had huge
India will play an essential role in that Power electronics as a We will expand our framework of revamped lata.j@htlive.com have agreed on an eight-week expert, said, referring to Thiru- budgets, but had to be released
global growth. Not just because we have technology platform is portfolio globally, and distribution sector window for OTT premieres, chitrambalam, Kaduva and Vir- across states to cater to wider

T
great talent here which is essential for us, becoming more and more therefore, there is an scheme...so if you really he South Indian movie and have asked multiplexes to uman, which feature popular audiences to recover the costs.
but also because there is a good under- relevant. You have power look at couple of years industry has recovered to reduce ticket pri- stars Dhanush, According to a recent report
standing in this market of what the differ- electronics in the renewa- opportunity, of course, back the government 80% of its pre-covid busi- ces to ensure the Telugu producers Prithviraj Suku- by media consultancy Ormax
ent elements are and what needs to happen ble side for solar, for wind, to leverage India to started with the APDP, ness on the back of successive films earn more at have agreed on an maran and Karthi, and investment firm GroupM,
for this energy transition to be delivered. you have more and more expand the portfolio. Deendayal Upadhyaya hits at the box office, said trade the box office. 8-week window but were made at Telugu cinema has seen signifi-
There are still areas where we will take power electronics in the scheme among others. All experts. “Southern film for premieres on lower budgets. cant growth in box office col-
Claudio Facchin
some further steps with regard to the cur- consumption side, EV those schemes are very While Tamil film Thiruchit- actors and pro- The movies hit lections. In January-April, 60%
CEO, Hitachi Energy OTT, and asked
rent portfolio to complete that remaining charging , data centres, important and it has also rambalam, starring Dhanush, ducers are taking theatres only in of Hindi box office revenues
20%. More importantly, looking a bit power electronics for helped needle to move on breached the ₹50-crore mark risks with lower- multiplexes to their home states came from dubbed versions of
beyond the next 2-3 years is the question power quality, HVDC and power electron- the distribution side, especially the distri- in Tamil Nadu alone since its budget movies to cut ticket prices and as they were south Indian films like K.G.F:
how do we set up so that our future portfo- ics for storage applications. So, that’s an bution network has improved. It’s not there release last week, Karthikeya 2 help audiences rooted to regional Chapter 2 and RRR. During this
lio will be broader in that sense for us to be area we have an opportunity to expand and where you would like it to be but at least (Telugu), has been a hit even in recreate the habit sensibilities, risks period, Telugu films contrib-
able to support this energy transition for leverage. We don’t plan to go into battery needle has moved there. So, we are defi- the Hindi belt. Thallumaala of coming to theatres. There- were lower and local audiences uted 27% to overall revenues,
our customers to look at those areas. We manufacturing. That’s an important part of nitely looking forward to see that in a big (Malayalam), Bimbisara (Tel- after, it is for the audience to thronged the theatres. Bolly- compared to 12% in 2019, while
have identified some of these high-growth the future investments plans for India, but step, the distribution, the last mile connec- ugu) and Viruman (Tamil), too, decide if they find the content wood flicks such as Shamshera Hindi cinema’s share fell from
areas where reliable, high quality power what we do is we want to invest more to tivity. have emerged as money-spin- compelling,” Girish Johar, film and Samrat Prithviraj, on the 43% in 2018 to 38% in 2022.

Withdrawal of the Draft

Red Herring Prospectus filed
by API Holdings Limited

API Holdings Limited had filed a draft red herring

prospectus dated November 8, 2021 with the
Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) on
November 9, 2021 in connection with its proposed
initial public offering of equity shares of ₹ 1 each.
On July 22, 2022, the IPO Committee of the Board
of Directors of API Holdings Limited decided to
withdraw the draft red herring prospectus filed
with SEBI, due to market conditions and strategic
considerations. API Holdings Limited has also
intimated the same to SEBI through its book
running lead managers on July 25, 2022 and to BSE
Limited and National Stock Exchange of India
Limited on July 26, 2022.

Issued by

Date: 27/08/2022 Contact:

Place: Mumbai corporatesecretarial@apiholdings.in

DELHI JAL BOARD, GOVT. OF N.C.T. OF DELHI DELHI JAL BOARD, GOVT. OF NCT OF DELHI
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF ENGINEER (WATER) PROJECT-I OFFICE OF THE ADDL. CHIEF ENGINEER(M)-10/EE(T)
EXECUTIVE ENGINEER (PROJECT) W-VIII ENGINEERS BHAWAN 2nd FLOOR, ANDREWS GANJ,
A-BUILDING, JHANDEWALAN, NEW DELHI-110005 NEAR MOOL CHAND CROSSING, NEW DELHI-110049
Email: eeprojectw8@gmail.com
SHORT NIT NO. 60/ACE(M-10)/EE(T)/2022-23
N.I.T. No 04/(2022-23)
S. Description Amount Put to Date of release Last date/time of
SI. Name of work Amount put to tender/ Date of release Tender Last date/time of
No. Earnest Money (Rs.) of Tender in Processing Fee receipt of tender
No. Tender, EMD, of tender in receipt of tender
e-procurement (Rs.) through e-procurement Tender Fee E-Procurement through E-Procurement
solution solution Solution Solution
1. P/L/J 1500-1200-900-700-450 mm dia Rs. 1,39,59,937/- 26.08.2022 Rs. 1000/- 15.09.2022 upto 1. Installation of 1000 mm and various dia valve Rs. 42,60,717/- 24.08.2022 05.09.2022 At 2.00 P.M.
water mains to interconnect the existing Rs. 2,80,000/- Tender ID No.: (Non-Refundable) 3.00 PM and interconnection at various places in ward Rs. 85300/- Tender I.D. No.
water mains with newly constructed MBR (to be transmitted 2022_DJB_228286_1
at Mohammadpur village, Palla through RTGS)
62 S Hauz Khas under AC-43, Malviya Nagar Rs. 500/- 2022_DJB_ 228185_1
Further details in this regard can be seen at https://delhi.govtprocurements.com Further details in this regard can be seen at (https://govtprocurement.delhi.gov.in)
ISSUED BY P.R.O. (WATER) STOP CORONA: (i) Wash Your Hands, (ii) Wear Mask, (P.K. SHARMA) ISSUED BY P.R.O. (WATER) “STOP CORONA: Wear Mask, Follow Physical (V.K. Gupta)
Advt. No. J.S.V. 306 (2022-23) (iii) Maintain Social Distance E.E.(Project)W-VIII Advt. No. J.S.V. 308 (2022-23) Distancing, Maintain Hand Hygiene” EXECUTIVE ENGINEER (T) M-10
 New DelhI, MUMBAI, BENGALURU, kOLkATA, CHENNAI, AHMEDABAD, HYDERABAD, CHANDIGARH*, PUNE* VOL. 16 NO. 205 Rs10.00 in Delhi-NCR; Rs11.00 outside Delhi-NCR. Mint is also available for Rs15.50 with Hindustan Times in Delhi-NCR only 16 PAGES

Saturday, August 27, 2022

India Inc sees decarbonizing as Adani: NDTV bid to prevent

livemint.com key sustainability goal uP14 share allotment not tenableuP14

SENSEX 58,833.87 59.15 NIFTY 17,558.90 36.45 DOLLAR ₹79.87 ₹0.01 EURO ₹79.90 ₹0.49 OIL $100.77 $0.79 GOLD ₹51,686 ₹170

Get ready for higher Essar Steel to sell infra assets

to ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel
DON’T MISS

rates, signals Powell Swaraj Singh Dhanjal

swaraj.d@livemint.com
MUMBAI
Fed chair’s tough tone points to big rate hike next month, say analysts
E
ssar Group on Friday
agreed to sell some of its Moderna sues Pfizer, BioNTech
Bloomberg ports and power and over covid vaccine technology
feedback@livemint.com BuCkle uP transmission assets to Arcelor
Mittal Nippon Steel India (AM/
Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech, claiming the
technology in their covid shot infringes on its

U
S Federal Reserve chair
Jerome Powell sig-
nalled the US central
bank is likely to keep
raising interest rates
and leave them elevated for a while
to stamp out inflation, and he
pushed back against any idea that
the Fed would soon reverse course.
“Restoring price stability will
likely require maintaining a
restrictive policy stance for some
time,” Powell said Friday in remarks
prepared for the Kansas City Fed’s
annual policy forum in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming. “The historical
record cautions strongly against
prematurely loosening policy.”
He said restoring inflation to the
2% target is the central bank’s
“overarching focus right now” even
though consumers and businesses
will feel economic pain. He reiter-
ated that another “unusually large”
increase in the benchmark lending
rate could be appropriate when offi-
cials gather next month, though he
stopped short of committing to one.
“Our decision at the September
meeting will depend on the totality
of the incoming data and the evolv-
ing outlook,” he said.
Two-year Treasury yields rose as
NS) for about $2.4 billion
(around ₹19,000 crore). The
two entities also agreed to form
an equal joint venture to build a
4 mtpa liquefied natural gas
(LNG) terminal at Hazira in
Gujarat.
The closing of the deal, which
involves assets in Gujarat,
Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, is
subject to the completion of cor-
porate and regulatory approvals.
After a protracted battle
fought in insolvency courts and
the Supreme Court, AM/NS
US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. AFP acquired Essar Steel’s 10 mtpa
integrated steel plant in Hazira
MORE PAIN for ₹42,000 crore under a
BrINGING inflation ANOTher unusually BrINGING back price bankruptcy auction. The assets
in Hazira, which have been sold
down to the 2% target is large hike likely at Fed’s stability to take time, while
now, were the subject of a tus-
Fed’s overarching focus 20-21 September meet Fed uses tools ‘forcefully’
sle earlier, with AM/NS claim-
ing they were built primarily as
investors digested the remarks, the Fed’s 20-21 September gathering captive units for the steel plant
pushed as high as 3.44% while the 2- as roughly even. They remained in and, thus, their ownership
to 10-year yield curve resumed its that vicinity after he spoke, but the should be transferred along
flattening. The Dow Jones Indus- amount of reductions in fed rates with the steel plant. However,
trial Average lost 1.6%, the S&P 500 priced for 2023 briefly retreated. these assets were ultimately not
fell 2% and the Nasdaq Composite Mark Spindel, chief investment offi- included under the insolvency
Index slid 2.4%. cer at MBB Capital Partners, said the resolution of the Hazira plant.
Prior to Powell’s speech, investors resolute tone of Powell’s speech points The Essar Steel case was one
saw the odds of a half-point or of the 12 large cases admitted
another three-quarter point hike at TURN TO PAGE 13 for bankruptcy resolution. AM/
The assets will generate synergies immediately once transaction
is completed, ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel said.
NS is a joint venture between
ArcelorMittal and Nippon
Steel, two of the world’s largest
steel companies.
A statement from AM/NS
said these assets are either cap-
tive (including port assets in
Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and
Odisha) or allied to AM/NS
India’s steelmaking and will
strengthen the strategic inte-
gration of its manufacturing
and logistics chain.“Full own-
ership of the strategically
located port assets in Gujarat,
Visakhapatnam and Paradip
will ensure seamless connec-
tivity and supply chain security
for the movement of raw mate-
rials and finished goods
between AM/NS India’s manu-
facturing facilities in western,
eastern and southern India, as
well as for exports. Acquisition
of the power and transmission
assets will ensure cost-effec-
tive, long-term power supply
BLOOMBERG
and energy efficiency at
Hazira,” the statement said.
The assets being acquired
are cash-accruing and will gen-
erate operational synergies
immediately upon completion
of the transaction, it said. AM/
NS India will be able to realize
further synergies from rising
throughput at the port assets as
a result of the company’s
planned expansion of steel pro-
duction capacity.
“With this deal, which yields a
multifold return on our invest-
ments, Essar Ports and Termi-
nals has unlocked value for all
stakeholders and will continue
to focus on building new and
modern core infrastructure
assets in India and overseas,”
Rewant Ruia, director, Essar
Ports and Terminals Ltd, said in
a separate statement.
Prashant Ruia, director of
TURN TO PAGE 13
patents, a move that sets the stage for a legal clash.
Moderna accused Pfizer and BioNTech of violating
IP rights on key elements of Moderna’s messenger
RNA tech in developing the Comirnaty vaccine.>P14
Operational creditors take lead
in dragging companies to IBC
Operational creditors, especially small vendors,
are increasingly initiating corporate insolvency
resolution process against corporate debtors in
what analysts say goes against the basic tenet of
the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, as it is a
resolution and not a recovery mechanism. >P13
Sebi enhances disclosure
rules for credit rating agencies
Sebi has enhanced rules on disclosures by
credit rating agencies, besides putting in
place a framework for rating withdrawal of
perpetual debt securities. Perpetual bonds
have no maturity date, therefore allowing it
to be treated as equity and not as debt. >P13
Diageo’s Indian subsidiary halts
whiskey sales to push price hikes
United Spirits Ltd (USL) has halted whiskey sales
in a number of states yet to budge on price caps
despite rising inflation. The move to stop sales
rather than see margins continue to erode is a
risky bet, analysts said, which could complicate
the firm’s pivot to premium products . >P15

Dubai is emerging as a favourite market for the ultra-rich, whom the

government has courted by offering long-term ‘golden visas’. REUTERS

RIL mystery buyer

of villa in Dubai’s
biggest realty deal
Bloomberg
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empire into green energy, tech
and e-commerce.
The family has been increas-

M
ukesh Ambani’s Reli-
ance Industries Ltd is
the mystery buyer of an
$80 million beach-side villa in
Dubai, the city’s biggest ever res-
idential property deal, two peo-
ple familiar with the deal said.
The property on Palm Jumei-
rah was purchased earlier this
year for Ambani’s youngest son,
Anant, one of the people said,
asking not to be named as the
transaction is private. The
beach-side mansion sits in the
northern part of the palm-
shaped artificial archipelago
and has 10 bedrooms, a private
spa, and indoor and outdoor
pools, local media reported
without saying who the buyer is.
Dubai is emerging as a favour-
ite market for the ultra-rich,
whom the government has
actively courted by offering long-
term “golden visas” and relaxing
curbs on home ownership for
foreigners. British footballer
David Beckham with his wife
Victoria and Bollywood mega
star Shahrukh Khan will be some
of Ambani’s new neighbours.
Anant is one of three heirs to
Ambani’s $93.3 billion fortune,
according to the Bloomberg Bil-
lionaires Index. The world’s 11th
richest person, now 65-years-
old, is slowly handing the reins
to his children after a diversifi-
cation push that expanded his
ing its real estate footprint
overseas, with all three siblings
looking Westward for second
homes, one of the people said.
Last year, Reliance spent $79
million to buy Stoke Park Ltd in
the UK, which houses a Geor-
gian-era mansion said to be for
older son Akash, who was
recently named chairman of
telecom operator Reliance Jio
Infocomm Ltd. His twin sister,
Isha, is scouting for a home in
New York, the person added.
The Dubai property deal has
been covert and will be held by
one of Reliance’s offshore enti-
ties, said one of the people, add-
ing that the Ambanis will spend
millions of dollars to customize
it and ensure its security. Long-
time Ambani associate Parimal
Nathwani, a director of corpo-
rate affairs at the group and
member of parliament, will
manage the villa.
The Ambanis’ primary resi-
dence will remain Antilia, a
27-story skyscraper in Mumbai
with three helipads, parking for
168 cars, a 50-seat movie theater, a
grand ballroom and nine elevators.
Reliance did not respond to
emails and calls seeking comment.
In addition to luxury homes,
Palm Jumeirah’s string of
islands comprises posh hotels,
TURN TO PAGE 13