HYDERABAD, NEW DELHI, MUMBAI, BENGALURU, KOLKATA, CHENNAI, AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH*, PUNE* VOL. 16 NO. 235 Rs15.

00 16 PAGES

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1 2022
THE RETURN OF A
WISER BUTTERFLY
Moni Mohsin’s inimitable
brand of wit is powered by a
scathingly satirical streak. Her
latest book on the adventures
of the now iconic Butterfly
Khan proves once again that
she can be facetious, comedic,
ironic—often all at once.
SEE PAGE 3

RBI HIKES REPO RATE AS IT STEPS UP BATTLE TO CONTAIN INFLATION | PAGE 16

GOA’S VIBRANT
FOODSCAPE
THE STATE IS THE NEW CULINARY HOT SPOT. TRAVELLERS AND WORK-FROM-HOME
PROFESSIONALS HAVE CREATED A MARKET AND RESTAURATEURS FROM BIG CITIES ARE
MOVING IN TO OFFER GLOBAL CUISINE. BUT ARE GOA AND GOANS LOSING OUT?

TASTE
Why jaggery isn’t a
substitute for white sugar
SMART LIVING
The ultimate guide
to TWS earbuds
CULTURE
Director Saim Sadiq on
the making of ‘Joyland’
BUSINESS LOUNGE
Meet MyGate’s
Vijay Arisetty
02 Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad FIRST

WEEKEND
A NOTE FROM
THE EDITOR
NEW ON SCREENS TO-DOs
One of the year’s best horror films, a social comedy from
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN Egypt, double Dhanush, and other recommendations
EXCUSE MY FRENCH
Hany Abdallah Peter has to switch from

Travel for fun, a posh private school to a public one

after his father’s death. Due to an over-
sight, he is assumed to be Muslim, like
the rest of the boys. Hany, wanting to fit

stay for the food in, does not try to clear this misconcep-
tion. It’s a funny and interesting way of
looking at the Muslim-Christian divide
in Egypt from a child’s perspective.
A FUN FEST FOR KIDS

K
(Netflix) ukdukoo, a children’s art
COURTESY TITLIE GOA festival started by two
enterprising fathers,
returns to the physical space
after two years. The lineup
includes immersive performan-
ces, shows and workshops for
children aged 2-18. Some of the
highlights include a DIY zone,
superheroes and anime cosplay,
mime, clown and puppet acts.
On display will be artwork cre-
ated by students from over 25
schools in Gurugram. Children
will get to meet artists and per-
formers such as Team Dine
Khan Manganiar, Walter Peter,
NAANE VARUVEAN Imran Khan and Mohammed
Dhanush has had a busy year, with Shameem. At Airia Mall
three films, a new one this week, and Grounds, Sector 68, Gurugram,
more to come. In his latest, a psycho- 1-2 October. Entry ticket, ₹499,
logical Tamil thriller, he plays a double available on www.kuk-
role. Directed by Selvaraghavan. (In dukoo.com and in.bookmy-
theatres) show.com

A holiday in Goa has always been high on the list for travellers
from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and beyond, but people rarely
went there for the food—until now. The state has grown into a
culinary destination, especially during the pandemic, when
people began trying to make Goa home while demanding ser-
vices they were accustomed to in cities. It has led to a surfeit of
new cafés, fine-dining restaurants and hip bars opening all
over the state, as our cover story explains. Every kind of global
cuisine is now available, and local ingredients too are in focus,
with chefs like Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar of Edible Archives in X
north Goa and Avinash Martins of Cavatina in Benaulim curat- This critically appreciated slasher film follows the cast and crew of a porn film,
ing meals that highlight locally sourced, responsible produce. shooting in rural Texas, who are targeted by a killer. Released earlier this year,
And away from all the lights and clamour of restaurants, mem- it has recently gained a prequel film, Pearl, and will get a sequel next year. Star- A UNIQUE ‘DOSA’ FESTIVAL
orable dining experiences are to be had in homes, bakeries and ring Mia Goth, written and directed by Ti West. (Amazon Prime)

N
plantations, all of which curate pop-ups and dining experien- airOnFire, a chain of
ces. While all these shiny new spots haven’t yet edged out the delivery kitchens started
mom-and-pop places that serve thalis and sorpotel, there are WOOD AND WATER by Toral Sanghavi and
concerns—as there always have been in Goa about the impact In Jonas Bak’s contemplative chefs Sara and Vinod Nair, has
of excessive tourism—about pollution, exploitation of resour- film, a recent retiree in Germany come up with a unique DOssera
ces and an exclusion of locals from these spaces. There’s no (played by his own mother) festival. On offer are eclectic
doubt, though, that Goa has become the country’s hottest food travels impulsively to Hong Kong dosa combinations in over 10
destination—with weekend tourists as well as work-from- to meet her son, who has been vegetarian and 10 non-vegetar-
home professionals driving demand for restaurants that serve away for years, and who can’t ian options. The idea is to create
global cuisine. And, if you are planning a trip to Goa, the cafés, leave because of the political a feast of savoury, spicy and
bars and restaurants mentioned in our stories would be a great protests there. We never see the tangy flavours, followed by the
way to curate your own list of where to eat. son; instead, we observe Anke’s sweetness of the innovative
We also meet former IAF pilot turned entrepreneur Vijay first couple of days in Hong Sarkara thenga dosa, with a mix
Arisetty of MyGate, the app that—like many others during the Kong, marked by loneliness and of jaggery and coconut. Some of
pandemic—became integral to our lives, curtailing and provid- kindness from strangers. There the highlights include the adai
ing access to communities. And if you are looking for a quick, are numerous pensive shots of dosa and the mushroom thoran-
entertaining read this weekend, I recommend Moni Mohsin’s Anke and some nice details of laced dosa. Another unique
Between You, Me And The Four Walls, which we review this Hong Kong life. Bak doesn’t offer preparation is the mashed
week, a book that takes you into the fickle and familiar world of a window into personal or Kappa and Pulichammanthi
Lahore socialite Butterfly Khan. national psyches but his film masala mix smeared on the dosa.
does have a sophisticated look, Available from 4-9 October for
Write to the Lounge editor shalini.umachandran@htlive.com complemented by Brian Eno’s home delivery in Mumbai. Order
@shalinimb score. (MUBI) on Thrivenow.in or 93240 59522

Compiled by Uday Bhatia and Nipa Charagi. —Compiled by Avantika Bhuyan.

LOUNGE LOVE READ LIVE SHOP

ONLINE
What does dating Kishore Kumar and In Doha for the world The haute look for
YOUR really mean? the Emergency cup? Try the food heirloom jewellery
FAVOURITE
WEEKEND READ
T S T J
he term “dating” is tossed around inger Kishore Kumar was also he forthcoming FIFA World Cup eweller Umang Gupta writes that
so often these days that it’s often adored for his comedy and famous may be a compelling reason to visit over the past few months, many of
NOW THROUGH misused. Most times, people use it for his eccentricity. In a new book, Doha. If you happen to be there, his clients have brought in heirloom
to refer to the stages of a relationship that Kishore Kumar: The Ultimate Biography, the food is not to be missed, writes Nive- pieces with a request to make them
THE WEEK it doesn’t really denote, writes dating by Parthiv Dhar and Anirudha Bhatta- dita Jayaram Pawar. Doha’s oldest mar- “more functional and everyday”. Rede-
coach Simran Mangharam in her fort- charjee, we learn of the time in 1976, dur- ket, Souq Waqif, is a great place to start, signing old jewellery is one of the best
nightly column. It’s no longer about see- ing the Emergency, when the Union says Pawar, who was told getting lost in ways to hold fast to family bonds while
The best of Mintlounge.in from ing someone exclusively— government banned his its meandering lanes was accentuating your look.
even if you have been on music and films for “non- basically mandatory for When an old piece loses its
the week gone by and what to regular dates with some- cooperation” after he first-timers. Certainly, shine or simply feels out-
look forward to in the one ahead one, you can’t assume they refused to perform at a after all the walking and dated, the best way to
are dating only you, or are government rally. Kumar shopping, its restaurants bring it to life is to upcycle
serious about getting into was mentally prepared to are a treat, offering every- it to suit your style. He
a relationship with you. As things stand make a debut on the streets. “I did what thing from Parisian fare to Persian feasts explains what to look for and what to
right now, dating someone is not consid- I thought best…. If someone decides to that start with a brilliantly spiced avoid while creating contemporary one-
ered as being in a relationship with them. rest his foot in my head, he will not have muhammara and an incredibly creamy of-a-kind designs that have the warmth
Have conversations to understand what the good fortune to witness the best of and perfectly whipped hummus. Try tra- of the past and the aesthetic of the future.
stage the relationship is at. my courtesies,” the writers quote him as ditional Qatari food, Syrian or Japanese To begin with, find a trusted jeweller
having said. An excerpt. fare, even American fast food. with the expertise needed.
In Relationships >> It’s Compli-
lounge@livemint.com cated In How To Lounge >> Books In Food >> Discover In Fashion >> Trends
@mint_lounge
@livemintlounge

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY CAVATINA


The return of a
wiser Butterfly
RE READINGS
Rereadings is a monthly column on
backlisted books that have much to
offer in contemporary times.
The latest Butterfly
book demonstrates
a degree of self-
awareness, the
wokest she has been
in living memory
Somak Ghoshal
T
his may not be the best of
times to hold forth on Pak-
istani humour, as the
country reels from devas-
tating floods and political
mismanagement. But it also feels oddly
fitting to do so, since it’s Moni Mohsin we
are talking about here. It’s hard to think
of many writers of South Asian origin
who have used humour as potently as her
to portray the miserable realities of soci-
ety, especially the bubble in which the
top 1% live.
Mohsin’s inimitable brand of wit is
powered by a scathingly satirical streak.
She can be facetious, comedic, ironic—
often all at once. Her writing can inspire
rip-roaring laughter and impotent rage.
And her prose was binge-worthy long
before Netflix (for the record, she has also
written “serious” literary fiction, though
personally I find her “frivolous” output
much more appealing).
Having just raced through Mohsin’s
new book, Between You, Me And The Four
Walls, I re-read some of her earlier works
featuring “Butterfly Khan”, her now iconic
Medium Talk
Making room for play
HEART OF THE MATTER
A fortnightly column
about emotional well-being
Play is a way of
interacting with the self
or others, where the
process itself is the prize
Sonali Gupta
A
question I consistently ask clients
in therapy is, “How do you make
room for play in your day-to-day
life?”
Surprisingly, most adults find the ques-
tion baffling and often take some time
before they can think of an answer. I have
found that children and teenagers,
though, have a long list of activities and
stories about when and how they have fun.
The very conversation invigorates them
and evokes joy as they share their experi-
ences.
As adults and grown-ups, we may have
given a bad name to play. We often see it as
childish, unproductive, maybe even triv-
ial. Yet our ability to build in play in daily
life can go a long way in ensuring our emo-
tional well-being. Whether it’s a child or
an adult, we all need moments of play and
fun as we navigate the challenges of day-
to-day life. Our ability to play is linked to
problem-solving and creativity. Very
often, play is associated with emotions
such as joy, wonder, surprise and curios-
ity. All these emotions add to our self-es-
teem and bring a sense of vitality and
enthusiasm for life.
I see play as something that’s driven
without an agenda or goals to meet: a way
of interacting either with the self or oth-
ers, where the process is the prize itself. It
can be spontaneous or planned, yet I think
it has qualities of fun, curiosity, and being
present. Whether in moments when I am
alone or with a group, there is a feeling of
connection and engagement.
There are so many moments in a day
that have potential for building play:
whether it’s singing while you cook, lis-
tening to music at home and suddenly
breaking into a dance or a quick playful
running competition with your colleague
as you climb the office stairs.
Each person, however, has their own
Between You, Me And
The Four Walls—The
Social Butterfly Bulletin:
By Moni Mohsin, Penguin
Random House India,
232 pages, ₹299.
protagonist, who first appeared in a wildly
popular newspaper column in Pakistan in
the 1990s. Apart from being hysterically
funny (or “historically” funny, as Butterfly
would say), the columns (and later, the
books) are a masterclass in mimicry as well
as nuance.
Mohsin never meant her writing to be
“a sociological treatise”. “Butterfly is a true
expression of my Hello-reading, self-ab-
sorbed, frivolous side,” she wrote early on,
“exaggerated manifold and unredeemed
by any hint of self-doubt and unburdened
by any desire for a more meaningful exis-
tence.” How many writers, let alone any
out of South Asia, can you name who
would make such a clear-eyed case for
writing as pure fun?
The Diary Of A Social Butterfly (the
name of the column and also of the first
book in the series, published in 2008)
holds up a mirror to Pakistan’s upper
crust, the “khata-peeta khandani types”, in
Butterfly’s words, a bit like what Helen
Play requires active engagement.
definition of what constitutes play and
fun, so it would be a good idea to define
the way you see it. The idea, though, is to
engage with play and not get defined by
one definition.
A good first step would be to ask your-
self what would constitute play for you as
an adult. A second step: Think of the
images that come to mind when you think
about it.
Play is not about activities per se, it
involves an attitude of playfulness or a
playful mindset. So, allow yourself to think
of moments, interactions and interactions
which help bring out this side of you. An
attitude of playfulness, whether it’s in
conversations or intimacy, allows a certain
ease and brings warmth to so many situa-
tions.
Moments of play can feel like an exer-
cise in mindfulness where there is a sense
of flow. When we lead a life where we are
consistently wired and tired, play can
help us feel alive, connect with ourselves,
and even allow us to come back to our
whole self. For me, play is a huge part of
rest and recovery. Whether it’s board
games, card games or even word games,
they all can bring out a childlike side. A
FIRST
Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary did for a
generation of young British women.
Except, Mohsin has much more at stake.
Unlike obedient South Asian writers in
English, who know better than to rock the
boat of editors in the Global North, Moh-
sin brazenly subverts expectations in the
Butterfly books. Instead of focusing on the
plight of the wretched, she trains her
hawk eye on the follies of the wealthy.
Rather than chastising the moneyed class
for its hedonistic excesses, she exposes its
hypocrisies and self-obsession, but with-
out quite dismantling the status quo. She
isn’t morally sanctimonious, but can hit
close to the bone with a stinging epiphany,
or three. The embarrassment you feel for
Butterfly’s obliviousness to the rest of the
world may suddenly turn into pathos or,
worse still, a pathetic moment of self-
knowledge.
Narrated in Butterfly’s signature pidgin
English, generously peppered with mala-
propisms and Urdu phrases (what Salman
Rushdie called the “chutnification” of lan-
guage), these books unfold in the familiar
“Dear Diary” format. Butterfly is a home-
maker in her 40s, married into landed
gentry, excessively fond of shopping and
the (obscenely) good life. Her days revolve
around her Mummy, Aunty Pussy, much
divorced cousin Jonkers, a closed circle of
friends (Flopsy, Fluffy, Floozy and others),
mother-in-law “The Old Bag”, sisters-in-
law “Psycho” and “Cobra”, son Kulchoo
and, of course, her husband, Janoo, who,
she never tires of reminding us, has a
degree from Oxford and is, therefore, an
“Oxen”.
An inveterate socialite, Butterfly spends
her days flitting among a closed circle of
rich Pakistanis at home and abroad.
“Everyone knows me. All of Lahore, all of
Karachi, all of Isloo—oho, baba, Islama-
bad—half of Dubai, half of London and all
of Khan Market and all the nice, nice bear-
ers in Imperial Hotel also,” as she says in
the first book. “No ball, no party, no din-
ner, no coffee morning, no funeral, no
More than small talk
ISTOCKPHOTO
fun workout, dancing, painting, or a sport
that is engaged in with a certain playful-
ness and doesn’t feel forced, also
becomes play. Playing with clay, colours,
any art-based activity, can offer a
momentary break from the tendency to
overthink and let you, instead, savour the
moment.
Some places inherently allow for a play-
ful mindset: think a bowling alley, a trip to
the zoo, a day at the arts and craft studio.
Sometimes planning a fun trip or holiday
can feel like play too.
Having said that, our itch to consist-
ently check our phones and scroll can stop
us from engaging with play. For, play
requires active engagement.
Maybe we all need to ask ourselves,
what does it take for us to adapt a playful
mindset and build room for play not just in
our homes but also at work and in social
interactions? It’s always a good time to
integrate play in your life.
Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based clinical
psychologist. She is the author of the book
Anxiety: Overcome It And Live Without
Fear and has a YouTube channel, Mental
Health With Sonali.
Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad 03
art galas, Basant parties and wedding
receptions, interspersed with heady shop-
ping trips to London and Dubai. But read-
ers who have loyally followed her adven-
tures over the years are likely to notice a
change.
For one, she demonstrates a degree of
self-awareness that seems shockingly out
of character. It’s true, Butterfly was never
a fan of the mullahs and was always ambiv-
alent about Imran Khan and his party,
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. But with Khan
becoming the prime minister, her suspi-
cions about his intentions only deepen.
And though still miles away from Janoo’s
left-liberal politics, she is now a softer
overlord of the serving classes.
Once Butterfly didn’t think twice before
sacking her maid when the country was
devastated by a natural disaster. Now her
heart weeps for her “Christian sweepress”
Martha, whose family falls victim to hor-
rific sectarian violence. Hearing Martha’s
ordeal, Butterfly fondly remembers her
own Christian ayah and the kind mission-
aries at her convent school. It’s the wokest
she has been in living memory.
There’s more. As the Delta wave
destroys India, Butterfly is genuinely
shaken. “India’s suffering has upset me
more than America’s or Braazeel’s and I
think so it is because whatever we might
do to each other, we are still humsayas.
Their saya is also our saya, na. What is hap-
pening to them today could be our fate
tomorrow,” she bursts out in a rare fit of
clarity. “Also, we watch the same movies,
eat the same gol guppas, give the same
gaalis, and speak same to same. We are
also all lovers of Shahrukh Khan. That’s
why.”
Moni Mohsin. Thankfully, it’s not all “Aman ki Asha”
for her. Butterfly is cannily alert to the rise
of “Moody” and his divisive politics across
GT—Get-Together, baba—is complete the border. What’s more, she is in her ele-
without me.” ment, bitingly caustic and cynical. “Some
Mohsin plays up the bitter irony of But- Indians I’ve seen on Facebook are saying
terfly’s existence by framing her diary kay haw, if we don’t watch out, we will also
entries with (usually tragic) references to become like Pakistan,” she writes. “I think
current affairs juxtaposed against Butter- so they mean they will also start carrying
fly’s unshakeable self-absorption. Here’s leather kay Birkings and listening to
a typical sample: “Pakistan’s worst ever Ghulam Ali’s ghazals and producing fast
earthquake devastates thousands/ Butter- bowlers and thanking Gensaab. Chalo, it
fly sacks her maid.” might make a pleasant change from
Between You, Me And The Four Walls thanking Moody all the time.”
follows the same template, as Butterfly Butterfly, circa 2022, has quite a few
gives us her hot-takes on the highs and such irreverent quips up the sleeves of her
Butterfly, circa 2022, has quite lows of the recent past: Islamophobia designer joras. She is far more subdued,
under former US president “Donald less impatient, and (gasp!) almost cool. As
a few irreverent quips up Duck”, Malala Yousafzai winning the times change, even the most obdurately
the sleeves of her designer “Noble Cup”, the “Mittu” movement, smug learn to keep up. As the sadder and
‘joras’. She is far more “Breaks It” in the UK, and, of course, the wiser Butterfly puts it, “Zamana badal
havoc wreaked by the “Karo na virus”. gaya hai.”
subdued, less impatient, and At a glance, it seems Butterfly is still
(gasp!) almost cool stuck in the same old purgatory of lit fests, Somak Ghoshal is a Delhi-based writer.
ZOYA PRESENTS BEYOND-
A Boundless Journey
Celebrating the glory of the Indus in an ode to the feminine spirit
Myriad Framed
Perspectives: Blue
sapphires, emeralds and
diamonds exemplify the
genesis of a river
Tranquil at Sunrise:
Emerald Riversong: Emeralds and diamonds
Streams of emeralds flow in rose gold with a
cascade gracefully into a central 4 carat morganite
gleaming 10 carat in a masterfully crafted
emerald, flanked by reminder of the Indus
marquise-cut solitaires sunrise
Z
oya, the exquisite dia- imperial look to present a con-
mondboutiquefromthe temporary collection of time-
House of Tata, takes less classics. Beyond was intro-
pride in its positioning as one duced by celebrated designer
of the most design forward Gauri Khan along with CEO
ateliers in the country. This Jewellery Division, Titan, Ajoy
season Zoya reaches the high- Chawla, and Amanpreet
est echelons of artistry with its Ahluwalia, Head of Business,
magnificent new collection, Zoya.
Beyond—A Boundless Journey “This is Zoya’s most antici-
that captures the pated launch. Zoya,
essence of a wom- with its eye on the
a n’s j o u r n ey world, has a soul
through the course rooted in India and
of her existence, its heritage. The
finding inspiration grand tale of the
in the glory of the Indus is both
Indus. Her larger authentic and soul
than life journey ZOYA stirring, and so we
through genesis, thought, who bet-
conflict, turbulence and calm, ter than Zoya, to translate that
is expressed through the line- inspiration with outstanding Flush of Evergreen: Ajoy Chawla with Gauri Khan who is wearing
upwithexceptionalgemstones finesse and without compro- stunning emeralds that are set in hexagonal diamond frames,
set apart by purity of form and mising on modernity or style!” crowned with a 6.45 carat emerald-cut rubellite
graphic lines, to create an says Ajoy Chawla. Created by Mint Brand Studio
04 Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad HOW TO LOUNGE

Source This festive season, go for gold

TISSUE ISSUE
Ana Dress In Vintage
My father, the
STREAM OF
STO R I E S
RAJA SEN

Gold Tissue
A vintage gold handloom tissue
kurta paired with gold farshi
pants and a dupatta in the
same material from indie brand
Soprano
Shorshe. Available on
Shorsheclothing.com;₹24,400
for kurta

HEEL IT IN
Golden Sole Wedge Heel
Handmade vegan leather
single-strap sandals with
dull gold sequins from
footwear designer
Aanchal Sayal. Available
on Aanchalsayal.in;
₹11,500

A still from ‘The Sopranos’.

I
never had a drink with my father. We were that sort of family where stuff
like this was kept surreptitious—I grew up watching Baba elaborately
snaffle cigarettes somewhere behind my grandmother’s back—and there-
TAKE A BOW fore it felt normal for me to lie that I never drank, and for my parents to (only
Azga Grey And too willingly) take my word for it. This idea of skirting the inappropriate was
Black Men’s Gift also applied to television, of course, with the channel promptly and merci-
Box lessly being changed any time Remington Steele would kiss a girl too hard.
In pre-cable TV times, with no other channels to flick to, the box was simply
This vintage- LIGHT UP turned off.
inspired festive Brocade Jumpsuit
gift box contains a Two summers ago, this changed. My mother died one March morning and
Tarun Tahiliani’s festive edit Illume features the pandemic left us nowhere to go. Literally. This is when Baba and I started
bow tie, a floral this oyster brocade jumpsuit with wide-leg
lapel pin and gold- watching The Sopranos, streaming in India on Disney+ Hotstar. I had always
bottoms and a back cutout, with a gold- wanted to revisit that magnificent show and I wanted to see what my father—
embossed cuff embroidered border that accentuates the
links. Available on who once directed documentaries and who had schooled me in Satyajit Ray
waist. For more, visit instagram.com/ and Sergei Eisenstein—would think of that most cinematic of shows (I also
Aashniandco.com; taruntahiliani
₹4,050 wondered if I could finally sit alongside Baba as an adult and watch a pro-
found drama where most conversations take place inside a strip-club).
In one hour, it was clear we were on to something special. In the monumen-
tal first episode, we meet mafia-man Tony Soprano, who calls himself a “waste
BE A STAR management consultant” and visits a psychiatrist following an anxiety attack
Black Enamel And and a decidedly off-kilter attachment to some ducks in his swimming pool.
Diamond Earring Not only could we dive headlong into the sordid and surprisingly sentimental
Set in 18-carat gold, a lives of the characters in David Chase’s immortal series, we could compare
star-shaped pair of notes on the way down, discussing motivations and moral conundrums, fig-
danglers from Legend uring out our own affected lives while studying these low-lifes we soon loved.
Amrapali featuring In my experience, grief demands literature. And here we were, reading HBO’s
RED HOT a classic black and War And Peace.
gold combination. Is The Sopranos the greatest drama series in television history?
Burgundy Mogra Available on Yes.
Wallet Legendamrapali.com; Quite simply, this is the show where television became an art form—argua-
Add a dash of red to ₹53,900 bly a richer, more transcendent art form than cinema. Rewatching a show you
your ensemble with love with someone you love is special because you are reacting to how they
this wallet from Vipul PURE PURPLE will react to what you once reacted to—while revelling in the show itself. It’s
Shah with dense Purple Cotton Opal like reading a beloved book out loud. The
ornamentation using Embroidered Bundi Sopranos is the sort of novel that gives
metal beads, threads Delicate embroidery and you so much to love, so much to
and mirrors. Available gold buttons add detail to marvel at, so much to learn and
on Ogaan.com; this bright bundi jacket from draw from. All that has aged
₹10,000 Philocaly. Available on weakly is the opening STREAMING TIP
Azafashions.com; ₹12,500 credit sequence, which OF THE WEEK
Compiled by Shrabonti Bagchi. Director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde
feels oddly unremarka-
ble, a scratched plastic has hit Netflix. Based on the Joyce
dust-jacket holding a Carol Oates novel of the same name,
book full of wondrous the horror film is a mostly fictional
sentences. take on Marilyn Monroe’s life and

LOUNGE LOVES One immense side

Things to watch, read, hear, do—and other curated experiences from the team
RICHES FOR EARLY READERS
effect of watching The
Sopranos with Baba was
legend, featuring a photorealistic
central performance from Ana de
Armas. It’s a mess, but it’s
that it broke down his resist- hard to look away.
ance to the idea of psychother-
apy, in a way that first-hand
accounts and testimonials just could
not do. Watching Tony Soprano sit across from
Dr Jennifer Melfi, squirming over the truth before spitting it out defiantly,
watching him confront his deepest, most duck-filled insecurities and inade-
quacies, was a humbling, beautiful thing. When the doctor started advising
Tony, my father was as sceptical of her methods as the mob-boss himself. Sev-
eral episodes in, Baba not only saw the point of Dr Melfi’s attempts but started
to feel irked whenever Tony (or even Dr Melfi herself) strayed from the paths
their therapists recommended. It was an understanding born out of empathy.
That surreal summer had us grieving yet desolate, unable to connect with
family and friends, with those even two neighbourhoods away seeming exoti-
cally far-flung. Fiction stepped in admirably as Baba and I started discussing
the Soprano clan over meals, as if talking about cousins and family members:
our paradoxical feelings towards Uncle June, Baba’s indulgent love for Chris-
MAN AND MACHINE ONE POD TO BIND THEM ALL ‘MANIKE...’ TAKES THE FLOOR topher, the troubled relationship between Tony and his sister. Tony himself,
of course, had our heart. James Gandolfini’s performance as the mobster who

I A
t’s a fabulous time to be an early
reader. Like the indie presses doing
a great job of creating beautiful
titles for children, the hardly year-old
AdiDev Press, started by Chitwan Mit-
tal, too has been producing beautiful
books and box sets. Their Learning to
Be series, for example, keeps getting
better. Their latest, Women In Sport, is
an adorable collection of four stories—
on amputee-mountaineer Arunima
Sinha, open-water swimmer Bhakti
Sharma, runner P.T. Usha, and sharp-
shooters Chandro and Prakashi
Tomar. Poet Pervin Saket goes into
just enough detail on these women’s
lives in rhyme and the illustrators—
Aparajitha Vaasudev for Sinha, Prerna
Roy for Sharma, Rajyasree Sarkar for
Usha and Ria Mohta for the Tomars—
fill the pages with lively illustrations
that are just as endearing and spunky
as their subjects.
—Vangmayi Parakala
I I
merican cartoonist Rube
Goldberg’s cartoons of chain-
reaction machines, designed to
complete simple tasks, have inspired
many to come up with their own
versions. Some of my favourite takes
are on the YouTube channel Joseph’s
Machines (also on Instagram and
josephmachines.com), run by kinetic
artist Joseph Herscher. A machine to
pour whisky, a machine that helps you
pass the salt on a long table, while
maintaining social distancing, to list
just two. As Herscher says, these solve
everyday problems using familiar
objects in unfamiliar ways. My
personal favourite is the sandwich-
making machine—a combination of
five mini machines. One puts down
the bread, the next one puts on peanut
butter, and so on. The final one feeds it
to Herscher. Ingenuity at its
complicated best!
—Nitin Sreedhar
f you, like me, have been terribly
disappointed with Amazon’s The
Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of
Power, I have good news. There is a lot
of entertaining and intelligent content
on J.R.R. Tolkien’s works on the
internet, from fantastic websites like
Tolkiengateway.com to fun
YouTubers like Nerd of The Rings.
Mostly, I have been turning to a
podcast: The Prancing Pony Podcast.
Named after the famous inn in
Tolkien’s Middle-earth, this is a labour
of love of two passionate and erudite
Tolkien fans, Alan Sisto and Shawn
Marchese. They began it in 2016,
reading through the The Hobbit and
The Silmarillion and currently making
their way through the final third of
The Lord Of The Rings. Look out too
for excellent interviews with Tolkien
scholars, cast members of the Peter
Jackson films and much more!
—Bibek Bhattacharya
f you cannot stop re-watching and
enjoying the viral dance videos of
Kala Chasma on social media, then
that makes two of us. Choreographed
and performed by members of a Nor-
wegian dance group called TheQuick-
Style, the dance routine was originally
performed at a friend’s wedding party.
Little did they know that it would go
viral on social media. The dance
group, which has worked with BTS,
has recently collaborated with You-
Tube India for a short video on the
remixed version of the much loved
Sinhala song Manike Mage Hithe by
Yohani. Mixing hip hop dance steps
with folk, they have managed to cap-
ture the essence of the original song,
which has been distorted in the
remixed Hindi version. Especially
watch the last 30 seconds of the dance
video to enjoy the simplicity and bril-
liance of the choreography.
—Debasree Purkayastha
just wanted to do better is a masterclass, as believable as a family guy as a mon-
ster. Tony Soprano does a lot of horrible things but Gandolfini’s eyes make
sure we know he is anything but remorseless.
The writing is extraordinary. The Sopranos strikes an unbelievable balance
between the sublime word and the believably spoken one, between humour
both high and low. After surviving an assassination attempt, Tony sits across
from Dr Melfi and agrees that “Every day is a gift”, yet he doesn’t think that’s
enough, adding, “but does it have to be a pair of socks?” The line is genius, yet
it’s plausible that Tony might say it. These are conflicted, complicated charac-
ters who strive for more, characters who don’t have the answers and don’t shy
away from asking questions. Characters who care about family and friends,
and about food. So much of the show is about food.
So we watched The Sopranos and we cooked, and we talked and we argued
noisily and with our mouths full, and, most importantly, we found a grown-up
experience to call our own. We couldn’t have watched this show together,
with its incidental nudity and its violence, with Ma hovering around, and
Baba fastidiously made sure we watched it only when my wife wasn’t in the
same room, making it an exclusively father-son affair. Now, with Baba gone, I
raise a toast to television. The Sopranos was the drink I had with my father.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about the
killing of critics. It is now in theatres.
@rajasen

A scoop of halo-halo for the inner life of a woman
CHEAP
THRILLS
NISHA
SUSAN
f I have your number, I have texted
I you last week asking, “Have you seen
Everything Everywhere All At Once?”
And if you said no, I definitely did this
strange dance of getting you to go see it,
without hyping it so much that it could
only be a letdown. But even without my
texting you, you probably knew from
the vibes that it is a cool, arty movie in
which Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn
Quan, a Chinese immigrant running a
laundry business who has to suddenly
learn how to fight and traverse a million
parallel universes—in which her hus-
band, father, daughter and auditor all
have different avatars.
What is the movie like? It’s like halo-
halo, the dessert from the Philippines
with crushed ice, coconut milk, fruit,
coconut strips, chickpeas and a dozen
other things. It’s perfect. Everyone is
likely to gaze into its technicoloured,
whipped cream surface and find mean-
ing for themselves.
But what is it about? You could, like
my two friends and me, groan that the
movie is making a big case for noble
THE LIMITLESS CURIOSITY OF
HILARY MANTEL
Aditya Mani Jha
H
ilary Mantel, one of those
rare writers of top-shelf
literary fiction whose
books also sold in the
millions, died last week
following a stroke. Mantel’s trilogy of nov-
els about Thomas Cromwell’s rise to
power in King Henry VIII’s court—Wolf
Hall (2009), Bring Up The Bodies (2012)
and The Mirror & The Light (2020)—
earned her two Booker Prizes, worldwide
acclaim and a legion of fans.
As a teenager, Mantel wanted to be a
historian. By her early 20s, though, she
felt like she had missed that academic
train. Yet, if you haven’t read beyond
Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, it would be
easy to think of her primarily as a writer of
historical fiction.
In truth, Mantel possessed tremendous
range and limitless curiosity as a writer.
Her novels through the 1980s-90s are dis-
parate, stand-alone achievements across
a wide range of genres and tonalities. Her
first two novels, Every Day Is Mother’s Day
(1985) and Vacant Possession (1986)—now
called the “Axon Family” books—were
darkly funny contemporary (set in the
1980s) stories featuring the same set of
characters, most notably a medium called
Evelyn Axon and her mentally ill daughter
Muriel, whom we discover has become
pregnant following a string of weekly vis-
its to a daycare centre. These two books
showed signs of what would become one
of Mantel’s writerly signatures—while she
motherhood, a free-floating obsession
of American movies, so much so that
even Sandra Bullock, free-floating as an
astronaut in Gravity, couldn’t get away
from it. Or you could giggle at the
thread in which the adult daughter, Joy,
turns away from productivity and
becomes the evil high priestess of a
navel-gazing cult, the navel represented
by a giant bagel, and then really only
wants the mother also to navel-gaze. Or
you could have an intentional parenting
moment when you realise that the
daughter just wants the mother to, you
know, hang with her.
It is true, of course, that kids just want
their parents to be there, not run around
doing the labour of households, and all
the Instagram accounts I am addicted to
remind me to wallow in the joy, in the
Joy. They tell you that if you have the
privilege of being invited into the world
of a young person, then “you have the
opportunity to be free but you choose
stress instead”. I just want to tell these
YOLO villains, however, that for a child
to be well taken care of requires the par-
ent to be both Martha and Magdalene—
listen to what the child prophet is spout-
ing and also cook dinner for her apostle
pals. So there, you bagel lover, so there.
Perhaps the whole movie is a message
to embrace carbs, I said to my friend.
Or you could cinema-nerd out and
just enjoy the full and ridiculous splen-
dour of the visual multiverse of the
movie—the enjoyment you get from
could be very generous with her charac-
ters, her default mode was a somewhat
cruel streak of humour, an equal-opportu-
nity malevolence that could make the
reader laugh even during scenes of
high-stakes drama.
Mantel’s next novel,
Eight Months On Ghazzah
Street (1988), was set in
Saudi Arabia, inspired by
the four years Mantel lived
there in the mid-1980s. A
classic East vs West story of
cultural clashes, this some-
what sombre, meditative
book was especially atten-
tive to the ways Saudi
women were subjugated
(and where her own position-
ality as an educated white
woman fell in all of this). This
was followed by a short comic
novel that’s among my favourite
books of the era—Fludd (1989),
set in 1956, among the fictional
villagers of Fetherhoughton in
England’s northern moorlands.
This small community consists
of simple folk, unpretentious in
the extreme (“… so thoroughly
against pretension that they
also discriminated against
ambition, even against liter-
acy”) and heavily influenced
by the book’s version of the Roman Catho-
lic church, fronted by Father Angwin. The
lives of Angwin and the villagers are
thrown into disarray by the arrival of
THINK
Michelle Yeoh in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’.
knowing that someone has slept way
too little for many months to produce
every detail of this shaadi. There but for
the grace of God go I, you say to your-
self, and roll about in the meadow of
film-makers Daniel Kwan and Daniel
Scheinert’s obsession with detail.
However detached you are as a movie
watcher, it’s hard to watch the intergen-
erational trauma and forgiveness carou-
Fludd, a curate (assistant to the parish
priest) who appears to have a Devil-like
fondness for mischief and a gift for know-
ing the fears and insecurities of strangers.
The novel’s central joke is
that for all the upheaval
Fludd causes, he actually
ends up helping Angwin at
the personal, and even spir-
itual, levels. The book is
asking a mischievous ques-
tion: Father, what if the
Devil were actually good
for you?
Mantel is in top comic
form throughout, her cru-
ellest barbs reserved for
men of the cloth as she
renders the rest of the vil-
lagers with an air of
benevolent humour.
Sample the way she
describes the caden-
ces of the Fether-
houghton tongue, for
instance. “The speech
of the Fetherhoughto-
nians is not easy to
reproduce. The endeav-
our is false and futile.
One misses the solem-
nity, the archaic formality
of the Fetherhoughtonian
dialect. It was a mode of
speech, Father Angwin
believed, that had come adrift from the
language around it. Some current had
caught them unawares, and washed the
sel that Hollywood is currently on (from
Encanto to Everything…) and not cry
ugly tears. I defy you. I defy you to not
weep a little at the promise that whole
other worlds are possible which are not
full of dragon-fed cruelty
I love that we are having a brief
moment in global pop culture where
the inner lives of older women are on
display, even when they are actual car-
GETTY IMAGES
Fetherhoughtonians far from the naviga-
ble reaches of plain English; and there
they drifted and bobbed on waters of their
own, up the creek without a paddle.”
Through the 1990s and early 2000s (i.e.
just before Wolf Hall), Mantel wrote five
novels: Of these, the French Revolution
novel, A Place Of Greater Safety (1992), is
often cited as the precursor to the Crom-
well trilogy, especially for the effortless
way in which it dissects the mechanics of
power. For me, though, The Giant, O’Brien
(1998) was the most potent foreshadowing
of Mantel’s mastery over historical fiction.
She took two real-life characters—a 7ft,
7-inch Irish man called Charles Byrne (the
“O’Brien” from the title) and the 18th cen-
tury Scottish surgeon, medical pioneer
John Hunter—who was also the teacher of
Edward Jenner, the inventor of the small-
pox vaccine—and created an exquisitely
crafted study in contrast. Byrne is a wide-
eyed dreamer who sees love, beauty and
wonder in the world around him (even as
Mantel was ultimately a
writer’s writer, excelling at
different styles and genres,
with a command of the craft
and a thoughtful, self-aware
outlook towards the practice
Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
IMDB
toon abuelas or near-cartoonish mid-
life crises.
After I watched Everything, I have no
clue what Evelyn Quan’s character
wants from life in the known universe.
Does she just want some peace and
quiet? But like the child in a recent viral
video playing pretend restaurant told
her father, “We are not serving that
today.” When are we ever?
In her nearly four-
decade-long career,
the novelist covered
a wide array of
genres and tonalities.
Hilary Mantel with her Commander of the British Empire honour at Buckingham Palace
in 2015; and (left) Mantel at a ‘Wolf Hall’ opening night curtain call in New York City the
same year.
he realises he’s headed for an early grave),
while Hunter is rational and calculated to
the point of being cold. There’s something
cruel and dispassionate about his single-
minded pursuit of science; as Mantel
shows us, there’s a fair bit
of narcissism and
even sadism there as
well (the field of medi-
cine offers him power
over his fellow man).
This same attentive-
ness to the workings of
power—and what
power so often does to
the soul—would, of
course, be wielded to
devastating effect in the
Cromwell trilogy, which
ended in 2020 with The
Mirror & The Light, the
last novel Mantel pub-
lished. The novel is ample
proof that Mantel’s powers
remained undimmed till the
end—there are gorgeous, wise
passages liberally strewn
across the book. Like the one
where Mantel examines
England’s difficult relation-
ship with denial and histori-
ography.
“You can write on
England, but what was writ-
ten before keeps showing
through, inscribed on the
rocks and carried on floodwater, surfacing
from deep cold wells. It’s not just the saints
and martyrs who claim the country, it’s
those who came before them: the dwarves
dug into ditches, the sprites who sing in
the breeze, the demons bricked into cul-
verts and buried under bridges; the bones
under your floor. You cannot tax them or
count them. (…) They bubble out of the
ground, wear away the shoreline, sow
weeds among the crops and erode the
workings of mines.”
Mantel was ultimately a writer’s writer,
excelling at different styles and genres.
She was known to be very kind to younger
writers who would sometimes want too
Hyderabad 05
It is likely that you, like me, will just
enjoy seeing Evelyn’s complete lack of
intentional living, her lack of mindful-
ness. Her inner life, organised in rela-
tion to the thousand different people in
her outer life, is chopped fine like a
MasterChef contestant’s vegetables.
On the outside, too, it is not like
Evelyn is on top of her to-do lists. In fact,
it is a scientific truth inside this world
that Evelyn can be anything in other
universes because she is so bad at every-
thing in this one.
Neo and other heroes of sci-fi and
fantasy are often destined to be The
One, Neo being an anagram of One.
Evelyn is destined to be Everyone and
always by doing things destiny has not
planned for anyone.
What does Evelyn want? Mary Rue-
fle, the poet, once wrote, “I think the
sirens in The Odyssey sang The Odyssey
for there is nothing more seductive,
more terrible, than the story of our own
life, the one we do not want to hear and
will do anything to listen to.” And this
depiction of this inner life of a woman
who simply can’t stay in the moment
even after she has risen to sci-fi bodhi-
sattva status towards the end—it is that
which gives you the feeling of a scoop of
halo-halo in your heart.
Nisha Susan is the editor of the webzine
The Ladies Finger and author of The
Women Who Forgot To Invent Face-
book And Other Stories.
REUTERS
much of her time. The British writer Katie
Ward (author of the novel Girl Reading)
has spoken about this aspect of Mantel’s
life (“Over the years, she’s dedicated a
great deal of time to supporting new writ-
ers,” she said, according to The
Guardian, in 2013). Her thoughts
on the cultural lodestones of her
time were every bit as sharp as
her fiction; she famously evis-
cerated Christopher Andersen’s
Madonna biography in a Lon-
don Review Of Books review
that ended up being more
insightful than the book itself
(“most intelligent Catholic
girls go through a phase in
which they would rather be
like Mother than like
mother”).
This is as good a
time as any, then, to
remember Mantel’s
own words about the
novelist’s craft (during
the first of her BBC
Reith Lectures broad-
cast in 2017), almost like
a manifesto in miniature
for writers of historical
fiction.
“The novelist knows her
place. She works away at
the point where what is
enacted meets what is
dreamed, where politics
meets psychology, where
private and public meet. (…) I move
through the domestic space and emerge
into the buzzing economic space of the
mill yard—the market place, the gossip
shop, the street and the parliament
house.” These lines also work as a succinct
introduction to the workings of the con-
temporary novel, at the technical and
experiential levels. They speak to her
command of the craft and her thoughtful,
self-aware outlook towards the practice.
There will never be another quite like
her.
Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based writer.
06 Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad TASTE

A SISTERHOOD OF
ISTOCKPHOTO

RECIPES FOR LIFE

Archana Pidathala’s self-
published book, ‘Why
Cook’, has compelling TEA NANNY
stories on women and
their recipes for more
thoughtful lives
Darjeeling tea
Deepa S. Reddy needs your help
W
hen at last a copy of
Archana Pidathala’s Aravinda Anantharaman
Why Cook came to my

hands, I found myself
suspended in a long,
unexpected pause. The book is a compilation
of biographical notes about a handful of
women from different parts of the country and
different walks of life, each inspiring or exem-
plary in some modest or superlative way, and
each followed by a set of recipes that reflect
the manner of their coming to cooking. I had
been looking forward to it; I had enjoyed
Pidathala’s 2018 treatment of her grand-
mother’s recipes in Five Morsels Of Love and
was wondering what she would do to carry the
craft of cookbook writing forward in her sec-
ond project.
When I read Why Cook, it was the way one
might read letters from close friends: in quiet
and absorbed seclusion. The book is a map of
Pidathala’s friendships as much as it is a jour-
ney to meet people where they are, literally
and figuratively. These women are scholars,
singers, architects, designers, entrepreneurs,
activists—and your mothers, sisters, aunts and
friends. Collectively, they represent a genera-
tional shift: not the “midnight’s children” of
barely-post-independence years, but the ones
after, those whose parents already straddled
worlds so their children could be less bound
by social stricture and much freer to be driven
by ideas and a certain eclectic ethic of self-
making. These women live in some out-of-
the-way outpost signalled only by a grand ban-
yan tree or in the thickest of metros but they
have cultivated affinities to nature, farming,
gardening, local sourcing. Cooking for them
is generally a nourishment set in some other,
wider frame.
Pidathala highlights “heirloom” recipes
rather than “heritage” ones and the difference
is telling. All the recipes in Why Cook represent
a region, but that may not be the region in
which these women live. Rather, there’s a con-
fluence of coastal Bangla and lush Malayali
influences set in arid Rayalaseema, a mingling
of the Kashmiri with the Maharashtrian and a
particular fondness for potato, a memory of
Punjab in the hands of a momo-maker in
Uttarakhand—parental lineage crosses with
personal choices, and a new cuisine is born.
The recipes may be old, they may even be
authentic, but what seems to matter more is
that they are alive.
The regionalism of Why Cook is thus less
about “community” in any traditional sense as
about a broader set of relationships with place
and people. “What grows here?” and “Who
lives here?” appear to dictate what gets cooked
in these kitchens as much as any community-
based practice. Neither Pidathala nor her 16
interlocutors shy away from less available,
wild and sometimes hyper-local ingredients as
the things that give food both intrigue and dis-
tinction: quince, stinging nettle, haak (Bras-
sica oleracea varieties), neem
flowers, Thooyamalli (a Tamil
Nadu rice variety), fermented
mustard leaves or Nepali gun-
druk. If I had ever had doubts
about finding myself in the
pages of Why Cook, this simple
reminder about hard-to-find
gundruk settled them: “On
your next trip to Darjeeling,
don’t forget to stock up.” Go
there, the book seemed to say,
echoing my own impulses per-
fectly, extend yourself, take that
circuitous route so you can find
(these things for) yourself. It will
be harder by far to make this
dish, right now, but the real taste
of things lies in such striving.
Pidathala is kinder than I might have been
to consistently offer substitutions but her
equally gentle push to slow, explore, embrace
is a welcome antidote to the mechanical
rhythms of urban domestic life. These are
reminders, too, that this book’s recipes are
hardly just for the hungry belly, but also for
the curious pilgrims among us, who, much
like the women in this book,
are seeking pathways to more
ethical and more enriching
modes of living.
The author Sara Suleri’s
memorable opening lines to
her book Meatless Days
declared once that “(l)eaving
Pakistan was, of course, tan-
tamount to giving up the
company of women”.
Almost as a counter to the
multiple alienations of
modern life, Why Cook
returns us to that old com-
pany. “Top girls,” Caryl
Churchill might have
named the group, though her
play by the same name ruminates on the femi-
nism of one age as Pidathala’s work expresses
that of another. The mandala design that dots
the book’s covers is a symbol of this, a kind of
“nari shakti” togetherness that is ultimately
D
(left) ‘Tchaman kaliya’(Kashmiri-style
‘paneer’ in fennel-infused milk broth);
and ‘verusanaga pulusu’ (Andhra-
style boiled peanut curry).
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY DEEPA S REDDY
predicated less on individual stories and more
on the transformative spirit they collectively
embody. I am aware as I write this, however,
that the genre of women’s writing in which
Pidathala’s work squarely falls posits a sister-
hood that is invariably both inclusive and
exclusive—in both senses of the word.
My own first response to Why Cook was rec-
ognition: Gosh, I know these women; they are
either personal friends or familiar in some
essential life-sense. And yet, these are Pidat-
hala’s networks and her kin, including her
own mother. Pidathala is the central dot on
that mandala; without her the circle isn’t com-
plete. The women represented overwhelm-
ingly treat food as lifeblood, not of the com-
munities they have each inherited, but of the
ones they now wish to create. This sentiment
is reflected multiple times, as much in Pidat-
hala’s narrative interludes as in images of
alluringly messy tables laden with food, hands
reaching across and into dishes, people eating
together, the table as a gathering point for love
and laughter.
The “power of cooking” that Pidathala
opens is mostly this power for social connec-
tion. Yet the irony of Why Cook’s vivid sociality
is that anyone reading is doing so most likely
as I did: alone, with a sense of peering into or
being an interloper in someone else’s social
world. If there are moments of deep identifica-
tion, there are also such moments of awkward-
ness: a peculiar risk of auto-biographical food
writing. The recipes make up for it though.
Those are thoughtfully tailored, they embody
the ethics and values spoken of (there are sev-
eral zero-waste recipes, for example), reflect
the realities of our jumbled worlds as much as
they prompt reflection, and are ultimately
measures of our own wideness and the ways to
materialise any inspiration Why Cook offers.
To that sisterhood, why, I will return without
reserve over and over and over again. .
Deepa S. Reddy is a cultural anthropologist
and researcher with the University of Houston-
Clear Lake. She blogs about food and culture on
paticheri.com.
arjeeling tea, the first Indian product to get the Geo-
graphical Indication (GI) tag, as early as 2004, has been
in the news lately, for all the wrong reasons. Many tea
gardens are reportedly up for sale.
The crisis has been building up for the last five-six years.
Cheap imports from Nepal have led to unchecked blending,
taking a toll on the quality of what is sold as Darjeeling tea. The
GI tag has done little to promote the brand. Moreover, Dar-
jeeling gardens are struggling to keep up production because
their bushes are ageing.
Darjeeling tea is about 150 years old, an industry created by
the British East India Company. Spring and summer offer its
most popular teas, earning the producers a premium price.
Forty per cent of the region’s tea, though, is produced during
the monsoon, the longest season. Considered less prime, this
often goes into Darjeeling tea blends or—a better option—
roasted varieties. The autumn harvest is, to my mind, so
underrated that it seems to just stay under the radar.
Two factors, in particular, have contributed to Darjeeling’s
current state of despair. The 2017 Gorkhaland agitation saw
gardens closed for 100 days as workers went on strike with the
demand for a separate state. This coincided with the prime
harvest season between spring and summer flush. Buyers who
would have descended from Europe and Japan, as they did
every year, were forced to look for alternatives. Nepal tea, a
fledgling industry, stepped in to fill the gap.
Yet while Nepal may share geographical similarities with
Darjeeling, its tea is just not the same. Darjeeling planters
complain that the entry of dubious quality tea has led to
unchecked blending of Darjeeling tea with cheap and poor
quality Nepal tea that is then sold as Darjeeling.
As tea drinkers, we can do our bit to support Darjeeling tea.
Many Darjeeling estates have chosen to go direct to consum-
ers by setting up a retail channel; some did it as late as the pan-
demic-triggered lockdown. When you buy direct from gar-
dens, you know you are getting the real deal. Many tea retail-
ers also sell Darjeeling tea by garden and are committed to
supporting Darjeeling. Do ask for a source and check for the
Darjeeling logo on packs. If you buy your Darjeeling tea loose
from a neighbourhood tea seller—especially if you live in
Kolkata—you may want to probe the source if your tea seems
particularly low-priced.
Every Darjeeling planter I have spoken to is wistful when it
comes to describing tea from the region. For them, it is a magi-
cal place, almost mystical, producing the finest brew. Tea is
much more than a business, they say. But for us to enjoy the
place and its tea, the business of Darjeeling tea has to be
restored to prime position.
TEA TAKES
Gopaldhara, Dorje Teas, Goodricke Tea, Jayshree Tea, Makai-
bari, Glenburn are gardens that retail direct to consumers.
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

Use jaggery mindfully, and relish the sweetness

arcane is harvested. The cane is crushed Ghee to cook dosas Makes 2 cups
to extract juice. Around 500 litres of
DOUBLE juice is brought to boil in a large pan set
over a massive furnace dug in the
Method
In a pan, combine the jaggery with half a
Ingredients
1 cup almonds
TESTED ground. The furnace is fuelled by dried cup of water. Bring this to a boil and Less than a cup of crushed jaggery
sugarcane bagasse. Okra mucilage is then simmer for one-two minutes until A pinch of salt
N A N D I TA added to the juice to clarify impurities, the jaggery dissolves completely. Let Half tsp crushed black pepper (or fennel
IYER which are skimmed off to be used as this mixture cool for 15-20 minutes. powder)
manure. The juice is stirred continu- In a bowl, combine the flour and car-
ously for around two hours to get thick damom powder with the cooled jaggery Method

I
wait for the day when jaggery varie-
ties in India will be as prized as olive
oils and balsamic vinegar from Italy
and wines from France. Jaggery tasting
sessions and jaggery tourism, anybody?
Some of the jaggery varieties found in
India are made from sugarcane, coco-
nut, date palm, palmyra and toddy
palm. Dark brown Marayoor jaggery
from Kerala’s Idukki district is famous
for its sweetness and organic method of
production. Jaggery from Maharash-
tra’s Kolhapur is known for its light col-
our and intense sweetness.
Maria Jenita’s Instagram post on the
organic way of producing jaggery from
sugarcane came as an eye-opener.
Jenita is a PhD, research associate and
teaching fellow at the Centre for Food
Technology at Anna University, Chen-
nai, and the founder of Goodness Farm.
“The making of organic jaggery is a
beautifully choreographed process that
employs tremendous skill and dexter-
ity,” Jenita writes in her post.
The process, as she explains it, is a fas-
cinating one. The makeshift processing
unit is set up on the farm where the sug-
molasses.
This is poured into another dry pan,
with more hours of synchronised man-
ual labour to turn it into a powder. The
process doesn’t generate any waste.
A consciously made jaggery is worth
its weight in gold. Goodness Farm
makes organic cane and palm jaggery;
it’s sold in mould, powder and syrup
form on their website.
While I don’t believe that a calorie is a
calorie, a sugar is definitely a sugar. If it
increases blood sugar levels sharply,
and, therefore, insulin secretion, it has
to be had with caution, be it sugar or jag-
gery. Just replacing sugar with jaggery
in any Indian dessert does not make it a
“healthy recipe”, as the millions of
recipes floating on the internet seem to
suggest.
Almost all the web content on jag-
gery claims that it is a “superfood”,
“powerhouse of nutrients”, “detoxifies
the liver”, “boosts immunity”, “an
excellent source of iron”—all of which
is terribly misleading information.
Take, for example, iron: 100g of jaggery
provides around 60% of the daily
(left) ‘Vella dosai’; and jaggery-coated roasted almonds.
required iron intake but I would worry
for you if you were eating 100g of jag-
gery a day. Bring it down to the more
practical portion size of one teaspoon
and jaggery provides just a tiny fraction
of the daily requirement. Replacing
sugar with jaggery provides marginally
more micronutrients, since sugar is just
empty calories.
On to the detoxification. The liver is
the most complex detoxifying unit in
the universe, handling all the toxins
thrown at it using its own complex bio-
chemical processes. It does not need
jaggery to fuel this.
Eat jaggery-based foods mindfully,
for the complex flavour and earthy
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NANDITA IYER
sweetness it adds to our everyday life,
rather than looking on it as a superfood
or miracle food. Maybe then we will
consume it in moderation and relish
each morsel of a jaggery-sweetened
dish for what it is—a sweetener.
CHILDHOOD FAVOuRITE
VELLA DOSAI
(Jaggery dosa)
Makes 6-8
Ingredients
Up to three-quarters of a cup of crushed
jaggery
1 cup wheat flour
Quarter tsp green cardamom powder
liquid. Add water and whisk to get a
thick dosa batter consistency. Cover
and let this rest for 30 minutes.
Heat a cast iron pan and grease with a
few drops of ghee. On a moderately hot
pan, pour a ladle of the batter and
spread it out into a circle, taking care
not to make it too thin. These dosas are
thicker than the regular dosas.
Spoon some ghee around the sides of
the dosa and cook it on a low-medium
flame for a minute or so until it is golden
brown. Flip over and cook for another
30 seconds. Serve hot with some ghee
drizzled over it.
To make this dish more festive, try a
happy fusion of the Tamil vella dosai
with the Bengali patishapta. Reduce the
quantity of jaggery in the batter by half.
Prepare a filling of grated coconut,
khoya, jaggery and green cardamom
powder by stirring over a low flame
until fudgy.
Make small dosas, place the filling in
the centre and roll the dosas.
JAGGERY-COATED
ROASTED ALMONDS
Toast the almonds in the microwave
(three minutes) or in a heavy pan (sev-
en-eight minutes), until they are aro-
matic. Remove to a dish and let it cool.
Line a baking tray with a silicon sheet
and keep ready.
Add the jaggery to a heavy-bottomed
pan along with a splash of water (2-3
tbsp). The jaggery will melt and come to
a boil. Lower the flame and let it simmer
for three-four minutes until the top gets
frothy. Add the toasted almonds and
toss well to coat. Transfer immediately
to the baking tray. Sprinkle salt and
black pepper on the almonds.
Store in an airtight jar once cooled. A
couple of these make a wholesome post-
dinner sweet treat.
Double Tested is a fortnightly column on
vegetarian cooking, highlighting a single
ingredient prepared two ways. Nandita
Iyer is the author of the newly released
book This Handmade Life—7 Skills To
Enhance And Transform Your Every-
day Life.
@saffrontrail
 SMART LIVING Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad 07

ALL EARS

Your ultimate Some tips to keep in

mind, no matter which
TWS you are considering
u Consider the battery capac-
ity, both for the buds and the

TWS earbuds charging case—higher numbers

will mean longer play time on
one charge.

u Check for fast charging, so

you can top off the buds and the
case in a pinch.

buying guide u Confirm what kind of noise

cancellation is supported—
some brands offer environmen-
tal noise cancellation instead of
active noise cancellation.

Consumers are spoilt for choice in the TWS u See if you can try out the
AirPod-style semi in-ear/half
earbuds market. Here’s a detailed guide to in-ear design earbuds in the
store. The design doesn’t work
finding a pair that fits your budget for many.

u Many TWS earbuds sacrifice

call quality for sound quality.
Most stemmed earbuds typi-
cally have better voice calling as
the stem allows the microphone
to be closer to the mouth.

(₹17,999) are to Samsung phones—

they simply work more seamlessly
and can play back higher-resolu-
tion audio via the Samsung Seam-
Tushar Kanwar mode, fast charging, and the exten- less Codec (the regular SBC/AAC
sive EQ and feature customisation Bluetooth codecs are available to

F
rom barely passable with the Realme Link app. other Android owners). They are
sound quality and unreli- durable (IPX7 water-resistance),
able connectivity to the UnDER ₹10,000 offer excellent noise cancellation
earbuds of today, truly Now you are talking! The and a comfortable fit and see a
wireless stereo (TWS) ear- sub-₹10,000 segment is abuzz and boost in sound quality, with bags of
buds have come a long way. They are most buyers will be happy not just punchy bass and an airy, open
everywhere: You can’t board a flight, with their choice but their savings. Oppo Enco X2 (₹9,999) sound packed with detail, courtesy
take a morning walk or stroll into a mall Bass heads will love the JBL Tune 230 the one-two punch of a 10mm woofer
without seeing someone sport a pair. NC (₹5,999), with a clean bass and a 5.3mm tweeter. The Google Pixel
Consumers are flooded with choice and response that doesn’t overwhelm the Buds Pro (₹14,990), good as they are on
while that means you can find a great details in the vocals and the highs, the ANC, sound quality, battery life and
pair of wireless earbuds to fit every bud- and the fine-grained equaliser set- good, if a little AirPod Pro- inspired, multi-point support, are let down by the
get, you do have to sift through the clut- tings to tailor the music on what is design, wireless charging, decent ANC support for advanced Bluetooth codecs
ter to find the picks at each price point. arguably the best companion app. A and crisp, immersive sound—and amped that could have unlocked their true poten-
Here’s a guide. lesser-known brand, Lypertek, has it all up just a bit more in every manner. To tial. Strictly recommended only for the
the Pureplay Z3 (₹6,999, previously give you a phone analogy, the Enco X2 are ardent Pixel user who swears by all things
On A BUDgET OF AROUnD known as the Tevi), which offer a a “flagship killer”: Thanks in large part to Google. The Sennheiser Momentum True
₹2,000 sound signature many audiophiles their dual driver setup and advanced Blu- Wireless 3 (₹21,990) score high on sound
These are likely your first pair of TWS would favour; it’s a shoo-in if you etooth codec support (LHDC and LDAC), quality and support for AptX and AptX
buds, or maybe the want balanced tuning. Where it lacks the Enco X2 can trade blows with the Sony Adaptive Bluetooth codecs, even as the
phone you picked up in active noise cancellation, it makes WF-1000XM4 and the Sen- third-generation earbuds catch up on
recently has forsaken up for in support for the Qualcomm nheiser Momentum True some hygiene features like wireless
the 3.5mm head- AptX format for high-resolution Wireless 3, both of charging. Yet, it’s the Sony
phone jack and you wireless audio. The Nothing Ear (1) which are far pricier. WF-1000XM4 (₹16,990) that are
are forced to go wire- (₹7,299) may have made the news likely the easiest to recommend to
less. It’s slim pickings for their see-through charging case and ABOvE ₹10,000 the largest cross-section of buy-
in this category, with audio is crowd-pleasing, the tight bass. Then you have the OnePlus transparent earbud design but a year into This price segment ers, and a lot of that comes down
several attractively and the passive noise isola- Buds Z2 (₹4,499), which offer good ANC their launch they are still a good pick for rewards you with the to their support for the high-reso-
priced options that tion is among the best in (for the price) and pass-through audio, a balanced sound and good ANC, alongside best TWS options. If lution LDAC Bluetooth codec
disappoint on audio the segment. The Air 3S punchy sound profile, good battery life a decent feature set. The OnePlus Buds you are on an iPhone, widely available on Android devi-
quality, putting many edge ahead on the feature with fast charging…and the best call qual- Pro (₹7,990) are easy to recommend, with the newly launched ces. Paired with the companion
prospective first-time set they deliver—dual ity in their class. Much like a comfortable in-ear fit, good ANC capa- Apple AirPods Pro sec- Headphones Connect
buyers off the segment Realme Buds Air 3S (₹1,899) device connectivity, cus- other first-party ear- bilities and a sound that can best be ond generation (₹26,900) app for iOS/
altogether. The OnePlus tomised EQ tuning and a low buds, you may want described as unabashedly fun and ener- might not look like a huge Android, the
Nord Buds CE (₹1,899), for instance, offer latency gaming mode via the full-featured to use these with a getic. Deal hunters can even scour for upgrade over the original AirPods Pro XM4s offer a
a satisfactory though bass-leaning sound Realme Link app, and Dart fast charging. recent OnePlus some great deals from a bunch of last-gen (available for less than ₹17,000) if you kitchen sink
quality and IPX4 sweat-resistance but device to get the products, such as the Sony WF-1000XM3 go solely by the design, software of useful fea-
their one-size-fits-all design, reminiscent UnDER ₹5,000 most out of the (₹7,990) or the Samsung Galaxy Buds features or the curious lack of tures, not to
of the Apple AirPods, may not fit every ear. If you are willing to spend a bit more, the Buds Z2 Pro(₹6,290). The Android/Google support for high-resolution mention
The in-ear Nord Buds, just ₹500 more, are options are substantially better. Our pick (gaming faithful could consider the Pixel wireless audio. But factor in Sony WF-1000XM4 (₹16,990) good battery
worth considering. The Oppo Enco Air2 in the segment is the Oppo Enco Air2 Pro mode and Buds A-Series (₹5,990) for their the significantly improved life and a sound
(₹1,999) and the Redmi Buds 3 Lite (₹3,499), with active noise cancellation D o l b y Assistant integration but the noise cancellation, a cleaner, profile replete
(₹1,999) are good options too, with their (ANC) and transparency modes, IP54 Atmos sup- absence of ANC at this more dynamic output and the with a crowd-pleas-
bass-heavy sound signature, spacious dust- and water-resistance, in-ear detec- port). The price point is criminal. It’s added speaker in the case (for locating ing sense of musicality
soundstage and emphasis on voice-calling tion for pause/play and equaliser presets Realme Buds yet again Oppo, with the when lost) and it may tempt commuters and a bass performance that
capabilities, but our pick has to be the via the rather well-designed HeyMelody Air 3 checked Enco X2 (₹9,999), that and travellers who frequent noisy, busy will warm the hearts of all but the most
Realme Buds Air 3S (₹1,899). Not only do app. The sound quality seals the deal, with many of these walks away with the hon- environments. hardened audio purists.
the Air 3S look unique in their segment, 12.4mm dynamic drivers and balanced boxes too, Oppo Enco Air2 Pro (₹3,499) ours in this segment. Oppo Switch over to an Android and you will
with the transparent-lid case and earbud tuning that allows the vocals and highs to including ANC took everything that worked be spoilt for choice. What AirPods Pros are Tushar Kanwar, a tech columnist and
fins to aid in-ear grip, but the bass-heavy be heard without being overwhelmed by with transparency with the original Enco X— to iPhones, Samsung’s new Buds2 Pro commentator, tweets at @2shar.

LOUNGE REVIEW | APPLE WATCH SE 2

A basic smartwatch experience at Apple’s pricing

If you want specialised stripped-down version of the Series 8. It glass used for the other models. On In India, crash detection will call the 112
uses the same Apple S8 dual-core pro- paper, the Watch SE’s glass is more sus- emergency number, if it detects that the
tracking and other cessor, which keeps things fast and zippy, ceptible to scratches and even breakage wearer has been in a car crash.
additional features, look but doesn’t have all the sensors that the if you happen to bang the watch against What I can confirm, however, is that
Series 8 does—or, for that matter, that a door or any other hard surface. This is the fall detection feature on older watches
for options from the likes even the Series 7 or 6 do. worth noting, especially for those who would often be fooled into thinking I fell
You won’t be taking ECG readings with plan to use the watch during workouts or if a ball hit my hand while playing football,
of Samsung, Garmin the SE and it won’t discreetly measure playing sports. That said, I tried to knock or during a tussle with another player.
your body temperature or help women it around a little, against my office desk One should assume that the crash detec-
Prasid Banerjee track ovulation. Neither and a door, and it didn’t pick up any tion feature isn’t triggered with little
prasid.b@htlive.com will it let you meas- scratches. force, however.
ure blood oxygen Furthermore, while the Apple Watch

A
pple’s “SE” line of devices has
always had an interesting place in
the Indian market. Everyone
except Apple seems to think of them as
“more affordable” alternatives to the com-
pany’s flagship devices. And though they
are considerably cheaper, affordable is not
a word you can use for them.
Yet the company has been able to
establish a position for itself where a
slightly cheaper Apple purchase feels like
a deal you can’t miss. Analysts have rou-
tinely said that the iPhone SE has spurred
Apple purchases in India and though the
Apple Watch SE is yet to notch up any
such achievement, it should fall in the
same category.
The 2022 edition of the Apple Watch
SE is, like its 2020 predecessor, a
levels. It won’t SE doesn’t charge as fast as Apple’s other SHOULD YOU BUY IT?
even show APPLE WATCH watches, it lives up to the 18-hour battery There’s no arguing the point that the
you the SE (2022) promise. I get quite a few texts, emails Apple Watch SE suits most basic smart-
time unless and calls every day. I usually get by with watch users. In a way, it’s the best basic
you raise Display: Retina; up to 1,000 nits an overnight charge. Using the sleep smartwatch for iPhone users. If all you
your wrist Processor: Apple S8 dual tracking feature on the watchOS 9 will need from a smartwatch is the facility to
because it drain the battery a little more but I still answer calls, see notifications and per-
doesn’t OS: Apple watchOS 9 don’t see much to complain about. The haps respond quickly to some texts, the
have the Features: Activity tracking, Watch SE takes over an hour and a half to Apple Watch SE fits the bill. However, for
always-on crash detection, with charge fully, which means most users those who want specialised tracking and
display that Emergency SOS will be able to charge it while they have more features, there are better offerings
many more Price: ₹29,900 their breakfast, get ready for work, and from companies like Garmin and Sam-
affordable smart- cellular connectivity (if you buy sors one carries, the Apple Watch SE is so on. sung that work fine with the iPhone as
watches have. that model) and a bunch of colour and for iPhone users who just want a taste of The new Watch SE also supports well. What those watches will perhaps
band options to choose from. what a smartwatch can do. A price tag of Apple’s new “crash detection” mode, not have is the smooth connectivity
BEST OF THE REST If the Apple Watch Ultra is the best ₹29,900 is pretty hefty for that, if you which calls emergency services if you between phone and watch, and they
The Apple Watch SE is meant to give you smartwatch for an Apple user who is into ask me. have been in a car crash. I obviously won’t allow users to respond to calls and
the bare essentials of Apple’s smart- extreme sports, and the Apple Watch The glass on the Apple Watch SE’s dial haven’t been in one, so I can’t really con- texts, since Apple reserves that function
watches—fast performance, a nice display, Series 8 is for users who need all the sen- is not as strong as the sapphire crystal firm if it works. for its own devices.
08 Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad
Goa’s
experiments
with food
The state is the hot new culinary destination. Travellers and
work-from-home professionals have created a market and
restaurateurs from big cities are moving in to offer global
cuisine. But are Goa and Goans losing out?
Priyanko Sarkar
f you thought a trip to Goa was all about going to the
I
beach, think again. Goa’s sun seekers have been replaced
by Indian travellers who are arriving for weekend trips
with just a list of Instagram-worthy places to dine and
drink at, or a tribe of work-from-home professionals who
are settling in the state and seeking the comforts of city
life. And a big part of life in the city is dining out at restau-
rants and bars that offer inventive, unusual food and
drinks.
Over the past two years, industry watchers say more
than 100 restaurants have opened just in the tourist belt
of north Goa, aimed at domestic tourists as well as resi-
dents. Chef Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar, who helms the
kitchen at Edible Archives in Assagao, says there are over
20 new restaurants just in the village of Assagao, with
another 25 waiting for permission to open. Even in Panaji,
home largely to locals, a slew of restaurants has opened
across the city and on its outskirts.
From a Japanese yakitori, Makatsu, in the heart of
Panaji to authentic Spanish tapas at Uno Más in Vagator,
to regional cuisine at cafés such as Mustard and Gunpow-
der in Assagao, you can partake of any style of cuisine
whilst in Goa. Concept restaurants which focus on speci-
ality food—such as Maka Zai, which serves hip Asian cui-
sine, or Edible Archives, with an accent on indigenous
ingredients—have made a name for themselves alongside
old favourites like Thalassa in north Goa and Joseph’s Bar
in Panaji and restaurateurs from Mumbai and Delhi that
have decided to open outlets in the state. As tourists began
staying longer and professionals signed long leases on
houses to take advantage of work-from-home policies,
delivery services like Zomato and Swiggy too started
operations in full swing. The state’s craft liquor brands
have formed worthy alliances with new resto-bars.
The state’s culinary landscape has been transformed.
Neha Sagar, a design consultant from Delhi, moved to
north Goa in 2021, after the first covid-19 wave. On her list
of places to eat were the health food café Artjuna in
Anjuna and the crowd favourite, Darling’s Bar, in Chap-
ora, but she says the food scene “completely blew my
mind”. Soon after she moved there, she discovered newer
restaurants like Raeeth in Vagator, whose wood-fired
pizza she swears by, and Makatsu, which “came as com-
plete surprises”.
Parth Timbadia, director of popular restaurants Mahe,
which serves coastal cuisine in Anjuna, and Roboto (relo-
cating to Anjuna), known for its contemporary Japanese
and Korean food, says the state now gives people an F&B
experience they are unlikely to
get in their hometowns.
“For restaura-
teurs, Goa
makes
COVER
sense because of a more open and experimental
customer profile, along with lower rents com-
pared to Mumbai and Delhi. For travellers, Goa is
a culinary destination that cannot be missed, with
so many pop-ups, guest shifts and takeovers
becoming common. It’s a great thing for every-
body,” he says, citing the example of Tesouro, the
popular bar in Colva, south Goa. “Within two years
of opening in 2020, Tesouro became Asia’s fourth
best bar. Clearly, it’s not hype. International and
national talent is coming to Goa and putting it on
the world map,” Timbadia says.Tesouro offers the
ambience of a neighbourhood bar while serving
cocktails that appeal to both locals and tourists.
MOVING IN
For restaurant owners, the allure of Goa started with
the pandemic. It was near impossible to continue
paying high rents in metros while patrons stayed
away or took long holidays in Goa once domestic
flights resumed. Uno Más moved lock, stock and
barrel from Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC)
to the Living Room Hotel in Vagator in December
2021. Co-owners Priyanka Sharma and Pallavi Jays-
wal insist that they had had plans since 2019 to
expand to Goa—but the lockdown provided the
impetus to make the shift permanent. “We had to let
go of our BKC premises because the lease was getting
difficult to sustain. Goa was becoming a 12-month
season (referring to the fact that tourists visit all year
now, compared to just the winter months earlier). In
terms of investment, Goa did not seem overwhelm-
ing. When they are on holiday, Goa as a destination (clockwise, from above) Elephant & Co. from Pune should be open to launching a new restaurant (an all-day
prompts people to feel freer and more experimental. opened in Goa this April; chef Avinash Martins dining format with craft cocktails). We are looking to do
Since we offer speciality Spanish cuisine, we feel we recreated dishes from Cavatina, such as the just that by the end of 2022.”
have a unique positioning in the market,” says calamari caldeirada (top), at Elan, The Lodhi, New
Sharma. Delhi, earlier this year; Crescy Baptista and Oliver TOO MANY COOKS?
Pune’s Elephant & Co. and Ahmedabad’s Lollo Fernandes of The Goan Kitchen, a food pop-up While restaurateurs from Delhi, Mumbai and other cities
Rosso both opened in Anjuna this April, within based in Loutolim; a platter from The Goan are moving in, not many Goan chefs and owners are tak-
a couple of weeks of each other. Karan Khil- Kitchen; and (far left) the team at Cavatina ing up space. “Goa is a large bebinca and everyone wants
nani, founder of Elephant & Co., says they champions local produce. a slice of it, including people who don’t belong here.
wanted to open their second restaurant in That’s why you see so many large brands coming in who
Mumbai but the high rents prompted them have nothing to do with the state,” says Goan chef Rahul
to opt for Goa instead. “The state has turned Gomes Pereira, chef partner of Delhi-based Passcode
into a weekend destination for domestic Hospitality.
travellers. Flights are packed through the The result is that local cuisine, including cafreal, sorpo-
year. The competition is tough, with 100- tel, xacuti and recheado, barely gets attention; eating
odd new restaurants, but the pie has also “local” is equated with fish thalis and ros omelettes. It’s a
gotten bigger for everyone,” he says. bit of an irony, considering that restaurants serving global
Mumbai-based consultant Sameer cuisine and high-end cocktail bars are making their pres-
Uttamsingh, founder and creative director Within two years of opening in ence felt with clever marketing strategies ranging from an
of Acme Hospitality, agrees that the cost of 2020, Tesouro became Asia’s Instagram and a digital push to bringing in big-name chefs
setting up an establishment in Goa is lower and bartenders for pop-ups, to organising events with
than it would be in a metropolis. “It provides
fourth best bar. Clearly, it’s not craft liquor brands, etc.
a great opportunity to budding entrepre- hype. International and national “My biggest worry is that people will start equating
neurs,” he says, “but one must have a plan. As talent is coming to Goa and Goan food with the top shot of a fish thali on Instagram
Goa is mainly a tourist destination, the busy putting it on the world map. when there’s so much local cuisine on offer,” rues Oliver
days are Thursday to Sunday and then there’s Fernandes, co-founder of The Goan Kitchen, a traditional
a lull from Monday to Wednesday.” food pop-up based in Loutolim, south Goa. He says no res-
Tarun Sibal, co-owner and chef of Titlie Goa, a PARTH TIMBADIA taurant can match the experience of eating like a local. The
culinary bar in Vagator, says that even though the DIRECTOR, MAHE AND ROBOTO Goan Kitchen serves a prawn curry without any coconut
space might look crowded, the right concept and and the xacuti uses 21 spices, just as it was made tradition-
location will still work. “If you have the conviction to ally in homes. Most prawn curries served in restaurants as
deliver something unique in the F&B space, anybody “Goan food” have a coconut base. “But not every Goan
STORY
curry uses coconut. It’s important to talk about the
history and connection of our dishes too,” he says.
Assagao can be seen as a microcosm of the resto-
bar boom that has hit Goa. “A village like Assagao
now looks like Gurgaon. You won’t find locals there
any more. The real Goa is all about socialising and
village scenes but people are living in a cocoon and
calling it Goa now,” says Avinash Martins, a cham-
pion of local Goan cuisine and head of Cavatina,
which serves reimagined Goan food, in Benaulim,
south Goa.
Martins also highlights the problems of waste
disposal and pollution. “There is no system to segregate
garbage in Goa. Restaurants have problems with sewage
disposal and parking. Residents have trouble with noise
pollution and unregulated parties, all of which affects the
ecosystem of the state.”
Victor Gomes, founder of the Goa Chitra Museum,
which showcases Goan farming implements, and an
upcoming culinary museum in Benaulim, says the state
does not have a tourism policy. “Today, it’s easier to get
cherry tomatoes than red or white amaranth in restau-
rants because no one talks about traditional Goan ingredi-
ents. We need to have a tourism policy that takes stake-
holders into account and puts legalities in place.”
Pereira, popularly known as Chef Picu, says it is not pos-
sible to operate restaurants all-year-round even though
Goa has become an all-season market. “The infrastruc-
ture, from public transport to electricity, has not devel-
oped yet,” he says, adding that for most new players, Goa
is just a magnet. “A lot of new places are driven by greed.
There is no culture around food and the idea is to just
copy-paste their space in Goa.”
THE DOWNSIDE
The restaurant boom also highlights lesser-known sour-
cing and environmental problems. “Only 6% of food con-
sumed in Goa comes from the state. The rest—that’s 94%
of all ingredients—comes from elsewhere, packed in plas-
tic and dipped in preservatives to keep them fresh,” says
Sanjiv Khandelwal, founder of the sustainability platform
Sensible.Earth.
The pandemic, for instance, has brought frozen fish to
Goa, something never needed earlier. The fish comes
from as far as Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, to satisfy
the palate of the travelling tourist. “...Goa’s coastline sim-
ply cannot generate enough supply to meet the demand
for all restaurateurs,” says Dastidar.
“The seafood being served in Goa is not from Goa. I live
in a fishing village and I know what’s in season. For exam-
ple, sea bass is only available in the monsoon but custom-
ers want kingfish and pomfret all year, which comes in
vac-sealed packs once a week for bigger restaurants. Peo-
ple must realise that you won’t find sushi-grade fish or
oysters in the Arabian Sea,” says Martins.
The rapid rise of restaurants has created a demand for
labour, leading to an influx from other states. Uttam-
singh’s Acme Hospitality had started talks with two F&B
outlets in Goa before labour woes came to the fore. “With
limited local talent, operators are forced to bring in labour
from other states, which is more expensive. As a large
number of places are opening, the attrition rate is very
high. This leaves the restaurants scrambling to find new
staff,” he says.
It also leaves locals feeling they have not benefitted
from the hospitality boom, whether in terms of income
or opportunities. On the other hand, they need to
reckon with the increased costs of dining out, with
everything becoming more expensive for them.
“One of the biggest downsides of this boom is that
it hasn’t taken into account Goan culture or helped
the economy. For no fault of their own, suddenly
everything has become more expensive for
locals,” says chef Thomas Zacharias, who has
worked at The Bombay Canteen and champions
local cuisine through the multi-format digital
platform The Locavore.
Martins concurs and asks, “What have they (new
restaurants) given to Goa? Everything is simply
outsourced.”
The demand for commercial space for restaurants
has driven up rents for locals, especially in north Goa.
“Traditionally, rent was never an issue in Goa. Italians
opened Italian joints, Germans opened German bakeries.
It’s only now that people from Delhi and Mumbai are will-
ing to pay exorbitant rents, which is utter foolishness,”
says Hansel Vaz, who produces Cazulo Premium Feni and
owns the liquor distribution company Vaz Enterprises.
According to his conservative estimate, rents have gone
up 300% in the last five years, with most of the rise hap-
pening post-pandemic in north Goa.
RECLAIMING GOA
Putting Goan ingredients like coconut vinegar and
recheado masala, for example, back on tourist plates
seems like an uphill task at the moment. If anything,
national names like Fig & Maple from Delhi and even
international brands are looking to open outlets in Goa in
the coming months. Some, however, have decidedly crazy
and environmentally-unfriendly concepts in mind, going
by their blueprints.
Fernandes says the need of the hour is to convince
young Goans to create dishes with Goan ingredients.
“Almost 2,000 students pass out of catering schools in
Goa each year and dream of making French pastries and
Italian food. But if no one wants to do an internship and
learn about Goan food, we are doomed. We need to put a
spotlight on Goan food and have the industry take things
from there,” he says. This, he hopes, will trickle down into
a more sustainable and responsible way of doing business.
While well-known restaurants from metros and smaller
towns will keep flocking to Goa, people in the industry
believe that the shelf life for bad to average outlets will be
a year or two. “Every business goes through a correction.
In two years, we will see many new restaurants either
rebrand, resize or shut down. On the other hand, the ones
that survive the correction will do really well in the
future,” says Columbus Marquis, co-owner of the Marquis
Beach Resort and partner at the pan-Asian restaurant
Yazu, in north Goa’s busy Candolim area.
There are quite a few optimists though, and Rakshay
Dhariwal, who owns Passcode Hospitality, which runs
Jamun and Saz On The Beach in north Goa as well as Raki
in Dona Paula, is one of them. He believes only a few
mom-and-pop establishments might resent the influx of
new restaurants. “There’s enough business for everyone
in Goa and each restaurant caters to a different point.
There are queues outside popular seafood joint Vinayak
even today despite the surge in new restaurants. To sur-
vive in Goa today, geography plays a huge role, along with
your product and offering.”
Priyanko Sarkar is a Mumbai-based writer covering the
F&B industry.
Not just cafreal
by the bay
Away from the glitz and
glamour of restaurants,
there are memorable and
delicious dining
experiences in Goa
Joanna Lobo
t is a feast fit for a queen.
I Laid out on bananas leaves and in kund-
dlems (earthen dishes) are kismur (a salad of
dried shrimp and coconut with a touch of vin-
egar), polle (rice pancakes), balchao (a spicy
and tangy prawn pickle), chepnem tor (brined
raw mango pickle, fried breadfruit), ambade
(a tangy hog plum, coconut and mustard seed
curry) and dudhi caldin (a light bottle gourd
and coconut curry). Dessert is soji or vonn, a
porridge of coconut milk, coconut jaggery
and broken wheat, served in small coconut
shell bowls.
The setting is tranquil. A quiet pond. Birds
chirping. Coconut palms swaying. The smell
of overripe jackfruit. The stillness of a sunny,
humid day. Dogs at my feet.
It is a true Goan meal.
Yet this is not a Goan restaurant.
The meal is part of an experience curated
by Hansel Vaz, founder of Cazulo Premium
Feni, and his team at Fazenda Cazulo, in Cue-
lim. Our dining table is set in an open part of
the house.
The coconut tree is an integral part of Goan
life. Earlier in the day, Vaz tells us about the
bounty obtained from it: toddy, how it fer-
ments into vinegar, dehydrates into sugar,
caramelises into coconut jaggery, and is dis-
tilled into coconut feni. Our snacks are a trib-
ute to its fruit: sannas made with toddy, choris
pao and vinegar, and jaggery in patoleo
((steamed rice pancake with jaggery and
coconut). The meal, by The Goan Kitchen
(TGK), takes this learning further.
It is dining experiences like these that offer
a deeper understanding of my home and its
history and culture.
If there was a pandemic show made in
India, it would be called “Everybody loves
Goa”. The small state has been abuzz with
activity—welcoming tourists and people
seeking a quiet life, witnessing unchecked
development projects and a slow destruction
of our way of life, and a booming hospitality
industry that is attempting to imitate and
offer competition to the metros. New restau-
rants and bars are mushrooming like those
treasured olmi (local mushrooms) found only
in the monsoon. Everyone wants to offer
something different, but very few do. Fewer
still offer affordable fare, and even fewer
champion Goan food.
So when I moved back home last year, it
became a personal mission to seek out and
document Goan food experiences, away from
restaurants and bars. I made the food pilgrim-
age from north to south for a bite of Jila Bak-
ery’s profiteroles and decadent rum cake in
Loutolim. I picked up cutlet pao from
D’Silva’s and walked off the calories at
Miramar Beach across the street. I learnt
about medicinal plants in our surroundings
and how they were, and are, used to treat ill-
nesses during a walk with Dr Maryanne Lobo.
In Fontainhas, I met Marlene Noronha and
ate my first toucinho do céu, or bacon from
heaven, an almond cake made with lard.
At Mollem National Park, food is a surpris-
ing addition to the biodiversity hot spot. On
repeated picnics at a family friend’s home,
our locally sourced meals have included patal
(curry of dried green peas) and sukhi bhaji,
French beans foogath (stir-fry with coconut),
recheado bangda (mackerel stuffed with a
spicy masala), fried fish and chepnem tor. At
the farm stay Dudhsagar Plantation, I had
meals that were a true farm-to-table experi-
ence, minus the carbon footprint. There was
a simple tambdi bhaji (red amaranthus), coco-
nut rich curry with bilimbi (tree sorrel), a stir-
fry of tendli (ivy gourd) with coconut, dudhi
ros (bottle gourd with a light coconut gravy,
polle and dudhache fov (beaten rice mixed
Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
(above) Fazenda Cazulo in Cuelim offers curated experiences;and Shubhra Shankhwalker
showcases Goan Hindu Saraswat cuisine.
with milk, jaggery and cashew nuts.
Another unusual setting for good food is
concerts. On certain Saturdays, the main hall
of a stately old house in Loutolim resounds
with the sounds of Konkani dulpods, mandos
and the Portuguese fado. Heritage Home
Concerts, which launched this year, pay trib-
ute to our Indo-Portuguese heritage through
song, music and food. The food here is note-
worthy. Here too is a table laid out with
snacks: donnem (rice cones steamed in jack-
fruit leaves), rissóis ((shrimp turnovers),
cashew nut and caramel dedos de dama (lolli-
pop-shaped sweets), angel wings, letri ((sweet
coconut bread)), pork pies and mango pies. By
the side is xarope de brindão (kokum sherbet)
and orchata (sweetened almond milk).
The snacks are also from TGK, a food ven-
ture by Crescy Baptista and Oliver Fernandes
that aims to showcase little-known Goan
snacks and drinks. TGK does catering but
their pride is a sit-down lunch under a mango
tree in Baptista’s front yard. It is a feast of 16
dishes, which includes a chance to try making
bebinca the old-school way, in a pot over an
open fire.
Up north is another space that highlights
Indo-Portuguese art and food. The Centre for
Indo-Portuguese Art (Cipa) is housed in an
old home overlooking the Mandovi river. On
certain weekends, a small heavily decorated
room becomes the venue for jazz concerts
(under Cháfé Braz) and mando and fado
(under MadraGoa). I have attended three
concerts here and beyond the intimate musi-
cal experience, the food catches my eye. On
tiny plates comes some Goan Portuguese fare
like cheese croquettes, rissóis, bacalhau and
pastéis de nata. “The idea is to preserve what
we have: the literary arts, ceramics, music and
culinary arts and take it to the next genera-
tion,” says the founder, Orlando de Noronha.
It is a similar ethos that drives Vaz and his
work at Fazenda Cazulo. “Feni has caught
global attention and yet it doesn’t turn many
heads in Goa,” he says. “It’s about showcasing
this culture and getting people back to it.”
Vaz is one of feni’s stoutest champions. In
2018, he opened a feni cellar and tasting
room, Beco das Garrafões. Today, he con-
ducts a Floating Feni experience (via the
Urbanaut app) at the pond on the farm—a
crash course on feni and flavour pairings—
and even customises experiences. I am part of
a curated two-day itinerary planned for a
Hyderabad 09
team of bartenders/mixologists from Japan.
We forage for dukshiri (Indian sarsaparilla),
collect roinn (anthill mud) to use as a sealant
for the pots, break coconuts so the coir and
husks can be used as firewood, learn how to
sharpen the kathi (like a sickle) using quartz
and make the kannto (stick with a pointed end
used to pick cashew apples) with porcupine
quills.
Trying to bracket Goan food into Hindu or
Catholic or Saraswat or Portuguese Goan
does it a grave injustice. We have different
recipes pertaining to season, community,
occasion, availability of produce and more.
It is at Shubhra Shankhwalker’s home that
I learnt there are six kinds of sol kadi: four
made with coconut milk and dried kokum;
one without coconut milk (futi kadi) and one
made with fresh kokum (binnachi kadi).
Shankhwalker is a chef and founder of Aai’s,
where she caters Goan Hindu Saraswat meals
and hosts sit-down meals at her farm. Some-
times, she also invites people home. I got
treated to a lunch of bharille bangde, or mack-
erel stuffed with a simple coriander and garlic
paste, visvonn, or kingfish hooman, vaalchi
bhaji (flat beans) and kuvar. Kuvar is an unfa-
miliar dish for me, an uncooked curry made
with coconut, chillies, tamarind and salt,
eaten with rice. “This food is not something
you will easily find in a restaurant,” says
Shankhwalker. A restaurant setting cannot
offer what she does: “a dining experience that
is seasonal, features fresh, local produce, and
food that offers a short introduction to Saras-
wat food”.
Soul Travelling, an offbeat tourism ven-
ture, takes me on a tavern trail in Panaji. Once
upon a time, Goa’s tavernas were where locals
would go for feni or urrak, to catch up on the
day’s news. The food was minimal, entertain-
ment included a game of carrom or watching
old films. Today, few remain. In three old bars
in Panaji, I sip fresh urrak with Limca and salt
and snack on dried shrimp, liver and gizzard
fry, and boiled gram. On a separate trail with
them in Divar, I get to try 15 different kinds of
feni—infused with coffee, lemongrass, even
garlic. “We want to introduce people to this
aspect of Goan life that seems to be dying
out,” says co-founder Varun Hegde.
Soul Travelling also conducts a tribal food
trail in Canacona. This activity is part of my
ever-burgeoning to-do list of dining experi-
ences. I wish to partake of an Indo-Portu-
guese meal at the magnificent Palácio do
Deão in Quepem and Figueiredo Mansion in
Loutolim: Both experiences, available on
request, include a tour of these century-old
heritage spaces. Tour group The Local Beat
conducts a monsoon experience that
involves a trek and a home-cooked meal in
the jungle. Chef Avinash Martins’ C’est L’avi
is a seasonal, bespoke menu that shows off
his take on Goan food, served at his property
in Cuelim. I hope to catch the next season of
Khop Inn.
Picture this: eating a piping hot plate of
chicken cafreal and poee, seated on the
ground under a shed in the middle of a paddy
field in the peak of Goa’s monsoon. This is
Khop Inn, a small takeaway that is open only
for lunch on five Sundays in a year; and yet
people have made that food pilgrimage to
Ponda for three years in a row.
In Goa, good food is a given. Seeking out an
experience to go along with it…that is price-
less.
Joanna Lobo is a Goa-based journalist.
10 Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad
Shelter from the storm
Mizoram’s ties with
communities in
Myanmar have seen it
absorbing refugees
from there. But the
strain is showing
Ninglun Hanghal and Makepeace Sitlhou
AIZAWL AND CHAMPHAI
O
n the narrow streets of Aiz-
awl, one can barely recog-
nise celebrity singer Ben-
jamin Sum, known to his
fans just as Sum. Dressed
in black, a cap, and a mask covering his
face, the 21-year-old runner-up of the
2019 reality music show Myanmar Idol
blends in perfectly. As soon as he enters
West Cafe in Dawrpui Vengthar, though,
it becomes apparent that he’s a celebrity—
the staff greet him with giddy smiles, pat-
rons sneak a peek. He’s grateful for the
warmth; it has been a difficult week, for his
mother had to undergo surgery.
“By the grace of God, it went well,” he
tells us, reluctant to share details. Before
they fled their hometown in Falam (Chin
state) last year, following the military coup
in Myanmar, visits to Mizoram used to be
mostly for her medical checks. “My mem-
ories of Mizoram are mostly of the cancer
hospital and Bethlehem Veng, where we
live with our relatives,” he says.
In March 2021, after Sum joined dem-
onstrations against the Tatmadaw, or mil-
itary coup, his life took a dramatic turn.
“There is a 505(b) case (intent to cause
harm to or incite the public, under the
Penal Code of 1861, with imprisonment up
to three years) against me, which is why
we had to flee.” He, his mother and their
corgi traversed thick jungle to reach the
border at Champhai district in Mizoram
that month. “I am a refugee now,” he says.
Sum and his family are among the thou-
sands taking refuge in the border state of
Mizoram, where the government has wel-
comed those fleeing the military’s offen-
sive against the resistance, both peaceful
and armed, in Myanmar’s Chin state.
Around 100,000 people have been dis-
placed from their homes in Chin state—
which shares a 510km border with Mizo-
ram.
Many of them have sought shelter in
Mizoram, according to a regional report in
June by the United Nations High Com-
missioner for Refugees. They are surviv-
ing on donations raised by the local com-
munity and the church as well as aid from
Chin refugees abroad, and, more recently,
the Union government and international
agencies. In the absence of clear direc-
tions from New Delhi, however, it may be
tough to sustain this aid in the long term.
The first arrivals began in March 2021,
a month after the military seized control
in Myanmar. Since then, a few hundred to
a few thousand refugees have been arriv-
ing in Mizoram every month. Chief minis-
ter Pu Zoramthanga, who has been
appealing to Prime Minister Narendra
Modi for asylum for the refugees since last
year, said the displaced have survived only
because of the generosity of relatives in
India—Chin refugees share ethnicity, reli-
gion and dialect with Mizos. “Many of
them are guests of their relatives, while
others are in camps. My government
helped them because the Government of
India helped me,” he had told Lounge in an
interview in May. The church, student
organisations, non-profits and political
parties had all contributed tremendously,
he had added.
In a significant shift from his position
last year, when Zoramthanga asked Modi
for aid for refugees, his tone now is concil-
iatory. “The Government of India is very
understanding at this time and we praise
them even though we know they have a lot
of limitations,” he said. “They have helped
us in every possible way.”
A response to a request filed by these
correspondents under the Right to Infor-
mation Act, 2005 with the government of
Mizoram revealed that the Union ministry
of finance allocated ₹37.6 crore to the Miz-
oram state disaster relief fund in 2021-22,
up significantly from ₹18 crore in 2019-20
(under the Disaster Management Act,
2005, 10% of the funds allocated to a state
can be used by it for events it considers
“disasters” within its local context). A
source in the Champhai district adminis-
tration, where most of the refugees are
staying, said about the same time that they
had received ₹30 lakh in Union govern-
ment funds from the state disaster relief
department in 2021-22.
It wasn’t enough. Although he did not
confirm the budgetary head or the
amount disbursed, Zoramthanga said
then that funding was a concern because
the Union government was not a signatory
to international refugee conventions like
the Geneva Convention of 1951 or the New
York Protocol of 1967. In the absence of a
national policy, refugees are dependent
on the UN High Commissioner for Refu-
gees (UNHCR) as “mandated refugees”,
while they await asylum in another coun-
try. Or, in the case of the Chin refugees in
Mizoram, the goodwill of civil society
groups and government funds that aren’t
allocated specifically for them.
“To feed 30,000 people for months…
VANTAGE
(from top) Champhai refugee
camp in Mizoram; Benjamin
Sum; and the Farkawn
quarantine camp, in
September 2021.
As of 1 June, the UNHCR in
India estimated a total of
39,790 Myanmar nationals in
Manipur and Mizoram. Of
these, 30,342 were in
Mizoram, as of 25 June
AFP
COURTESY FACEBOOK
it’s quite a problem for the government of
Mizoram and the people at large,” Zoram-
thanga had noted.
MIZORAM’S TRINITY
Tucked in the southern-most corner of
the North-East, Mizoram lives in relative
isolation from other states. Formerly the
Lushai Hills of undivided Assam, it got
statehood in 1987 after the Mizo Peace
Accord, following years of conflict that
saw air raids on the capital, Aizawl. The
years since have been largely peaceful,
though Mizos have never fully embraced
vai-te (Indian) nationalism the way tribes
in Arunachal Pradesh did post-statehood.
Here, it is the Presbyterian Synod and civil
society bodies like the Young Mizo Asso-
ciation (YMA) and Mizo Zirlai Pawl (stu-
dent union) that rule the roost.
Wedged between Bangladesh and
Myanmar, the hill state is no stranger to
refugee incursions. In 1963-64, Chakma
and Hajong refugees were resettled in
camps in the Lushai Hills after the two
communities were driven out of Bangla-
desh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts. Tensions
soared after the Chakmas established an
autonomous district council, leading to
riots and the displacement of thousands of
indigenous Brus to neighbouring Tripura.
In contrast, the Chin refugees have not
only been welcomed since 1988, during
the first student uprising against the Tat-
madaw, but have been allowed to resettle
in the state. As of 1 June, the UNHCR in
India estimated a total of 39,790 Myanmar
nationals in Manipur, where they have not
been registered officially, and Mizoram.
Of these, 30,342 were in Mizoram, as of 25
June. More than 13,000 people have been
living in 160 refugee camps in Mizoram,
according to state government estimates.
“We don’t look at Myanmarese as refu-
gees but (as) displaced people,” says Mizo-
ram University’s Prof. Lalnuntluanga,
general secretary of the Central YMA in
Aizawl. While district deputy commis-
sioners have been tasked with looking
after the refugees, he says the church and
locals are involved too. “In Aizawl alone,
we have three camps and the commis-
sioner alone cannot manage it all,” he says.
SADIQ NAQVI
“They need the local people, too, to pro-
vide for their requirements.”
While several refugees have taken up
jobs as daily labourers and domestic help-
ers or are running small businesses, most
families are dependent on relatives in the
state and overseas. Many from the 1988
generation, who found asylum in the
West, are major donors. Student unions,
the church and Mizo society have been
organising charity concerts to raise funds.
Sum has been at the forefront of
attempts to raise money through concerts,
held across the state and streamed online.
He says he has lost count of the number of
concerts he has performed in, along with
local gospel singers. “I personally have
gone and distributed donations at refugee
camps all over Mizoram,” he says.
Yet, civil society members say the
model isn’t economically viable. Daniel, a
Chin refugee in Champhai who goes by
one name, says the concerts he helped
organise in Aizawl and Champhai didn’t
draw donations that were worth the time,
energy and resources that went into them.
“We raised ₹1-2 lakh at the most. Our
expenditure was half the amount we col-
lected,” he says. Daniel refutes any sug-
gestion that the charity concerts raised
money for the resistance.
EARNING A LIVING
When Pu Chanpeng fled Tahan in Kalay-
myo (Chin state) with his wife and three
children in September last year and
reached the border town of Zokhawthar
in Champhai district, the 58-year-old
small business owner didn’t imagine he
would be running a refugee camp and a
shop selling betelnut and Burmese snacks.
By November, with the help of local res-
idents, a refugee camp had been built on
a secondary school playground overlook-
ing Khawmawi village. “The camp was
constructed with donations from the vil-
lage council. People contributed every-
thing from ₹100-1,000,” he says. “Even
the MLA helped in raising ₹3 lakh.” Every
household in the village volunteered one
member to help erect the bamboo walls,
tin roofs and tarpaulin sheets that 470 ref-
ugees from Myanmar’s Sagaing division
and Falam now call home.
As of 25 June, Mizoram had issued
30,089 identity cards, covering 99.2% of
the refugees, H. Lalengmawia, the state
home department secretary, told Lounge
in July. The ID, or “Temporary certificate
of identity of Myanmar nationals in Mizo-
ram”, attested by the district administra-
tion, enables mobility and allows them to
seek a livelihood within the state.
But even those who have found work
don’t earn enough to move out of the
camps. Room rents in Champhai district
start from ₹1,000 a month for one room
and the most one can earn as a seasonal
labourer is ₹350 a day. In the camp, one
can count on a steady supply of basic food
rations, including rice, dal, sugar, tea, oil
and soya chunk nuggets. There’s an acute
water shortage, though, with families
forced to buy drinking water at ₹50 for a
20-litre bottle. And, while camp housing
is reinforced with wood and aluminium
roofs, it doesn’t have the concrete walls
that would protect the occupants from
extreme weather.
Last year, after the brouhaha between
the Union and state governments on
allowing refugee to settle, international
groups like the Médecins Sans Frontières,
Action Aid and World Health Organisa-
tion offered help. As the Centre does not
formally recognise the refugees, many of
the groups work discreetly.
This year, the non-profit Impulse has
employed about 500 refugee families
each in Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur
to grow indigenous seasonal crops on
community land. “We are providing food
relief to people who are living in the com-
munity-based camps,” says Impulse
founder Hasina Kharbhih, who has been
recognised globally for her work on con-
trolling human trafficking in South and
South-East Asia. Kharbhih, who has been
working with partners in Myanmar since
2012, designed the project with long-term
food security in mind. “The host commu-
nity are supporting the refugees for multi-
ple crop plantation in 300 acres of com-
munity land lying barren in each state,”
she says. “The food grown will be shared
by the displaced and the hosts.”
The trauma and financial hardship are
not the only issues for refugees. It’s not
easy to assimilate culturally into Mizo
society, where the Lushei dialect reigns
supreme. The UNHCR estimates 580 chil-
dren among the new arrivals who have
enrolled in government schools in Mizo-
ram. The children are familiar with
Lushei (written in Roman) but are used to
studying in the Burmese script.
Sum is apprehensive of their future in a
foreign land. “Food we can manage, but
without education the next generation
will be lost,” he says.
ANXIETY LOOMS
Despite the bonhomie, several Mizos are
anxious about the pressures on their state
and are beginning to wonder how long it
will be before locals start feeling the guests
have outstayed their welcome. “So far, we
haven’t received any complaints from the
locals,” says Prof. Lalnuntluanga. “What-
ever resources we have, have been shared
with the displaced people, but I don’t
know what the perception will be a year
from now, since we cannot support them
forever.”
The apprehensions are not unfounded,
given that Mizoram is largely an agricul-
ture-based economy with limited resour-
ces, especially when it comes to cultivable
land—26.76% of the state is under reserve
forest. The state is among the poorest in
the country, whether it’s per capita
income (₹2,10,629) or gross state domestic
product (₹1,87,327), and is heavily
dependent on Central assistance
(₹4,083.24 crore in the 2022-23 budget).
An official from the Mizoram home
department says, on condition of anonym-
ity, that there is an urgent need to find a
model for the “prolonged stay”. “The
assumption has been that they will leave in
a year but what we need is a mid-term and
long-term framework to accommodate
them,” he says.
Seeing the accommodation of Myan-
mar refugees as “a humanitarian duty”,
Zoramthanga had told us a long-term plan
wouldn’t be needed if they could “shorten
their stay.... There’s a possibility for mak-
ing peace in Myanmar now very soon. All
they need is someone to bring them
together and this is where the Indian gov-
ernment can play a crucial role.”
Prof. Lalnuntluanga, however, believes
the state government needs to push the
Centre to recognise the Myanmar nation-
als as “refugees”. “That would ease the
burden on the people of Mizoram to sup-
port them. The situation was particularly
grim last year, when the second wave of
covid-19 struck. “Fortunately, people still
live by an old saying, sem sem dam dam
eibil thi thi (share everything and avoid mis-
fortune),” says Prof. Lalnuntluanga.
While making a fervent appeal for aid in
his meeting with Modi and Union home
minister Amit Shah last year, Zoramtha-
nga said he had to recount his family his-
tory to get them to soften their stance. “I
told them that two sisters of my mother
lived and died here in India and their two
brothers, my only two uncles, in Myan-
mar. If their children came to me, should
I turn them back?” he recalls.
On 24 August, the Chin Human Rights
Organisation reported that the influx of
Myanmar refugees in India had crossed
50,000; state officials estimate over
29,000 of them are in Mizoram. The
absence of an official Indian policy on ref-
ugees keeps coming up. Zoramthanga
perhaps understands the predicament
more than anyone else. “Given that the
country is surrounded on every side,” he
said in May, “the government of India
would be wise to make a policy which suits
its functioning.”
Reporting for this article was supported
by the International Women’s Media Foun-
dation’s Howard G Buffet Fund for Women
Journalists.
Ninglun Hanghal is a journalist based in
Imphal. Makepeace Sitlhou is a Guwahati-
based journalist currently at the Arizona
State University as a Humphrey fellow.

GOING BENEATH THE SURFACE WITH
SAIM SADIQ The first Pakistani film to screen at Cannes, ‘Joyland’ is a quiet yet profound queer
drama that’s also a crowd-pleaser. Lounge speaks to the film’s director
Pahull Bains
A
10ft-tall cutout of a woman
in a bright orange sharara,
balanced on a scooter,
coasting down a Lahore fly-
over. A glittering dance
performance in the dark, illuminated by
cellphone flashlights. A kiss between a
couple in a dimly lit room as neon green
lasers dance across their faces. Two
women shrieking with laughter atop a
Ferris wheel on a sweaty night.
Saim Sadiq’s spectacular debut feature,
Joyland, pulsates with visual imagery that
imprints on the mind. Equally, though, it’s
filled with characters that burrow into the
heart. It’s hard to provide a succinct over-
view of what the film—fresh off a festival
run, with stops at Cannes and Toronto—is
really about. On the surface, it’s about
Haider, a stay-at-home husband in a
Lahore joint family who begrudgingly
takes on a job as a backup dancer in an
erotic dance troupe led by a trans woman
named Biba and starts to fall in love with
her. In the hands of a lesser film-maker,
the story might have begun and ended
there—a romance between a cisgender
man and a transgender woman with all the
predictable rhythms: secret identities
revealed, existential crises of sexuality
faced, and fears of societal rejection
addressed.
But Sadiq, a 31-year-old Pakistani
director, isn’t content with scratching the
surface. He takes that premise and
stretches it, examining it from all angles,
adding new layers, bringing in more per-
spectives. The result is a staggering inter-
personal tale about desire, identity and
gender normativity where no one’s
actions or impulses exist in a vacuum.
When Haider is coerced
by his patriarchal family
to get a job, it’s his wife
Mumtaz who must pay
the price, giving up a job
she loves to look after the
home. And as Haider’s
understanding of his sexu-
ality begins to shift, how
can that not have an impact
on Biba? Sadiq doesn’t
value one subjective expe-
rience over the other; to
him, they are all equally
valid, so he offers us a win-
dow into them all, adding
even more richness and
complexity to the story as it
unfolds.
Joyland will be touted foremost as a
queer romance (and it did win the Queer
Palm at Cannes this year) but at its core
this is a film about understanding one’s
sense of self. From three unique vantage
points, we see people trying to figure out
who they are on a fundamental level, who
they are allowed to be in a society with
rigid ideas about masculinity, domesticity
and gender identity, and the toll a chasm
between these two versions can wreak.
Sadiq balances the gravity of these big,
existential questions with a tenderness
and a biting sense of humour.
Edited excerpts from a phone conversa-
tion with Sadiq in Karachi, Pakistan, after
his film’s rapturous premiere at Toronto:
Your 2019 short film, ‘Darling’, was
the jumping off point for ‘Joyland’.
(from top) Stills from ‘Joyland’; and Saim Sadiq.
Where did the idea first come from?
I was toying with ideas of sexuality and
gender and sacrifice, and where you draw
the line between ambition and sacrificing
too much of yourself to become some-
thing. Those were themes that interested
me and the setting of the theatre was
something that I was very fascinated
with…. There was a trans woman, an older
lady in her 50s, who told me a story of
when she was young dancer and there was
a boy who fell in love with her but didn’t
know she was a trans girl. It sparked a
germ in me at that point in time. I knew I
didn’t want it to be a secret that she’s a
trans girl, I didn’t want there to be a big
reveal. I kind of wanted
to do the opposite of it.
So it was a real story that
I heard and I was look-
ing to write a romance—
I knew that I had a
romance in me—and
those two parts came
together.
Alina is the only
‘Joyland’ actor who
appears in ‘Dar-
ling’—not as the
fiery Biba from the
feature but still a
trans woman try-
ing to make it as a
dancer. How did
you adapt the
short into a feature?
I knew the feature was not about Biba
entirely. I always knew she would be the
second- or third-most important charac-
ter. It’s kind of a two-way between her and
Mumtaz. They are both very important,
one is propelling the story forward but the
other turns out to be the heart of the film.
And I knew the main protagonist was the
guy. Just like the guy in the short, there
was something far more complex happen-
ing with him...a man who questions why
he loves who he loves and what it says
about him and does it say something about
him or not? That area of confusion really
informed Haider.
As characters, Mumtaz and Biba were
always with me. I knew that in the short I
did not want to put Biba in. A character
like Biba almost seems meant for a bigger
screen, she needs time and space to do her
CULTURE
thing and for us to fall in love with her and
get to know her. She’s not easily likeable,
which is something I like. She’s not a sweet
girl. To show that without judging her
required a feature film.
Though the central romance is the
catalyst for events, this is not a love
story. Why did you zoom out from just
the two of them?
I didn’t want it to be just about Haider
and Biba because I thought it would be a
bit boring. I didn’t think it would be a
holistic picture because it doesn’t feel cor-
rect that for a guy who comes from a joint
family system, that he would be having
this affair and the big thing is only that it’s
a secret. It is going to affect his family in
some way, there’s no way that in our world
I knew that I was making a film
about gender and desire,
almost like a Pakistani version
of ‘Sex And Punishment’—
about what you want and
what you can’t have...
things don’t affect our family because they
are so up in our business all the time.
The film wrestles with many themes
and ideas, so much more than you
might think. What are some of the
themes you would say it’s exploring?
I knew that I was making a film about
gender and desire, almost like a Pakistani
version of Sex And Punishment—about
what you want and what you can’t have,
and if you try to have it, what happens or
what could happen, you know, the fear of
it all… And of course there is an intersec-
tionality that I was interested in because
there are all these hierarchies of charac-
ters and it’s not like they are pitted against
each other, but it was interesting to me (to
consider) where does a guy who’s poten-
tially queer lie in the hierarchy as opposed
to his wife, who’s far more confident and
assured in terms of her place in the world.
And a trans girl who is so powerful—but
she is a trans girl in our society at the end
of the day—where does she lie in the hier-
archy, and what happens if one attempt at
finding their identity is something that
leads to another person losing theirs.
At Toronto, Sania Saeed, who has a
small but impactful role in ‘Joyland’,
called the film an act of protest and
resistance. Is that something you
were consciously thinking of?
I mean she’s right, objectively speaking.
But I would not say that when I was mak-
ing the film that the protest was the intent,
for me personally. I was really interested
in these characters. But I wasn’t going to
be stupid, I knew I couldn’t do certain
things. I had to tell the story in a certain
way which is palatable for people to watch.
There is a far more sexual version of this
film that exists and I know that. But in
some ways it felt correct to me that if I am
talking about desire in a repressed society,
that I take both into account, I take the
repression. But beyond that, the intent
was not protest or activism. My interest
was very artistically inclined. But I did
make it as honestly as I possibly could,
which in itself, I think, is pretty protest-y—
that you choose the kind of film you want
to make and you make it exactly that.
Pahull Bains is a freelance culture writer
and the outreach and marketing manager
at Reelworld Film Festival in Toronto.
Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad 11
FIRST
B E AT
SANJOY
N A R AYA N
This queen of
electro-R&B
bends genres
The singularity of ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’ is its shape-shifting nature.
A
t the heart of Sudan Archives’ songs is her violin. And yet, you may not
always notice that easily. If you watch her perform in 2020 at the NPR
Tiny Desk Concert (and I would highly recommend that you do), you
can see her virtuosity with that instrument. Two of the three songs she per-
formed during that session, accompanied by another violinist, a violist and a
cellist, were from her first album, Athena, released in 2019; the third song was
an earlier released single.
The NPR performance at the public radio’s Washington, DC offices was,
however, not typical of how Sudan Archives uses the violin in her music. In
her albums and live performances, you may even find the violin difficult to
identify in its purest sense at times—enhanced by electronic wizardry, she can
make it sound like a drum or even a saxophone. After the Tiny Desk gig, you
could switch back to another video of a full performance at the studios of the
KEXP radio channel, also from 2019, to see how she is able to make her violin
sound chameleon-like.
Sudan Archives is a mostly self-taught violinist and multi-instrumentalist
who is all of 25. Born Brittney Parks, she was renamed Sudan by her mother
and by the time she began performing and recording, Archives got added to
the name. So her stage name is both unusual and striking.
Sudan picked up the violin at 10, learning it by listening to Celtic folk tunes.
Then she started playing at churches as part of the choir and began exploring
the violin styles in Western classical music. Later, as an African-American
(and because she had been renamed Sudan), she started exploring African
music, discovering traditional Sudanese and Ghanaian one-string violin
styles and composers such as the Cameroonian Francis Bebey.
All those influences are incorporated in Sudan Archives’ music, which has
often been labelled electro-soul but is in reality way beyond such pigeon-hol-
ing. Sudan is a true bender of genres. She largely produces her own music, has
her own studio and has talked in interviews about her ambition of becoming a
producer for other musicians, mainly women.
Early this September, Sudan released her second full-length album, a daz-
zling one titled Natural Brown Prom Queen. If Athena stood out as an experi-
mental alternative R&B work in which she collaborated with at least a dozen
co-producers and wowed the crit-
ics, her second takes her output to
an altogether different level. It’s
unabashedly autobiographical,
THE LOUNGE
with Sudan, a self-confessed intro-
vert, telling her story in lyrics that
LIST
are candid, uninhibited and con- Five tracks by Sudan
fessional. Archives to bookend
In the opening track, Home your week
Maker, for instance, she begins
apparently tamely by singing, I 1. ‘Home Maker’ from ‘Natural
just got a wall mount for plants/ Brown Prom Queen’
And hoping that they’ll thrive
around the madness, but soon 2. ‘NBPQ (Topless)’ from ‘Natural
declares that there are Only bad Brown Prom Queen’
bitches in my trellis/ And baby, I’m
the baddest. Those are the sort of 3. ‘Freakalizer’ from ‘Natural
shifting emotions and thoughts Brown Prom Queen’
that mark not only Sudan’s lyrics 4. ‘Selfish Soul’ from ‘Natural
but her music as well. Brown Prom Queen’
In Home Maker, we are taken on
a roller-coaster ride where elec- 5. ‘Black Vivaldi Sonata’ from
tronic dance music cross-breeds ‘Athena’
with R&B and pop. The luscious
string arrangements are embroid-
ered on a sheet of infectiously danceable drum lines. The second track, NBPQ
(Topless)—the initials obviously refer to the album’s title—is described by
Sudan as “a song of redemption and freedom”. She says it’s “about my insecu-
rities that I have being a brown skin black female in the world and how to nav-
igate through that while facing American beauty standards”. Sudan raps on
the song, starting with: Sometimes I think that if I was light-skinned/ Then I
would get into all the parties/ Win all the Grammys, make the boys happy/ Fuck
lookin’ sassy, they think I’m sexy. But then her attitude shifts to stress that she
doesn’t really give a damn and that she’s a natural, natural brown prom queen/
’Cause I’m not average.
The singularity of Natural Brown Prom Queen is its shape-shifting nature.
Jazz transforms into R&B; R&B turns into funk; funk turns into catchy hook-
laden pop. One factor in this was the collaborative nature of the album. Partly
because of covid-19 but also because Sudan is the sort of musician who is not
comfortable playing at other people’s studios, she made demos and sent them
to other producers, who laid down their lines and submitted them to her. She
then chose from the options she got, taking some, rejecting others.
The violin may not be as upfront in Natural Brown Prom Queen as it is in
Sudan’s earlier songs, or even Athena. But it is there, with her solos pretty
obvious on at least half a dozen of the 18 songs. And, for the ones on which you
think you are not listening to the violin, it could be that she’s channelling
electronics to make her plucking sound like a drum loop or her bow strokes
seem like horns!
With her sophomore album, Sudan Archives is clearly at the vanguard of a
new movement—of the singer-songwriter evolving into what one might call a
singer-songwriter-cum-producer. Keep your ears open for more from her.
First Beat is a column on what’s new and groovy in the world of music.
@sanjoynarayan
12 Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad BUSINESS LOUNGE

Vijay Arisetty
THE COMMUNITY MAN The founder and CEO of MyGate talks about the most exciting day in his life, being agile during the
pandemic, and how he answers questions regarding the privacy and security of his app
Illustration by Priya Kuriyan
Shrabonti Bagchi
Shrabonti.B@htlive.com

M
ost founders say the
most exciting journey of
their lives has been the
entrepreneurial one.
Ask Vijay Arisetty,
founder and CEO of MyGate, an app-
based management system for gated com-
What is more
munities, about his most exciting journey
and he will tell you about being a helicop-
ter pilot during the tsunami that hit the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands and south-
important is not
ern India in December 2004, and a des-
perate 1km run from his quarters to an air-
field with a wall of water chasing him.
the ability to
It was early morning on 26 December.
There had been a Christmas party at the
Indian Air Force (IAF) cantonment on the
small island of Car Nicobar, where Ari-
foresee all things—
setty was posted as a helicopter pilot with
the IAF, the night before and most people
were sleeping it off. At around 5am, Ari-
but the ability to
setty was woken up by his bed shaking vio-
lently. Realising it was an earthquake, he
jumped out of the window of his ground-
floor room. The most bizarre moment
react when you
came when he, along with colleagues who
had also gathered outdoors, felt the earth-
quake end. “We looked behind us—and
Car Nicobar is tiny, only 2.5km radius, so
experience them.
you can see the ocean everywhere—and
saw there was no sea. It had receded for
miles around and it was shining white
with corals for 10 miles. The island had
risen above sea level,” says Arisetty.
“And, in the distance, there was a wall of
murky water coming towards us at a fast
pace,” he adds in his calm, patient tone.
That is when he started running, pull-
ing along colleagues and civilians, towards
the airfield, which he knew was on higher
ground. They were stranded at the airfield
for almost three days, during which Ari-
setty flew his chopper and rescued people
stranded on rooftops and treetops, ulti-
mately saving around 350 lives—an act for
which he subsequently received the
Shaurya Chakra.

MyGate services 25,000

gated communities. The
company is expecting to
hit an annualised
revenue rate of ₹400
crore by December 2022

From being a peacetime Armed Forces

hero to founding MyGate, a company that
created a category (of community man-
agement apps), has been a very different
kind of challenge. Arisetty, who grew up
in Koraput, Odisha, on the campus of Hin-
dustan Aeronautics Ltd’s (HAL’s) engine
manufacturing plant—thus the early fasci-
nation with flying and the Armed Forces—
founded MyGate in 2016, along with
Abhishek Kumar, chief operating officer,
and Shreyans Daga, chief technology offi-
cer. He quit the IAF in 2009 after a shoul-
der injury prevented him from flying and
went to ISB, Hyderabad for an MBA
degree, going on to work with Goldman
Sachs in Bengaluru for five years as an
investment banker.
His first short-lived startup, Purple
Road, would rent out vehicles to e-com-
merce companies. Though it wound up
before being registered, insights from it
led to the idea of MyGate. Arisetty, 45, was
having conversations with his
co-founders, whom he met through
entrepreneur networks in Bengaluru,
about the growth of e-commerce in India
and how this was leading to increased fric-
tion at the gate, where physical protocols,
like entering details into a register and
security guards calling the resident to
approve entry, were leading to delivery
personnel spending as many as 15-20 min-
utes at the entry point of gated buildings.
“We realised that this could be smoother.
The volume of e-commerce was only
going to grow but it was hitting a road-
block at the gate,” says Arisetty.
Today, the Bengaluru-based MyGate,
the market leader in the segment, services
25,000 gated communities across India
(around four million homes). The com-
pany is expecting to hit an annualised rev-
enue rate (ARR) of ₹400 crore by Decem-
ber 2022, a growth of nearly 800% over
the ₹55 crore it clocked in December 2021.
Even as it grows, the company faces a host
of challenges—from an ongoing court case
with rival NoBroker over the alleged theft
of customer databases by MyGate, to the
challenges of turning the company profit-
able and keep it growing, as well as rou-
tinely facing questions on social media
about the kind of customer data its app
collects and how private it remains.
It is the last that baffles and bothers
Arisetty. His normally even tone
becomes a bit charged when he’s talking
about how, ever so often, someone will
accuse MyGate of violating end-user
consent by giving access to their data to
resident welfare associations (RWAs) or
something similar. A viral Twitter thread
from January 2022 called MyGate “one of
the truly dark tech startups in India” and
accused it of “scoop(ing) up loads of end-
user data, neatly structured by service
provider, and frequency.... There’s no
opt-out since they just need to convince
a bunch of people that manage these
associations and individual users and
their consent suddenly no longer mat-
ters,” the writer added.
“To all the people who put criticism on
Twitter—I am inviting all those people to
come and take a look at our systems.
Which consumer tech company in India
is GDPR-ready or IDP-ready? We con-
sulted top lawyers and privacy experts for
the GDPR exercise, so I am confident and
I tell people, get an auditor and come and
see for yourself if we are misusing data,”
says Arisetty, referring to the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), a regula-
tion under European law on data protec-
tion and privacy, and Identity Protection
(IDP), a technological framework that
makes a company GDPR-compliant.
“As a company, if I say that I am not cap-
turing all those things (consumer data), I
am lying, but am I misusing it? Am I
snooping into the data and trying to derive
insights? I am not and that is what being
GDPR-compliant ensures,” says Arisetty.
“I come from an Armed Forces back-
ground. We want to be truthful to what we
are signing up for. My co-founder
(Abhishek Kumar) comes from a banking
background, so all our training is not to
disclose our client’s information. One of
our cultural statements is that we take our
customers’ data to our graves.”
The pandemic has been an exponential
game changer for the company as well as
the category. During the 2020 lockdown
and the Delta wave of coronavirus in
2021, companies like MyGate, till then
essentially systems to record and allow
residents to permit/decline entries at the
gate, found the rules changing overnight.
There was a lot of uncertainty in gated
communities about who would be
allowed in, how personnel from e-com-
merce and food delivery companies
would get customers their orders if they
were not allowed into the complex,
whether domestic help should be
allowed to come in or not, and many such
dilemmas. MyGate, which was handling
around 4,000 communities across India
at the time, had to quickly come up with
solutions.
“Things were completely dynamic.
There were containment zones across
the city and apartments in those areas
had to abide by different rules. Every sce-
nario was different in every pin code and
every society and our product had to
keep pace with that, keep evolving,”
recalls Arisetty.
He shares an example: “In most socie-
My quiet time
It’s running. When I run, I go
deeper into a problem and come
up with disruptive solutions.
My business mantra
As a founder, you have to be
strategic in your long-term
thinking and tactical in solving
day-to-day problems.
What I don’t
like about
apartment life
People are losing connectedness.
Build trust and empathy with
your neighbours.
ties, delivery boys were not allowed
inside but residents needed their daily
groceries. So companies like BigBasket
started supplying in bulk—they said they
would not supply at an individual level
but at a community level. We had to bulk
the order and at the gate we had to break
the bulk.” Then there were rules like visi-
tors from certain states had to produce
the results of RT-PCR tests, and it fell to
security guards at the gate to check that.
All this had to be folded into the app in a
user-friendly way.
“Finally, 18 months into the pandemic,
we said, ‘Let’s put a pause on covid-related
activities.’ Otherwise feature pe feature
banta hi jaa raha tha (we were coming up
with feature after feature). Take the vacci-
nation tracking tool,” Arisetty says, refer-
ring to a controversial feature present in
the app for a while that let RWAs track the
vaccination status of residents. “We real-
ised that it was creating privacy issues.
Why does the RWA want to know who has
been vaccinated? The management com-
mittee will ask us but the end consumer
doesn’t want to give that information. Vis-
itor management is just a log, it’s not about
tracking. But we realised that the intent of
the vaccination tool was to track.”
Arisetty, however, bats for the RWAs
(he is personally on over 2,000 WhatsApp
groups of RWAs), saying that while they
are often reviled as intrusive and narrow-
minded, they are doing a thankless unpaid
job. During the pandemic, especially, they
were answerable to city municipalities,
which were also often acting in an ad hoc
manner. At the peak of the pandemic,
companies like MyGate played a big role
in creating a buffer between residents and
the authorities, making lives easier and
smoother during an uncertain time—like
fine-tuning delivery options .
MyGate today is aiming to become a
one-stop solution for apartment living,
with many new features integrated into
the app. Starting February 2021, it has
launched “MyGate Exclusives”—deals
exclusively available to communities
through the platform (Arisetty calls this
something that “enables gated communi-
ties to unlock their collective buying
power”)—a “Buy and Sell” feature, which
allows residents to sell services and prod-
ucts to neighbours, and an Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) solution that
helps RWAs with book-keeping and com-
mon facility management, apart from let-
ting individual residents make payments
such as maintenance bills, salaries of sup-
port staff and even cable TV bills on one
platform. It has also started property lis-
tings—rivals like NoBroker started with
property listings and then got into com-
munity management.
“The job has changed a lot, the com-
plexity of the task has changed a lot. Did
we envisage this when we first started
MyGate? No. As an entrepreneur, a lot of
things become clearer as you get deeper
into the business,” says Arisetty. “But what
is more important, I found as a founder, is
not the ability to foresee all those things—
but the ability to react when you experi-
ence them.”
LIVEMINT.COM NEWS Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad 13

Ola Electric
m MINT SHORTS
Pegatron factory in Chennai is
taps Australian Fiscal deficit touches 33% on
companies
another milestone: Chandrasekhar
New Delhi: Union minister of state for electronics and informa-
tion technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday said that the
Pegatron mobile manufacturing facility in Chennai is another
for battery
minerals
higher capex, state transfers
milestone in making India a global electronics manufacturing
hub. Addressing the inauguration of the facility, the minister said FROM PAGE 16
18
that it is a symbol of partnership between the centre and the
states to help India achieve the target of $300 billion in electron- Exchange mission this week to Deficit of ₹5.41 tn by end August 15.6% higher from a year ago amid moderate revenue increase
ics manufacturing, from the current $75 billion. SWATI LUTHRA explore commercial partner-
ship opportunities,” the Aus-
tralian High Commission said Dilasha Seth estimates of around ₹1 trillion.”
Vodafone Idea seeks softer in response to a query. dilasha.seth@livemint.com Revenue receipts in April-August, at
Ola Electric, founded by ₹8.68 trillion, were merely 2.9% higher
terms to settle Indus dues Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola Cabs,
BengAluru
compared to last year, on the back of a

has invested $500 million to set
up the Bengaluru BIC for bat-
tery pack design, fabrication
and testing. Earlier this year,
the company unveiled its first
Li-ion cell, NMC 2170. Ola
plans to mass-produce its cells
from its coming giga factory by
2023. The company was also
allocated 20GWh capacity
under the production-linked
incentives scheme for
advanced chemistry cells.
New Delhi: Vodafone Idea has sought softer payment In an interview with Mint,
terms including additional time and partial payment of its Denise Eaton, trade and invest-
outstanding dues from Indus Towers, said people familiar ment commissioner, Australia,
with the development. Vodafone Idea told stock had earlier said that a delega-
exchanges on Friday that the No 3 carrier was in talks with tion comprising 106 companies
the country’s largest tower provider following reports of would visit this week to explore
the latter considering revocation of services if its dues supply partnerships with
were not paid up. GULVEEN AULAKH Indian companies. The Austra-
lian companies will also scout
for opportunities in critical
16 insurers under DGGI probe for minerals, digital health, infra-
structure and agri-food sectors.
over ₹800 cr of GST irregularities India’s merchandise imports
New Delhi: The finance ministry on Friday said that the Direct- from Australia were $15.1 billion
orate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) has initiated investiga- in 2021, consisting largely of
tions against 16 insurance companies for using input tax credits raw materials, minerals and
wrongfully. Investigation has shown that the wrongful use of tax intermediate goods. India’s
credit amounted to ₹824 crore, of which ₹217 crore has been ‘vol- merchandise exports to Austra-
untarily’ paid by companies after the probe agency’s detection, lia surged 135% between 2019
the ministry said. PTI and 2021. India’s exports have a
broad-based basket largely of
finished products and were
Centre concludes 75-day $6.9 billion in 2021.
free booster dose campaign
T
he Centre’s fiscal deficit wid- contraction in non-tax revenue and a
ened in the April-August slowdown in tax revenues.
period to touch 33% of the Revenue receipts have touched
budget target for the finan- 37.1% of the full year’s target up to
cial year — the result of a Falling receipts August compared to 44.4% in the year-
sharp offtake in capital expenditure, (Figures as % of revised estimates) ago period. Tax revenue in August con-
moderate increase in revenue and Apr-Aug FY22 Apr-Aug FY23 tracted 70% compared to the same
higher transfers to states. month last year.
The development comes when the 36.7 35.2 40.9 37.2 31.1 32.6 “Incremental net revenue receipts in
government expects its subsidy pay- August 2022 halved from the August
outs to rise due to an extension of the 2021 level, primarily on account of the
free foodgrain scheme, depreciating double instalment of tax devolved to
rupee and decline in excise and cus- Total expenditure Total receipt Fiscal deficit state governments in that month given
Source: Controller General of Accounts
toms duty collections. the buoyancy in revenues... Addition-
PARAS JAIN/MINT
The gap between the government’s ally, various taxes such as corporation
revenue and expenditure, at ₹5.41 tril- additional spending on food, fertilizer nal GDP growth, which is the denomi- tax, personal income tax, excise duty,
lion during the April-August period, is and cooking gas subsidies. That said nator. customs duty and CGST saw a year-on-
15.6% higher than the corresponding the windfall tax on crude oil and other Fiscal deficit goes up when the gov- year decline in collections in August
period of last year, according to data export duties, along with the buoyancy ernment’s spending exceeds its reve- 2022,” said Nayar.
from the Controller General of in the goods and services tax and high- nue collections. Total expenditure during the period,
Accounts released on Friday. er-than-expected nominal GDP, may “There are several upside risks to at ₹13.9 trillion, was 9.4% higher com-
Fiscal deficit in the first the fiscal deficit target pared to last year. Capital expenditure,
five months of FY23 was MIND THE GAP for FY23...However, a which is used to create assets like infra-
at 32.6% of the budget large part of it will be structure, and acts as a multiplier, was
target of ₹16.6 trillion set FISCAL deficit in REVENUE receipts TAX revenue in absorbed by higher- up 46.8% year-on-year to ₹2.5 trillion.
for the financial year, as April-Aug period was at ₹8.68 trillion, were August contracted than-estimated non-ex- It is 33.7% of the full year’s estimate as
at 32.6% of ₹16.6 tn merely 2.9% higher 70% compared to
against 31.3% a year ago. budget, as against compared to the same month cise taxes, savings on against 31% in the year-ago.
Fiscal deficit in August 31.3% a year ago. last year. last year account of lower wheat However, revenue expenditure,
at ₹1.47 trillion, was 36.7% procurement, as well as which comprises ongoing operating
higher than the corre- the windfall tax on expenses such as salaries and pensions,
sponding month last year. help the Centre contain the deficit. domestic crude oil production and was up 2.7% to ₹11.37 trillion compared
Economists said risks to the govern- The government contained the fiscal export,” said Aditi Nayar, chief econo- to ₹11.1 trillion in the year earlier.The
ment’s fiscal deficit target of 6.4% of deficit for 2021-22 to 6.7% of GDP, bet- mist, ICRA Ltd. Centre is also trying to cut avoidable
gross domestic product (GDP) for FY23 ter than the 6.9% budget estimates, “It would limit the extent of the over- spending amid concerns of a private
were due to revenue loss on account of largely on the back of higher-than-ex- shoot in the Union government’s fiscal investment slowdown due to monetary
the excise duty cut, and the need for pected revenue collections and nomi- deficit in FY23 relative to the budget policy tightening.

SC to hear banks’ Sebi tightens RBI raises repo rate in RBI names
disclosure 16 leading
petitions on RTI rules for firms bid to tame inflation
By Utkarsh Anand readying IPOs FROM PAGE 16
18 growth prospects,” Das said.
NBFCs in
letters@hindustantimes.com
FROM PAGE 16
18
Stocks rallied after the RBI’s
to weigh on domestic mone- policy announcement. The BSE its upper
S
even years after pushing tary policy. It would be difficult Sensex gained 1.8% to close at

New Delhi: The Central government has concluded the

for transparency in the
banking system under the
them as they may not have the
necessary background to
for RBI to soften its stance in 57,426.92. The yield on the
such a hostile global environ- benchmark 10-year bond rose to
layer list
75-day free covid booster dose campaign, the union health Right To Information (RTI) Act, approve this.” ment. Over the last few months, 7.4%. RBI also downgraded its
ministry said on Friday. In the last 75 days, around 150 mil- the Supreme Court on Friday In addition, the committee declining banking system growth forecast modestly, while Gopika Gopakumar
lion booster doses were administered through 1.3 million agreed to examine a plea by of independent directors will liquidity has put upward pres- its inflation projection was gopika.g@livemint.com
vaccination camps. On 15 July, the Union government public and private sector banks have to recommend that the sure on short-term money unchanged. The growth forecast mumBAi
started the ‘Covid Vaccination Amrit Mahotsava’ in a mis- to be exempt from disclosing price band is justified based on market rates. However, RBI for FY23 was cut to 7% from 7.2%.

sion mode in which special covid vaccination drives were financial information about
organized by all States/UTs to increase the uptake of pre- Non-Performing Assets (NPAs),
caution doses by all adults. PRIYANKA SHARMA losses from trading operations,
show-cause notices and penal-
ties. A bench of justices B.R.
Kunal Shah’s Cred launches Scan Gavai and C.T. Ravikumar held
that the petitions moved by the
and Pay to expand payments biz banks are legally maintainable
Bengaluru: Kunal Shal-led fintech startup Cred launched ‘Scan since the only remedy available
and Pay’ under the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform for- to the banks “for protection of
aying into the wider payments business, to compete with the likes the fundamental rights of their
of PhonePe, GooglePay (Gpay), Paytm and government-backed customers” and their right to
Bhim UPI mobile applications, among others. BEENA PARMAR privacy is to approach the
Supreme Court.
According to the bench, the
Sterlite Power postpones IPO 2015 judgment in the Jayantilal
N. Mistry case “did not take into
plans citing market volatility consideration the aspect of bal-
New Delhi: Vedanta Group unit Sterlite Power Transmission ancing the right to information
Ltd on Friday postponed its plans to go public through an initial and the right to privacy”, and
public offer (IPO) citing unfavourable market conditions. The thus, the court was duty-bound
company, which had filed the DRHP in August, informed market to give banks an opportunity to
regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) about the argue their case on merits.
decision and sought to withdraw the DRHP, a company state- “In view of the judgment of
ment said. SHUBHASH NARAYAN this court in Mistry’s case, the
The court is expected to hear
the banks’ plea on 18 October.
RBI is entitled to issue directions
to the petitioners/banks to dis-
close information even with
regard to the individual custom-
ers of the bank. In effect, it may
adversely affect the individuals’
fundamental right to privacy,”
said the court, as it referred to
the 2017 nine-judge bench ver-
dict that declared privacy to be a
fundamental right. However,
the right to information is also a
fundamental right, said the
bench, emphasising that a bal-
ance will have to struck in a situ-
ation where two rights are found
to be competing with each other.
The court is expected to hear
the banks’ plea on 18 October.
quantitative factors such as key
performance indicators vis-a-
vis the weighted average cost
of acquisition of primary issu-
ance or secondary transac-
tions.
The regulator has taken a lib-
eral approach by making it
optional for companies to pre-
file documents.
The Sebi board also
approved the proposal to bring
buying and selling by mutual
funds under insider trading
rules.
The Franklin Templeton
episode of 2020 in which some
executives were accused of
insider trading prompted the
capital markets regulator to
take this step.
The board also approved the
relaxation of open offer pricing
norms for the disinvestment of
public sector undertakings.
T
seems comfortable with pre- RBI, however, remains confident he Reserve Bank of India
vailing liquidity conditions, about growth prospects even as (RBI) on Friday released a
and there was no indication of June quarter growth was lower list of 16 upper layer non-
durable liquidity than expected. banking finance companies
infusion at this Das refrained from RBI’s inflation (NBFC-ULs) that must adhere
stage.” committing to any forecast remained to enhanced regulation.
In the post-pol- unchanged at 6.7% The 16 companies in the
icy press confer-
guidance on
for FY23, with RBI NBFC-UL list are: LIC Hous-
liquidity level,
ence, Das refrained sounding cautious ing Finance, Bajaj Finance,
operating rate,
from committing about the inflation Mahindra & Mahindra Finan-
to any guidance on or real interest trajectory despite cial Services, Shriram Trans-
liquidity level, rate level the recent correc- port, Tata Sons, L&T Finance,
operating rate, or tion in crude prices. Indiabulls Housing Finance,
real interest rate Das stressed the Piramal Capital & Housing
level that would trigger a change uncertain global backdrop, with Finance, Cholamandalam
in stance at this stage. aggressive monetary policy Investment and Finance Co.,
“MPC was of the view that per- actions from global central banks Shanghvi Finance Pvt. Ltd,
sistence of high inflation necessi- emerging as a major global shock Muthoot Finance, PNB Hous-
tates further calibrated with- India was coping with after the ing Finance, Tata Capital
drawal of monetary accommoda- pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Financial Services, Aditya
tion to restrain broadening of Das added that the bulk of the Birla Finance, HDB Financial
price pressures, anchor inflation decline in forex reserves stems Services and Bajaj Housing
expectations and contain the sec- from a change in valuation and not Finance.
ond-round effects. This action because of intervention by RBI to RBI’s scale-based NBFC
will support medium-term defend the currency. regulation announced in
October 2021 has four layers:
base layer, middle layer, upper
layer and top layer. The upper

Weak port traffic signals slump Apple’s difficulty in dumping China
FROM PAGE 16
18
interest rates. Therefore, the last
quarter of the fiscal may see a
10-15% decline in apparel and tex-
tile exports,” said Goenka.
He said the EU market is
turning out to be more negative
in demand than the US. “While
US orders are seeing a small
reduction, the decline in the
EU is quite significant. Buyers
are holding their orders or
deferring them,” he said.
Europe is staring at a crisis in
energy and cost of living. European
energy prices have spiked given the
uncertainty caused by the war in
Ukraine and the continent’s plans
to wean itself from crucial supplies
of Russian oil and gas. Europe now
faces the prospect of sky-high
household utility bills, power cuts
and disrupted industrial activity.
Ajay Sahai, director-general
and CEO of the Federation of
Indian Export Organizations
(FIEO), said demand is definitely
down for high-value products but
is up for low-value products. “At
layer (UL) includes NBFCs
warranting enhanced regula-
tion based on several parame-
ters and scoring. Earlier, RBI
this point, we expect a little dent in the New York Federal Reserve’s FROM PAGE 16
18 September report from Gold- ing economic ties with China classified NBFCs based on
high-value exports, while I feel Global Supply Chain Pressure man Sachs Group Inc. found that simultaneously incentiv- type.
that volumes remain intact. We Index, which was down to an directly invested in China at the that the share of US tech izes companies to shift their Despite appearing in the list
also feel there will be increasing 18-month low as of 22 August. end of 2020, and despite all the imports coming directly from production via subsidies and of top 10 NBFCs in terms of
opportunities for India with Sanjay Budhia, managing talk of decoupling, added China has declined by 10 per- penalizes investment in China asset size, HDFC Ltd was not
respect to trade with Russia. We director of Patton Group, an engi- another $2.5 billion in 2021, centage points since 2017, via tariffs and export controls. included in the list due to its
expect that we will end the year neering products firm, said orders according to data compiled by “mainly on moderating China This summer, Biden signed ongoing merger process with
with around 12% growth, taking to US are seeing a dip due to accu- China’s commerce ministry. The mobile phone exports.” two pieces of legislation—the HDFC Bank, RBI said.
exports close to $470 billion,” mulation of inventory with the actual total is likely even higher, Apple’s exposure to China is Chips and Science Act and the These NBFCs have to put in
Sahai said. He said while demand buyers after the easing of shipping because some businesses are also notably bigger than many Inflation Reduction Act—that place board-approved policies
in EU is definitely lines. thought by analysts to route others. Amazon.com Inc., HP contain provisions to help bol- for the adoption of the
down, the US The govt estimates “Demand has some investments through Inc., Microsoft Corp., Cisco Sys- ster domestic manufacturing of enhanced regulatory frame-
hasn’t seen much export growth to been deferred. Hong Kong, or via tax havens like tems Inc. and Dell Technologies certain strategic goods like semi- work applicable to all NBFCs
drop. “In many slow to 7.3% in the There was some the Cayman and Virgin Islands. Inc. also depend on China to pro- conductors, electric vehicles, in the upper layer, and chart
recent export remaining seven kind of over-order- US tech supply chains in US firms had $90 bn directly duce hardware for servers, stor- batteries and pharmaceuticals. out an implementation plan
shows in the EU,
months of the fiscal ing due to various China rely on firms from Tai- age and networking products, The legislation bars compa-
invested in China in 2020. AFP for adhering to the new set of
buyer response is factors, including wan and elsewhere as well as but the extent of their depend- nies that access the program’s regulations within three
extremely luke- year from 17.7% in uncertainty in domestic Chinese firms, “Such actions shut off avenues ence is far below that of Apple. $52.7 billion in federal funding months, the RBI said.
warm,” he said. April to August China, non-availa- increasing the level of depend- for regional growth and cooper- Bloomberg Intelligence says from materially expanding Further, the boards of these
The govern- bility of containers, ence further. ation, deepen divisions between that overall tech-industry production of chips more NBFCs should ensure that
ment estimates and everyone was Furthermore, America’s allies countries and may precipitate dependence could be reduced advanced than 28-nanometers stipulations for the NBFC-UL
export growth to slow to 7.3% in in a panic mode as they were aren’t exactly swayed by Yellen’s the very conflicts that we all by 20%-40% “in most cases” by in China—or a country of con- are adhered to within 24
the remaining seven months of unsure when orders would come. “friend-shoring” concept. Key hope to avoid,” Singapore’s 2030. For hardware and elec- cern like Russia—for 10 years. months, the regulator said.
the fiscal from 17.7% in the first So, they have a lot of inventory. US partners like Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tronic manufacturers, they Also this year, the US According to RBI, the
five months till August, assum- Now, they want to use this mate- warned the Biden administra- said following Biden’s visit to the could reduce their reliance on expanded curbs on sending US aggregate exposure values of
ing outbound shipments to rial for a month or two; by Decem- tion that isolating China could region in May. the Chinese market to semiconductors to China, with NBFC-UL to a single counter-
touch $470 billion in this fiscal ber, we expect demand to nor- destabilize the global economy That’s not to say untangling 20%-30% over the next decade, new license requirements to sell party must not be higher than
from $422 billion last year. malize,” said Budhia, who is also and potentially “sleepwalk” the the tech supply chains that link BI calculates. The Biden chip-making equipment to fac- 20% and 25% in the case of
Moderation in global supply chairman of the CII national com- world’s largest economies into a the US with China isn’t already administration is taking a two- tories that produce 14-nanome- group of connected counter-
chain bottlenecks is visible in mittee on exports and imports. dangerous conflict. happening to some extent. A 23 pronged approach to weaken- ter or more advanced chips. parties.
14 SatuRday, 1 OctObeR 2022
HydeRabad NEWS LIVEMINT.COM

RBI’s confidence in
growth prospects
High inflation fails to deter Framework
for bad loans’
spurs rally in stocks consumer confidence: RBI securitization
to be set up
FROM PAGE 18
Shayan Ghosh
seven-day losing streak,” said shayan.g@livemint.com
Vinod Nair, head of research at The current situation index improved to 80.6 in the September survey from 77.3 in July MUMBAI
Geojit Financial Services.

T
Moreover, the decision to he Reserve Bank of India
retain inflation forecast at Swaraj Singh Dhanjal (RBI) will introduce a
6.7%, with a marginal cut but a
healthy GDP forecast of 7%,
swaraj.d@livemint.com
MUMBAI
Inflation note framework for securiti-
zation of stressed assets to pro-
indicates the resilience of the vide an alternative mechanism
to govt will be
C
Indian economy, Nair said. onsumer confidence con- for securitization of bad loans,
The fourth hike by RBI this tinues to improve even as in addition to the existing
fiscal now takes the repo rate to Brent crude has inched up
the highest since August 2019. slightly in the past few sessions
most households expect
prices to rise further in confidential route involving asset recon-
struction companies (ARCs).
Though the central bank’s com- but is trading below $90. AFP the coming months, The regulator said it will
mentary warned about prevail- showed surveys conducted by the cen- Shayan Ghosh soon issue a discussion paper
ing risks to the domestic econ- the middle of a storm. I expect tral bank. shayan.g@livemint.com on the proposed framework.
omy, the monetary policy com- further weakness in the rupee, “Consumer confidence has been on MUMBAI Securitization involves pool-
mittee refrained from sounding but it’s hard to say where it will recovery path since July 2021 after the ing together a set of assets and

T
very hawkish, experts said. get support, given that there are impact of the covid-19 pandemic he Reserve Bank of India repackaging them into inter-
“Another 25 bps to 35 bps is too many moving parts. On waned; though the current situation (RBI) does not intend to est-bearing securities.
likely in this remaining part of bond yields, we expect a hard- index (CSI) remained in negative ter- make public its letter to the In September 2021, RBI had
CY22 and will depend on the ening from the current level of rain, it improved in the latest survey union government explaining issued the revised framework
Fed outcome and evolving 7.39-7.4% to 7.5% by FY23-end. round on the back of better senti- why the central bank failed to for securitization of standard
global situation,” said Aishvarya The rupee overshooting should ments on general economic situation meet the inflation target of 2-6% assets. On Friday, it said that
Dadheech, fund manager, also correct by the fiscal end, and spending,” according to the con- for three consecutive quarters. with regard to securitization of
Ambit Asset Management. with the rupee regaining equi- sumer confidence survey by the Retail inflation has stayed non-performing assets, the
The 10-year bond yields librium below 80 a dollar.” Reserve Bank of India (RBI). above the central bank’s flexible Securitisation and Recon-
reacted positively amid “a relief The rupee closed at 81.35 to The current situation index target between January and struction of Financial Assets
rally” and no negative surprises the dollar, gaining 0.6% from its improved to 80.6 in the September August. It is not expected to turn and Enforcement of Security
in the policy, analysts said. Senti- previous close of 81.85. The round of the survey from 77.3 in the Most households reported higher current spending, which was mainly driven by benign in September either, and Interest (Sarfaesi) Act of 2002
ment remains buoyant amid a 10-year bond, which saw yields July round. spending on essentials. BLOOMBERG RBI therefore has to send a report currently provides a frame-
slight reduction in government come off by 3-4 bps after the pol- The survey, which obtains current to the government in October. work for such securitizations
market borrowing, icy, closed higher perceptions compared to a year ago 2022 survey round but they remain in by 90 basis points since the July 2022 Under the monetary policy through licenced ARCs.
robust growth in The rupee closed at by 5 bps at 7.43%. and one-year ahead expectations on the positive terrain, it said. round to 10.2% in September, while it framework, RBI has to maintain “However, based on market
tax collections and 81.35 to the dollar, M a n a v i general economic situation, employ- Most households reported higher rose by 50 bps each for both three the consumer price inflation in feedback, stakeholder consul-
expectations of gaining 0.6% from Prabhu, head of ment scenario, overall price situation current spending, which was mainly months and one-year ahead, adding the 2-6% range, with the median tations and the recommenda-
inclusion in global its previous close fixed income at and own income and spending across driven by spending on essentials; that most categories of respondents target of 4%. Failing so for three tions of the Task Force on
bond indices. Gur- Anand Rathi, 19 major cities was held between 1 Sep- nearly three-fourths of the respon- expect higher inflation for both three consecutive quarters requires Development of Secondary
vinder Singh
of 81.85. The 10-yr e x p e c t s the tember and 10 Septem- months and one-year the central bank to write to the Market for Corporate Loans
Wasan, a senior bond closed higher 10-year G-Sec to ber, covering 6,062 LATCHINg ON TO HOPE ahead periods. union government, citing rea- (RBI, 2019), it has been
fund manager and by 5 bps at 7.43% range 7.30-7.50% responses. A larger share of sons and suggesting remedial decided to introduce a frame-
credit analyst- by December Consumer confidence THE median WHILE there is THE expectations households expect measures. “It is a privileged com- work for securitisation of
fixed income, JM end, if oil remains for the next year, as inflation perception
for the current
pessimism over
current incomes,
on employment
conditions have
higher prices for all munication between the RBI and stressed assets in addition to
Financial Asset Management steady or trends down from measured by the future period increased by most expect it to rise also moderated product groups as com- the government and so at this the ARC route, similar to the
Ltd, said, “Considering H2FY23 the current level of $87-88 a expectations index, 90 bps since July over the next year since March pared to the previous point of time, I cannot say framework for securitisation
calendar announcement, we barrel. “Only if something remained steady and the round of the survey. whether it will be made public. of standard assets,” it said.
witnessed a slight steepening in drastic were to happen with expectation at the aggre- “Overall prices and From our end, we will not make it Experts said this will add
the yield curve with five-year respect to Ukraine or on global gate level remained close to the level dents expect further rise in overall inflation expectations for three public…” said RBI governor another channel for bad loan
G-Secs yield moving down and macros will the yield test the in the previous round, the survey said. spending over the next year while months ahead period were generally Shaktikanta Das. resolution. RBI’s announce-
10-year G-Secs staying flat at outer bound of 7.6% by Households expressed pessimism another 20% expect it to remain aligned with food products, non-food In May 2016, the RBI Act of ment comes at a time when
7.35%. Till clarity on bond inclu- December end,” she added. on their current incomes but a major- around the prevailing levels. products and cost of services, while 1934 was amended to provide a India’s bad bank – the National
sion emerges, we expect bonds Brent crude, though, has ity expect incomes to rise over the The Households’ Inflation Expecta- they were more aligned with non-food statutory basis for the implemen- Asset Reconstruction Com-
to take cues from global events.” inched up slightly in the past next year, according to the survey. The tions survey from the central bank products and cost of services for the tation of the flexible inflation tar- pany Ltd (Narcl) – which will
D.K Joshi, chief economist at few sessions. However, it still expectations on employment condi- added that median inflation percep- longer horizon of one year,” according geting framework. take over bad loans from len-
Crisil, said, “We are right now in continues trading below $90. tions have moderated since the March tions for the current period increased to the survey. ders, is yet to take off.

Banks dip into excess regulatory buffers to meet credit demand Natural gas prices
Shayan Ghosh
shayan.g@livemint.com
rates. The hike in RBI repo rate
has been passed on to the bor-
because they need the cash to believe that the large over 6%
support and sustain their lend- differential between the
liquidity in the system arising
from the expected pick-up in
the 28-day VRRR with the fort-
nightly 14-day main auction
hiked to record high
MUMBAI rower; however, banks have ing operations,” said RBI gov- increased credit and deposit government spending in the and therefore, only 14-day
not shown similar alacrity in ernor Shaktikanta Das. growth is clearly unsustainable second half of the year. VRRR auctions will be con- Saurav Anand comes on the back of firming

A
s system liquidity mod- revising deposit rates, apart Meanwhile, and hence, we “If you take everything into ducted. Fine-tuning operations saurav.anand@livemint.com benchmark international pri-
erates and deposit from a few festive offers. Sur- the government While banks expect a hike in account, the system liquidity is of various maturities for NEW DELHI ces.The government sets the
growth remains weaker plus liquidity in the banking raised rates on reported deposit rates by in the order of about ₹5 tril- absorption as well as injection price of gas every six months,

than credit pickup, banks have
begun to dip into their excess
stock of regulatory buffers of
liquid holdings.
While banks reported non-
food credit growth of 16.7% on 9
September, deposit growth
lagged at 9.5%. The scenario
has been similar for the last few
fortnights, and demand for
credit, is led by retail and sup-
ported, to an extent, by corpo-
T
system, as measured by the certain small sav- non-food credit banks up to lion,” he said. In October last of liquidity will continue as he price of natural gas on 1 April and 1 October, based
average daily absorptions ings schemes on growth of 16.7% 50-150 bps in the year, RBI had said that the fort- necessary, Das said. According has been raised by 40% on global rates.
under the liquidity adjustment Thursday by up to
on 9 September, second half of nightly main liquidity opera- to Kaushik Das, chief econo- to a record high in line The move tracks rising
facility (LAF), moderated to 30 basis points FY23,” said tion conducted through 14-day mist, India and South Asia, with firming up of global global energy prices since Rus-
₹2.3 trillion between August (bps) for the deposit growth Suman Chow- variable rate reverse repo Deutsche Bank, going forward, energy prices spurred by the sia’s invasion of Ukraine.
and 28 September, from ₹3.8 December quar- lagged at 9.5% dhury, chief ana- (VRRR) auctions may be com- RBI will announce term varia- Ukraine crisis. Simultaneously, the price of
trillion during June-July. ter. Experts said lytical officer, plemented with 28-day VRRR ble repo rate auctions, to fine The price of gas produced gas from deepwater, ultra deep-
“Many banks are holding the reduction in Acuité Ratings & auctions, depending upon the tune liquidity, which will result from old fields, which contrib- water and high pressure-high
excess statutory liquidity ratio surplus liquidity has ensured Research. Governor Das said liquidity conditions. On Friday, in the Mumbai Interbank Offer ute nearly two-thirds of India’s temperature areas such as Reli-
(SLR) and excess cash reserve better monetary transmission the temporary moderation of the central bank announced Rate (Mibor) and the call natural gas production, has ance Industries Ltd and its part-
ratio (CRR) and some of them and believe that deposit rate surplus liquidity has to be seen that given the moderation in money rate aligning with the been increased to $8.57 per ner BP Plc-operated deep sea
have started dipping into them hikes are in the offing. “We in the context of the potential surplus liquidity, it will merge repo rate. million British D6 block in KG
thermal unit This is the third basin, was hiked to
(mmBtu) from increase since $12.6 per mmBtu
$6.1/mmBtu, April 2019 and from $9.92.

NO CHANGE IN STANCE, MORE LIGHT ON FOREX DEPLETION according to an

route and also add to currency volatility. This being the case, the
forward guidance provided by the major central banks is directed
EXPERT towards more aggressive increases in policy rates. The implication
is that this may not be the last rate hike for us and that there could
VIEW be more coming, which can take it to 6.4-6.5% by March. The one-
year overnight indexed swap (OIS) was pointing at a number in the
M A DA N S A B N AV I S range of 6.5-6.75% for quite some time. The overall inflation target
for the year remains unchanged at 6.7% as the pressures remain on
Respond to this column at food even while producers of manufactured goods are still in the
feedback@livemint.com process of passing on higher input costs to the consumers. The red
flag is, however, more on the agricultural side where lower output
order from the
government’s
comes on the
back of firming
“In accordance
with Ministry of
Petroleum and
Petroleum Plan- benchmark global Natural Gas, Govt.
concept of withdrawal of accommodation will continue. It was felt ning and Analysis prices of India, Notifica-
that since the daily surplus liquidity had dwindled to a deficit at Cell on Friday. tion No.
times would provoke some affirmative action by the RBI in terms
of announcing Open Market Operations (OMOs). However, the
The price of O-22013/27/201
domestic natural gas has been 2-ONG-D-V (Vol-II) dated
RBI has explained that the temporary distortion was more due to more than doubled to $6.10 per 21.03.2016 for marketing
advance tax payments and as the government will spend more million mmBtu for the six including pricing freedom for
aggressively in the second half due to habit, liquidity would be back months starting 1 April from gas being produced from dis-
to the above ₹2 trillion mark. Therefore, the stance has not really $2.90 per mmBtu in the second coveries in Deepwater, Ultra
changed as there is space for further ‘withdrawal’. half of FY22. This will be appli- Deepwater and High Pressure-
Is the market comforted by the stance on the currency? Here cable for the regulated gas High Temperature areas, the
only time will tell as the RBI is comfort- fields of state-run Oil and Natu- gas price ceiling for the period

T This may not be able with the level of reserves and has
here weren’t any major surprises in the credit policy
announced by the governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Intense debate on the possibilities in the policy were flagged
in the run-up to this announcement as all analysts and economists
tried reading into the mind of the central bank. The summary of
MPC meeting indicates that almost all announcements were in
accordance with the market expectation, with a possible deviation
being only on the stance. The market can take solace from the fact
that the RBI has assured that in its view, the economy is resilient
and that inflationary pressures, caused by a variety of factors would
stay for this year.
The RBI has increased the repo rate by 50 bps, which was
expected given that in the prelude to this announcement, the gov-
ernor spoke of the third shock that we are witnessing i.e. central
banks across the world raising rates to tackle inflation. The other
two shocks were covid and Ukraine war. Hence, while the impres-
sion so far was that policy is normally driven by domestic consider-
ations, there has been an indirect reference made on the approach
taken by the Fed and ECB which affect us through the investment
of rice and pulses as well as the delayed withdrawal of monsoon can
impact inflation. Hence the onion and tomato syndrome has to be the last rate reiterated that it has no number in mind
watched out for where late withdrawal of monsoon damages crops and is more worried about volatility.
and causes sharp increases in overall inflation. hike for us and The critical statistic that has been men-
The GDP growth forecast has been lowered marginally to 7% there could be tioned here is that in the fiscal year, of
which is due to the statistical realignment which has taken place more coming the $70 billion drop in forex reserves,
after the first quarter number came in lower than the RBI’s expec- by March two-thirds has been due to valuation of
tation. The RBI has actually increased its projections for Q2, Q3 and reserves. This should be comforting to
Q4 relative to its expectations in the August policy and backed it the market as it was not quite clear if the
up with a strong story line on how the economy is faring based on RBI has been selling large quantities of dollars in the market to
all high frequency data such as PMIs, consumption, capacity utili- steady the rupee.
zation, import of non-oil goods etc. Therefore, for all practical pur- The RBI has been steadying the ship through inclement weather
poses, the indication is that the growth trajectory is on the expected in the last three years or so ever since the pandemic began. Shocks
path and presently, there is no reason to believe that anything can have come from unexpected quarters which has made policy for-
upset the apple cart. This is premised on consumption continuing mulation tricky as the goal post has shifted from inflation to growth
in Q3, which is the post-harvest and festival season when consum- to inflation. The calibrated approach has ensured there have been
erism peaks in both rural and urban India. no ugly shocks which is how it should be.
The other part of the commentary which the market was looking Madan Sabnavis is chief economist at Bank of Baroda and the
at is the stance. Here, there may have been a surprise because the author of Lockdown or Economic Destruction.Views are personal.
ral Gas Corporation Ltd and Oil 1st October, 2022 31st March,
India Ltd. 2023 is $12.46/MMBTU on
This is the third price Gross Calorific Value (GCV)
increase since April 2019 and basis,” according to the order.
CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
Mint welcomes comments, suggestions or complaints about errors.
Readers can alert the newsroom to any errors in the paper by
emailing us, with your full name and address to
feedback@livemint.com.
It is our policy to promptly respond to all complaints. Readers
dissatisfied with the response or concerned about Mint’s journalistic
integrity may write directly to the editor by sending an email to
asktheeditor@livemint.com
Mint’s journalistic Code of Conduct that governs our newsroom is
available at www.livemint.com

FOR ANY QUERIES/DELIVERY ISSUES

CALL: 60004242, Monday-Saturday, 10am-6pm (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune and Chandigarh) MAIL: delivery@livemint.com TO SUBSCRIBE: Give a missed call on 7039035039 or visit www.mintreaders.com or write to us at subscription@livemint.com

First published in February 2007 to serve as an unbiased and clear-minded chronicler of the Indian Dream.
SRUTHIJITH KURUPICHANKANDY (EDITOR); PUBLISHED/PRINTED BY MANHAR KAPOOR ON BEHALF OF HT MEDIA LTD, 18-20 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001
Printed at HT Media Ltd presses at •Plot No. 8, Udyog Vihar, Greater Noida, Distt Gautam Budh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh 201306; •MNSPrinters Pvt. Ltd, 345/4, Bhatrahalli, Near KR Puram RTO, Old Madras Road, Bangalore 560049; •Saraswati Print Factory Pvt. Ltd, 789, Chowbhaga (W), Near China Mandir, Kolkata 700 105; •MNSPrinters Pvt. Ltd, 76/1, Poonamallee High Road, Velappanchavadi, Chennai 600077; •
Bhaskar Print Planet, Survey No. 148P, Changodar Bavla Highway, Sanand (Tal), Distt Ahmedabad, Gujarat. •Jagati Publications Ltd, Plot No. D75 & E52, APIE Industrial Estate, Balanagar, Rangareddy Distt. Hyderabad 500037 *Also available in Chandigarh and Pune.
RNI Registration DELENG/2007/22485; Mint welcomes readers’ responses to all articles and editorials. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. Send in your views to the editor at letters@livemint.com. ©2021 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved
LIVEMINT.COM NEWS Saturday, 1 OctOber 2022
Hyderabad 15

Air India
Only institutions weighs
can be resolution raising at
least $1 bn
professionals now Bloomberg
feedback@livemint.com

A
ir India Ltd is consid-
ering raising at least $1
billion in a round that
Institutions have more skills to rescue companies: IBBI could value it at $5 billion,
said people in the know.
The Tata Group-owned
Gireesh Chandra Prasad carrier is in discussions with
gireesh.p@livemint.com potential investors, including
New Delhi private equity and sovereign
wealth funds, they said seek-

T
he Insolvency and ing anonymity.
Bankruptcy Board of The airline is working with
India (IBBI) on Fri- financial advisers for the fun-
day said institutions draising, which could be com-
will replace individ- pleted within a few months,
ual insolvency professionals to the people said.
administer sick companies, “Deliberations are ongoing
considering that a professional and details of the funding
team is expected to bring in round, including size and
multiple skill sets needed for timeline may change,” one of
salvaging companies. The Insolvency Professionals (Fourth Amendment) Regulations the people said.
The Insolvency Profession- were made public on Wednesday. MINT A Tata Group representa-
als (Fourth Amendment) Regu- tive declined to comment,
lations were made public on hired by lenders. might have limitations while and an Air India spokesper-
Wednesday. The regulations allow enti- dealing with the multifarious son did not respond to email
“Considering the limitations ties to register themselves as issues of a company’s opera- queries seeking comment.
of an insolvency professional, insolvency professionals and tions due to lack of time and, in Air India is looking to order
being an individual, in dealing perform the associated duties. certain cases, even expertize,” 300 narrow-body jets, Bloom-
with processes under the Bank- Earlier, they were allowed to said Pritika Kumar, founder of berg News reported in June.
ruptcy Code, requiring concur- provide only support services law firm Cornellia Chambers. The deal could be one of
rent efforts, and multi-disci- to insolvency professionals. “Insolvency professional enti- the largest in commercial avi-
plinary expertize, the board Since an individual, adminis- ties have corporate governance ation history, as the airline
decided to institutionalize the tering a sick company under- as well as risk management looks to overhaul its fleet
profession of structures in under the new owners.
insolvency TEAM GAME place, and Ordering new aircraft in
profession- may not face bulk, especially with favoura-
als. To begin ENTITIES can now EARLIER, firms were SUCH entities have limitations ble terms for long-term main-
with, the enrol as insolvency only allowed to offer necessary skills to
professionals to help support services to solve corporate
due to their tenance, will help Air India
board has turnaround sick the insolvency governance and risk institution- cut costs and take on compe-
considered it companies professionals management issues a l i z e d tition, especially budget air-
appropriate nature,” he lines, which offer lower
to enable added. domestic airfares.
insolvency professional entities going bankruptcy resolution, To rescue more firms and On Friday, the airline said
recognized by the board to takes on the tasks of an entire help lenders to cut losses while it will start 20 additional
carry on the activities of an board of directors, it is not pos- offering help to sick compa- weekly flights to San Fran-
insolvency professional,” the sible for him to complete every nies, IBBI is working on making cisco, London and Birming-
board said. task necessary to resuscitate a sweeping changes to bank- ham gradually from October.
Mint was the first to report company optimally due to lack ruptcy rules. Earlier, it allowed Tata Group completed the
on 11 June that incorporated of time and expertize, it said. slicing up of businesses in dis- acquisition of Air India in Jan-
entities, such as firms, will be Industry experts welcomed tress to ensure individual units uary after beating out others
allowed to run bankrupt busi- the move. “Individuals serving or assets can be sold separately with its $2.4 billion bid last
nesses instead of individuals as an insolvency professional to get more investor interest. year.
 HyDERABAD, NEw DELhI, MUMBAI, BENGALURU, KOLKATA, ChENNAI, AhMEDABAD, ChANDIGARh*, PUNE* VOL. 16 NO. 235 Rs15.00 16 PAGES

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Fiscal deficit touches 33% on state Air India weighs raising at

livemint.com transfers, higher capex uP13 least $1 billion uP15

SENSEX 57,426.92 1,016.96 NIFTY 17,094.35 276.25 DOLLAR ₹81.35 ₹0.50 EURO ₹79.71 ₹0.40 OIL $88.17 $0.32 GOLD ₹50,390 ₹203

RBI hikes repo rate as it steps Regulator tightens

disclosure rules for
DON’T MISS

up battle to contain inflation firms readying IPOs

Central bank joins peers that have raised rates to rein in effects of soaring dollar, rising prices Prayanka Gawande
priyanka.gawande@livemint.com
MUMBAI IBBI: Only institutions can be
Gopika Gopakumar resolution professionals now
RAtE RElIEF Stocks snap
T
gopika.g@livemint.com he board of the Securities The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India
MUMBAI and Exchange Board of (IBBI) on Friday said institutions will replace
The Reserve Bank’s repo rate now stands at 5.9%, taking the tally of
seven-day India (Sebi) on Friday individual insolvency professionals to administer

T
he Reserve Bank of India’s
monetary policy panel
lifted interest rates by 50
basis points for the third
straight time, joining a
procession of central banks that have
raised rates to rein in the effects of a
rate hikes to 190 basis points since May this year.
tightened disclosure norms for sick companies, considering that a professional
Repo rate (in %) Sensex Nifty-50 companies tapping public mar- team is expected to bring in multiple skill sets
7 58,000 57,426.92
(Close)
17,300
17,094.35
losing streak kets, requiring them to disclose needed for salvaging companies. >P15
(Close) key performance indicators
Ujjval Jauhari & Ram Sahgal (KPIs) and share pricing details
6 5.90 57,500 Natural gas prices jump to a record
NEw DELhI/MUMBAI based on past transactions and
6.00 17,100
previous fundraisings. Sebi chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch. high on soaring global energy rates

soaring dollar and rising prices.
RBI’s repo rate now stands at 5.9%,
taking the tally of rate hikes to 190
bps since May. The rate increase
matched the forecasts of all 10 econo-
mists surveyed by Mint.
The six-member rate-setting panel
voted five to one in favour of raising
the rate by half a percentage point,
with Ashima Goyal voting for a 35 bps
hike. In a split decision, the panel also
maintained its stance of “withdrawal
of accommodation”, with only Jay-
anth Varma dissenting.
The MPC’s decisions are guided by
two factors—inflation and growth,
RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said.
“Currency market fluctuations—like
depreciation or appreciation of the
rupee—are not a factor for the MPC to
consider. RBI has other instruments
for dealing with such situations,
which would be deployed as
required,” Das said.
Central banks are racing to hike
interest rates to combat soaring infla-
tion and the effect of a strong dollar
5 57,000
4 56,500
3
Jan 2018 Sep 2022
POLICY STANCE
MPC’s 6-member panel
voted five to one in
favour of a 50 bps hike
on their economies, as the US Fed-
eral Reserve continues on an aggres-
sive path to hike rates. Being the cur-
rency of global trade, the relentless
rise of the dollar fuels inflation and
hurts growth in countries dependent
on energy and food imports.
RBI, too, is grappling with stub-
bornly high inflation, exacerbated
by geopolitical tensions, droughts
and supply-chain disruptions.
“The fact that RBI kept the policy
I
16,818.1 ndian stocks surged, snap- The regulator also asked The markets regulator wants firms to The price of natural gas has been raised by 40% to
(Previous
close) ping a seven-day losing companies, including new- disclose key performance indicators a record high amid firming up of global energy
56,409.96 16,900 streak, as the Reserve Bank age technology companies, to and share pricing details. PTI prices spurred by the Ukraine crisis. The price of
(Previous of India retained its inflation disclose transaction prices of gas produced from old fields has been hiked to
close)
forecast and signalled confi- new issues of shares, second- head of capital markets, Cyril $8.57 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu)
56,240.15 16,798.05 dence in the country’s eco- ary sales or acquisition of Amarchand Mangaldas, said, from $6.1/mmBtu. >P14
(Open) (Open)
56,000
9.15am 3.30pm
16,700
9.15am 3.30pm nomic trajectory that analysts shares during the 18-month “The regulator had for several
Source: Bloomberg perceived as less hawkish. period before the initial public months increased the ques-
With uncertainty about offering. tioning on the pricing of issues Enforcement body upholds
most key events now behind, “In case there are no such and the details of previous $682 mn block on Xiaomi assets
tHE panel maintained RBI downgraded growth the latest 50 basis points rate transactions during the 18 issues, including key perform- An Indian appellate authority has confirmed
its stance of ‘withdrawal forecast, but left inflation hike is likely to support the months period prior to the IPO, ance indicators. They have now a seizure order against Chinese smartphone
of accommodation’ projection unchanged rupee. The Nifty regained then the information shall be made this disclosure manda- maker Xiaomi Corp that froze $682 million in
the 17,000 mark, rising disclosed for price per share of tory, including for secondary an investigation related to illegal
SARVESH KUMAR SHARMA/MINT
1.64% to close at 17,094.35. the issuer company based on transfers. Some of this may not remittances to foreign entities, authorities
stance unchanged as ‘withdrawal of The Sensex, too, rose 1.8%, last five primary or secondary be known to the issuer. How- said on Friday.
accommodation’ indicates the door crossing the 57,000 mark transactions, not older than ever, they will now have to be
is open for a further hike in the pol- comprehensively, to end three years prior to the IPO,” provided. Additionally, inde-
icy repo rate. The terminal rate trading at 57,426.92. the regulator said. pendent directors are now Defiant Putin proclaims Ukrainian
expectation in the bond market has “An in-line rate hike, The Indian capital markets required to look at the issue annexation, vows to win war
moved up to 6.5%,” said Pankaj along with RBI’s confidence in 2021 saw a slew of new-age price. While one can under-
A defiant Vladimir Putin proclaimed Russia’s
Pathak, fund manager-fixed in the economy’s growth companies, including Zomato, stand the concerns of the regu- annexation of a swathe of Ukraine in a
income, Quantum AMC. “Aggres- momentum, aided the Paytm, Cartrade Tech, and lator on pricing, pushing this pomp-filled Kremlin ceremony, promising
sive monetary tightening in domestic market to alter the Nykaa, go public, with many of on independent directors may Moscow would triumph in its “special
advanced economies will continue them now trading below their make it challenging for some of military operation” against Kyiv even as
TURN TO PAGE 16
14 issue prices. some of his troops faced potential defeat.
TURN TO PAGE 15
13 Yash Ashar, partner and 13
TURN TO PAGE 15

Falling core sector Vanishing traffic at key ports Ola Electric taps Australian
growth bodes ill signals demand slump in West firms for battery minerals
for factory output Ravi Dutta Mishra & Dilasha Seth
NEw DELhI
An exporter serving the India-
West Africa route said freight
rates have fallen from $140 per
Ravi Dutta Mishra
ravi.dutt@livemint.com
NEw DELhI
be noted that ECTA is yet to be
ratified in the Australian parlia-
ment and is expected to come
Dilasha Seth

I
Distress signs n a sign of slowing demand container to $80-90, adding the into effect by the end of the

O
dilasha.seth@livemint.com
Growth in the core sector amid geopolitical turmoil, rates are on the decline not just la Electric Mobility year.
BENGALURU slumped to a nine-month the wait time for berthing of in select routes but everywhere. Pvt. Ltd has begun Queries sent to Ola Electric
low in August. ships at India’s largest and busi- “Supply has declined in all talks with Australian Mobility remained unan-

G
rowth in the core sector,
comprising eight infra-
structure sectors,
slumped to a nine-month low in
August, signalling a coming
slowdown in industrial activity.
Except for crude oil and natu-
ral gas, all sectors posted growth.
Growth in the eight sectors—
coal, crude, natural gas, refinery
products, fertilizers, cement,
steel, and electricity—slowed for
the third straight month in
August to 3.3% in August from
4.5% in July, data released by the
ministry of commerce and
industry showed on Friday. Only
fertilizers posted double-digit
growth in output.
Economists expect industrial
production to remain muted in
the coming months, given that
the eight core industries hold
40.27% weight in the Index of
Industrial Production (IIP). “A
disaggregated picture signals
some slowdown in real terms.
Cement and steel have witnessed
low growth rates, indicative of
lower infrastructure activity lev-
els. We may expect industrial
growth to be 4-5% for August,”
said Madan Sabnavis, chief econ-
omist, Bank of Baroda. He added
80
Core sector growth
(year-on-year change, in %)
62.6
60
40
20
3.3
0
Apr 2021 Aug 2022
Source: Ministry of Commerce
& Industry
SARVESH KUMAR SHARMA/MINT
sonally adjusted data, core sec-
tor output in August shows a
contraction of 0.9% over July.
“Worryingly, core sector output
has now declined sequentially
for four consecutive months,
based on the seasonally adjusted
data,” he added.
Coal production growth
slowed to 7.6% in August after
four months of double-digit
growth and 11.4% growth in July
but was still among the better-
performing sectors. Electricity
output slowed to 0.9% in August
compared to 2.3% last month and
16% in the corresponding month
last year. “Return to normalcy in
est port in Kandla has slipped
from 7-9 days to less than a day,
shippers and exporters said.
They also warned there could
be more stress on the trade
front during the winter, mainly
due to the weakening demand
from Europe, India’s second-
largest export market.
The Kandla port in Gujarat
handles the largest share of traf-
fic among all the major ports in
the country. The cargo volume
handled at the Kandla port was
127 million tonnes (mt) during
the last fiscal. In terms of traffic
handled, the Kandla port is fol-
lowed by the Paradip port in Odi-
sha and Jawaharlal Nehru Port
Trust (JNPT) in Navi Mumbai.
“Kandla port, on average, had
a wait time of 7-8 days for any
ship to come and berth. Today,
its berthing is on arrival,” the
Apple’s tech supply chain shows difficulty of dumping China
Bloomberg
feedback@livemint.com
Wait time for berthing of ships
at Kandla port has slipped from
7-9 days to less than a day
head of a Singapore-based ship-
ping service provider said on
condition of anonymity. “This
has not happened because we
have gotten efficient but because
demand is vanishing. Demand in
domestic market may be rising,
but there is no doubt that there is
a recession in the export market.”
“Moreover, container freight
rates have gone down sharply.
You can imagine the extent of
falling demand by the fact that
freight rates in the busiest route
from Asia to the US have fallen
from $17,000 per container three
months ago to $2,500,” he added.
producing some iPhone 14 mod-
els in India, in an earlier than
usual move for new models. And
products, not only in a few
products. Moreover, there has
been an export curb on a num-
ber of commodities such as
wheat, rice and steel. So, that
has had an impact,” another
exporter said.
Queries sent to the ministry of
commerce and industry remained
unanswered till press time.
Narendra Goenka, chairman of
the Apparel Export Promotion
Council, said exports of textiles
and ready-made garments are
likely to decline by 10-15% in the
last quarter of the current fiscal,
with orders slowing down
sharply. “While India is in a fairly
strong economic position,
demand is severely affected in
advanced economies due to the
geopolitical situation and high-
TURN TO PAGE 13
15
companies to source key min-
erals for electric vehicle battery
manufacture, two people aware
of the development said. The
discussions to explore com-
mercial and economic collabo-
ration in minerals were held
under the aegis of the Australia
India Business Exchange
(AIBX) programme.
The proposed collaboration
would include the supply of
minerals such as lithium,
graphite, cobalt, nickel and
titanium from Australian com-
panies to EV manufacturers
such as Ola Electric, looking to
strengthen their cell and bat-
tery manufacturing value
chain.
An Australian delegation
visited Ola Electric’s manufac-
turing facility in Krishnagiri,
Tamil Nadu and its battery
Ho said.
An Apple spokesperson did
not respond to a request for
Ola Electric founder
Bhavish Aggarwal. HT
innovation centre (BIC) in Ben-
galuru to expand talks around a
strategic partnership, the peo-
ple cited above said on the con-
dition of anonymity.
The development comes
after India and Australia signed
an Economic Cooperation and
Trade Agreement (ECTA) ear-
lier this year.
The likely collaboration
assumes significance as India
has significantly reduced tariffs
on minerals under the ECTA
agreement. However, it must
Political headwinds in the US
have been steadily leaning
against US-Chinese integration.
swered till press time.
Canberra-based mineral
companies such as CSIRO Min-
erals, Rio Tinto, Ardea Resour-
ces, Australian Vanadium Ltd,
Future Battery Industries CRC
and Geoscience Australia were
part of the delegation that met
Ola Electric executives to
explore ties, the people cited
above said on the condition of
anonymity.
“Australia has among the
largest global supplies of bat-
tery minerals and world-class
mineral processing technolo-
gies. We look forward to work-
ing closely with India to power
our renewable energy futures.
More than 100 Australian busi-
nesses have visited India as part
of the Australia India Business
TURN TO PAGE 13
15
have become the latest flash-
point offering a case for decou-
pling. “There was some momen-

that core sector growth for the
month had been influenced
partly by the statistical base effect
of 12.2% growth last year.
Sunil Kumar Sinha, principal
economist, India Ratings and
Research, said the ongoing
industrial recovery is still weak
as the core sector output is only
3.5% higher than the pre-covid
level (February 2020). “In fact,
the coal and cement sector out-
put even in August are trailing
the pre-covid level. Even the
ongoing momentum of indus-
trial activity, which is captured
by the seasonally adjusted
month-on-month growth, con-
tinues to be weak,” Sinha said.
He added that based on sea-
coal production is positive for the
economy which was under stress
in April and May following the
Ukraine war where there was a
shortage of coal,” said Sabnavis.
Crude oil contracted for the
third straight month, declining
by 3.3% in August against 3.8%
in July. Natural gas output
declined for a second straight
month at 0.9% in August com-
pared to 0.3% in July. Steel out-
put grew by 2.2% from 6%
growth in August. Cement and
fertilizers grew by 1.8% and
11.9%, respectively, in August.
“Fertilizer production was
upbeat more in preparation for
rabi sowing, which will start
from next month,” said Sabnavis.
A
merican companies
have had a growing list
of reasons to down-
grade their ties with China in
recent years. Former president
Donald Trump’s tariffs. Bei-
jing’s stringent covid lock-
downs. The US-Sino standoff
over Taiwan. Political pressure
to “friend-shore” supply chains
toward nations aligned with
Washington.
But breaking up, as the adage
goes, is hard to do.
That conclusion is evident
from a Bloomberg Intelligence
analysis of Apple Inc., which is
trying to reduce its dependence
on China. The Cupertino, Cali-
fornia-based firm already started
Apple’s largest supplier, Fox-
conn Technology Group,
recently agreed to a $300 mil-
lion expansion of its production
facilities in Vietnam.
But Bloomberg Intelligence
estimates it would take about
eight years to move just 10% of
Apple’s production capacity out
of China, where roughly 98% of
the company’s iPhones have been
made. Scores of local component
suppliers—not to mention mod-
ern and efficient transport, com-
munication and electricity sup-
plies—make it particularly diffi-
cult to get out of the world’s
second-largest economy.
“With China accounting for
70% of global smartphone
Apple has started producing
some iPhone 14 models in
India. REUTERS
manufacturing and leading
Chinese vendors accounting
for nearly half of global ship-
ments, the region has a well-
developed supply chain, which
will be tough to replicate—and
one Apple could lose access to if
it moves,” BI’s report from ana-
lysts Steven Tseng and Woo Jin
comment.
It’s one thing to look outside
China for other makers of toys
and t-shirts. But US tech firms
invested more than two decades,
and tens of billions of dollars, set-
ting up complex production
chains to provide essential goods
for the e-commerce boom.
Unwinding those ties could end
up taking just as long, and may
result in lasting damage to an
already battered global economy.
Of course, unanticipated
events—like Europe and Amer-
ica’s rupture with Russia—pro-
vide a potent reminder of both
the systemic risks of deep eco-
nomic integration and the speed
at which decoupling can occur.
Under President Joe Biden, the
$615 billion US-China trade rela-
tionship has simmered into a
cold war following the commer-
cial tensions under Trump that
resulted in tariffs on a collective
$360 billion worth of bilateral
goods, along with US sanctions
on key Chinese tech manufac-
turers like Huawei.
The pandemic then ushered
in President Xi Jinping’s strict
virus-containment policies,
which essentially barred travel
and has left major areas locked
down for extended periods of
time. Rising tensions over US
ties with Taiwan and China’s
unprecedented scale of military
exercises in the Taiwan Strait
tum in this direction as a conse-
quence of the trade war and the
pandemic,” Scott Kennedy, a
senior adviser at the Washing-
ton-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said
about decoupling. “The Shang-
hai lockdown was really a mon-
ster accelerant. And the cross-
strait crisis in early August added
more fuel to the fire.”
Yet the Biden administration’s
reshoring strategy—or “friend-
shoring” as termed by US Trea-
sury Secretary Janet Yellen—
remains a lofty but unfulfilled
ambition, as far as the data go.
US firms had $90 billion
TURN TO PAGE 13
15