WEEKLY MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 8, 2015 Free with your copy of Hindustan Times

Forget what greeting cards and rom-coms have told you about Valentine’s Day. This year, we’re sharing stories of snug couples and smug singles, each having a blast and making it work. It doesn’t matter which side you’re on; it’s a WIN-WIN!

Pearl Miglani & Nikhil Chinapa

Reemma Sen & Shiv Karan Singh

Prianka & Rannvijay Singha

Swara Bhaskar

Shalmali Kholgade

Kishi Arora

4 BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

n The AIB Roast pulled offn When celebrities lie about their age (which is all the time, as it turns out)n That you no longer just need to be worried about flight safety but also in-flight women’s safety!n Spring fever n That we still can’t take a joke, and file FIRs instead

n #BrunchBookChallenge cartons. <Points up>n That we have more than 50,000 followers on Twitter now. Follow @HTBrunch! n The Game of Thronesseason 5 trailer. n OnePlus One: the phone that had our staff writer Satarupa Paul swooningn The AIB Roast

LOVE

IT SHO

VE IT

by Saudamini JainOn The Brunch Radar

To read Brunch stories (and more) online, log on to hindustantimes.com/brunch. To discuss the stories (or give feedback), follow @HTBrunch on Twitter. For everything cool on the Internet, like Hindustan Times Brunch on Facebook. And for videos, check out our channel (youtube.com/HindustanTimesBrunch).

Front Row by Nihit Bhave

The State-Of-The-Heart Movie Library

PACKERS AND MOVERS (AND LOTS OF BOOKS)

Single, dating, mating, or dissipating, whatever your relationship status, there’s a heart-themed movie for you in Hollywood

If you’ve finally gotten someone to commit, watch Hearts And Souls with them – the movie where Robert Downey Jr has to be convinced by heavenly angels to stop acting like a jerk, and give in to his feelings.

If you’re in a new relationship, watch The Heartbreak Kid – the movie about discover-ing each other’s ugly side, and liv-ing with it. It takes Ben Stiller all of 10 minutes to find his new partner annoying. See how long it takes you!

If there are societal pres-sures tearing you apart, The Normal Heart is your movie. Julia Roberts is overlooked by too many hot men busy making out with each other, while the rest of the world hates them with a vengeance.

If you’ve known the pain of longing for someone, pick up the DVD of A Mighty Heart. In the movie, Angelina Jolie goes looking for her missing husband (to a third-world nation, and returns baby-less, mind you), while our own Irrfan Khan lends a helping hand.

If you think your signifi-cant other has another significant other, drop a hint by renting Heartburn. This dialogue – “If you want monogamy, marry a swan” – is sure to leave them tossing and turning

with guilt! Plus, there’s Meryl Streep, so that’s always a great watch!

If you’ve battled all odds to be in a relationship, Brave-heart is the right pick. Mel Gibson yells, “They will never take our freedom” to his com-rades. And that reminds you of a similar pact you had with your comrades before you got into said relationship.

If you’re gloomy aboutlove lost, pick up a copy of Crazy Heart, where Jeff Bridges is as smooth as the whiskey he drinks, and there’s a generous helping of Collin Farrell and his soothing accent. Indulge in

the mush!

Just been through a bad break up? Watch the fantasy film Dragonheart, which made dragon-slaying cool before Game Of Thrones took over. There is much blood and gore and there’s Sean Connery as a talking dragon! What else to pull you out of your funk?

EDITORIAL: Poonam Saxena (Editor), Aasheesh Sharma, Rachel Lopez, Aastha Atray Banan, Veenu Singh, Satarupa Paul, Saudamini Jain, Asad Ali, Nihit Bhave, Atisha Jain

DESIGN: Ashutosh Sapru (National Editor, Design), Monica Gupta, Payal Dighe Karkhanis, Ajay Aggarwal

Cover design: MONICA GUPTACover images:LABONY KAUSHAL, AKSHAY TAMBE, RAJ K RAJ

FOR ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACTNational – Sanchita Tyagi: sanchita.tyagi@hindustantimes.comNorth – Siddarth Chopra: siddarth.chopra@hindustantimes.comNorth – Shaila Thakur: shaila.thakur@hindustantimes.comWest – Karishma Makhija: karishma.makhija@hindustantimes.comSouth – Sharbani Ghosh: sharbani.ghosh@hindustantimes.com

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

We challenged you to read 24 books all through last year. And we promised prizes for lucky winners. Finally, the boxes are packed and couriered, and here’s a little sneak peek at what’s coming your way. Post pics when you get ’em!

Drop us a line at: brunchletters@hindustantimes.comor to 18-20 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001

BRUNCH BOO

K

C

HALLENGE

STEP1: Our friends in publishing – HarperCollins India, Bloomsbury India, Rupa Publications, Aleph Book Company, Penguin Books India, Random House India, Pan Macmillan India and Westland – sent us books. Many, many books

STEP3: Oxford Bookstore sent us coffee mugs and reading tealights. We bubblewrapped the cups and sniffed at the scented candles

STEP5: Everything in the boxes, all stacked up, a little note added, addresses pasted. Off they go!

STEP2: We spread them around the office and neatly packed 24 books in each carton, all the while fighting the temptation of keeping some for ourselves

STEP4: Our fabulous designer Monica Gupta designed posters, coasters and bookmarks. All printed at our glorious press

Excellent writeup on Sturla Gunnarsson’s documentary Monsoon...eagerly awaiting its release...and, of course, the monsoons :) - @rajatmehra

Stuff You Said Last Sunday

Find Hindustan Times Brunch on Facebook or tweet to @HTBrunch or

riteup on rla Gunnarsson’s

Today’s @HTBrunch features @ayushmannk !

Kudos to you for attempting

#hawaizaada which is soo different!enjoyed it! - @

crazy4fawad

Loved the cover story on

Hero without Heroics,

the charming Ayushman

Khurana. Its time for

confidence & determina-

tion #CrackTheCode - @

junkkDNA

Rajiv Makhni

Our tech columnist Rajiv Makhni is taking a break today. Techilicious will be back next week. Till then, you can inundate@rajivmakhni with all your geeky queries on Twitter.

MIND BODY SOULSHIKHA SHARMA

11 WAYS TO KEEP YOUR KIDNEYS HEALTHYYour renal glands keep your body clean. Make sure they’re in good shape

YOUR BODY is made up of two-thirds

water and it’s the job of your kidneys to maintain your hydra-tion level. Your kidneys also maintain your blood’s elec-trolyte balance and help flush out toxins from your body. A combination of diet, herbs and good practices will keep them going strong.

1. If you don’t drink at least 10 glasses of water a day, your urine will become concentrat-ed, which harms your kidneys. 2. Drink freshly squeezed lime juice diluted with water first thing in the morning. Other kidney-friendly fruit, vegetable and herb juices include apple, orange, sweetlime, grape, car-rot, beetroot, wheatgrass and parsley.3. Gokshura, an ayurvedic herb-al preparation, is prescribed for frequent kidney infections and problems caused by kidney stones. Cystone is good for kidney stones and Chandrap-rabha is prescribed for those with recurrent kidney problems. (Note: If you don’t modify your diet, these ayurvedic preparations will not give any benefits.)4. Use sprouted kid-ney beans, turmeric and garlic as ingredi-ents when you make soup. 5. Avoid excess tea, cof-fee, alcohol and tobacco as they are flushed out by the kidneys and expose them to a high level of acid. 6. Avoid exposure to chemicals found in cleaning products – protect

your hands with rubber gloves and wear a mask when using sprays. When colouring your hair, drink lots of water to help flush out the chemical pig-ments. 7. Kidney-healing foods contain the rejuvenating B-group vitamins and vitamin C. Eat pomegranates, watermelon and papaya. Take probiotics or B12 supplements if you have fre-quent kidney problems. Cran-berries or cranberry juice is a popular remedy for frequent kidney problems.8. When you need to use the toilet, do not hold on for too long. That creates problems in the long run.9. Avoid innerwear made of syn-thetic fabrics. Maintain good personal hygiene.10. Supplement your diet with calcium-rich ragi and eat lots of

fruit and lemon when you’re consuming an excess of protein. A protein-heavy diet is acidic, and in trying to maintain your

body’s pH balance, the kidneys use calcium from your bones. 11. Eat cooling foods such as coconut water, rice,

watercress, celery, green vegetables, cucumber and mung sprouts.

ask@drshikha.com

KIDNEY FRIENDLY Watermelon is rich in electrolytes, and it also rejuvenates the kidneys

WELLNESS6

Photos: SHUTTERSTO

CK, THINKSTO

CK

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

MORE ON THE WEBFor more columns by Dr Shikha Sharma and other wellness stories, log on to hindustantimes.com/brunch

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

Do couples have more fun or do singles rule? Are solos reigning supreme or are two-somes taking the cake? Would you rather compromise for company or indulge alone? This year, celebrate Valentine’s Day with a twist, with tales of happiness from those on both sides of the debate by Team Brunch

oSingle oIn A ReI AM:8 COVER STORY

Rannvijay Singha, the only Roadie India loves to love, impressed Prianka Vohra

with his dancing skills and his comic timing the first time they met at a friend’s party three years ago. “We were the only two not drinking, so we ended up talking all night,” he says.

But it wasn’t until they met again at a Mumbai hotel soon after, in 2011, that they felt an attraction. “It was really funny,” Prianka says. “I’d lived in London all my life, I had no clue who he was. So as people came up to him and asked for pictures, I was laughing, thinking he’d been mistaken for a movie star.” Then she saw him get mobbed in Delhi again and the penny dropped. They got married in April 2014.

As couples go, the Singhas are pretty snug. He plays the fool,

teasing her; she basks in the at-tention, chiding him occasionally. They admit they are still in their honeymoon period; Rannvijay’s work on Roadies and other projects keeps him away for long periods, “so maybe we still aren’t tired of each other,” says Prianka. But they know that marriage needs work. “I am the adventurous one,” admits Rannvijay. “She is the one who makes sure everything is in place.”

In an industry and society where marriages often come with expiry dates, both say they were clear when they married that this would be for keeps. “We married our best friend,” says Prianka. As he listens to his wife talk, Rannvi-jay turns serious: “When you are younger, there are many things to distract you, but as you grow up, you need someone to care about you, no matter what.”

It’s clear that to them, being a couple means each makes life com-fortable for the other. “He bends over backwards to make sure I have everything I need in a new city,” she says. He adds: “She never complains and stays up to have dinner with me even at midnight. You have to adjust to each other’s lifestyles. That’s how ‘couplehood’ will survive.” Then he puts his head in her lap: “This is what I do at the end of every day. It makes everything worthwhile”.

– Aastha Atray Banan

THE SNUG COUPLE V/

“You have to adjust to each other’s lifestyles. That’s how couplehood will survive today”

RANNVIJAY SINGHA, actor & TV host, 31; and PRIANKA VOHRA, marketer, 31

Photo: LABONY KAUSHAL

The best part about being in a relationship is...n We can play games against each other on our phonesn Having corny dance-off nights with each other with no one else watchingn Being able to binge eat and not worry about getting fat alonen Never having to be alone on a flight or at an airportn We can watch TV shows together and then discuss them endlessly

lationship

9

oAwesome

Swara Bhaskar, single for the last eight months, jokingly blames films for her unreal

expectations of men. “Bollywood has ruined me,” she says, laugh-ing. “I told Aditya Chopra that he’d ruined my life, because after Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Raj set the standard very high. I’ve gone through a lot of people look-ing for Raj. I don’t know whether I came to Bollywood looking for love or for work!”

She found one of the two for sure. As for the other, she’s happy that singlehood isn’t the taboo it used to be. “It’s always been okay for men to be single, but I think there’s a lot more acceptance for single women in our society to-day,” she says. “The media played a big role in portraying singlehood as normal. Now, girls can have a career and a life that doesn’t revolve only around men.” Being single is exciting, she says. “You’re open and receptive to new people and new relationships; there’s al-ways an element of curiosity when you meet new people. It’s a lot of fun. And if you’ve completely given up on relationships and just decided to be with yourself, well that’s awesome too!”

If only the rest of society would catch up. “I heard this re-ally offensive acronym for single women: SINBAD. It means Single Income, No Boyfriend, Absolutely

Desperate. I yelled at the person joking about it. He made it worse by saying it wasn’t about me. I told him that wasn’t the point!” Being unattached has nothing to do with being lonely or desperate, she believes. “There are also phases in relationships when you feel like sh*t, and when it gets overbear-ing,” she says. “Everything has its pros and cons.”

Like when she shows up, without a Plus One at wedding receptions and has to put up with aunties looking to pair her off or offer unsolicited advice. “They say, ‘Beta, ab time aa gaya hai, ab shaadi kar lo. Ab toh career bhi set ho gaya hai’. At the last wedding, I was forced to hang out with this friend, who eventually asked me to leave him alone as I was cramping his style’,” Swara recalls.

For her, it’s all about being able to be independent. “I don’t characterise my single status just by the lack of a man. For me, it is about be-ing able to live alone, have a career and earn my income,” she says. “Besides, apart from ballroom dancing, which you technically can’t do alone, there’s nothing a single person can’t do!”–

– Nihit Bhave

THE SMUG SINGLE

“Apart from ballroom dancing, which you technically can’t do alone, there’s nothing a single person can’t do!”

HONESTLY, WE can’t decide. Single peo-ple tell us how awesome it is to have the whole bed to themselves (all the pillows too, can you imagine?).

Couples, on the other hand, remind us there’s nothing better than a warm cuddle before you nod off. The unattached turn impul-

sive holidays and flirting into an art form. The teams-of-two show us how everything is twice as fun with company. Then again, we know cou-ples that bicker and gripe through togetherness and an equal number of lonely hearts whose smiles never meet their eyes. And don’t get us started on sugary Instagrams, man-hating

tweets and Facebook relationship statuses... If Valentine’s Day is all about the celebra-

tion of love, how about some stories of people who are making it work and having a blast both with and without a partner? Can you tell which side is winning?

brunchletters@hindustantimes.com

/S

SWARA BHASKAR, actress, 27

n Shopping is peaceful without a

man asking, “Are we done yet?”

n You can flirt guilt-free

n It’s okay to hang out with male

and female friends without having

to justify it to a partner

n You can keep a toothbrush and

hairbrush in your bag and spend

the night anywhere safe!

n You can drink, misbehave and

make an ass of yourself and not

have to deal with someone else’s

embarrassment, just your own

hangover

The best part about being

single is...

Photo: ABHIJEET PARKAR

10 COVER STORY

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

Shalmali Kholgade, who shot to fame with her loved-up song, Pareshaan from

Ishaqzaade, isn’t worrying about her single status one bit. She’s ready to pour all the romance into the mushy Bollywood songs she records, while remaining happily unattached at the same time. “I’ve come across more people who envy the fact that I’m alone, than feel bad for me,” she says. “I get more time for my hobbies this way. I don’t just sing but also love to sketch; I knit whenever my hands are free, learn kathak from a dance teacher and pick up a book at almost every airport.”

While there might be a lot of stigmas attached to singlehood, she isn’t ready to give in to the pressures of finding a partner just as yet. “Being single is equated with being lonely but couples get lonely, too,” she says. “We only have ourselves to blame for how we feel at any given time. So I can choose to be single today, and still not get lonely.” The advantages of not being in a relationship are greater, she’s found. “It’s great to allow yourself to feel drawn towards or attracted to someone without having to feel guilty about it. It’s great to do things alone, that you otherwise would have had to ask your partner to do with you; perhaps even against his wishes! I’ve had a blast in the last year, travelling to different countries on work and just renting a bicycle, us-ing public transport and exploring the city on foot on my own.”

There’s of course an downside to singlehood: “You have to take care of everything on your own, from the laundry to stocking up your fridge, paying all your bills, servicing your car and even chang-ing a flat tyre. And then there are the over-friendly neighbours who want to get too close,” she says. But those few challenges of living

alone in the city aren’t worth settling for someone you don’t love. “It is no use putting yourself through a relationship and settling on a partner who doesn’t tick all your boxes,” she says. “The accept-ance of singlehood by society has made it easier for singles today. At the end of the day what matters is what keeps you happy. It’s the best time to understand yourself, your views, your opinions and your preferences.”

– Nihit Bhave

“Being single is equated with being lonely but couples get lonely too!”

SHALMALI KHOLGADE, singer, 27

Fifteen years ago, Pearl Miglani phoned her friend, a producer on the show

MTV Select, for a chat. What she got instead was the love of her life. Nikhil Chinapa, the show’s host, had grabbed the phone from his producer as a joke. “I was curious about what she looked like because her voice sounded incredible,” Chi-napa recalls. “She had this really nice laugh and made interesting conversation.” On the other end of the line, Pearl was similarly smitten. A week later, Nikhil asked Pearl if she’d have dinner with him on his trip to Delhi: “I finally put a face to the voice – and what a gorgeous one it was! We yammered like chatterboxes.”

They took a dancing holiday to Barcelona and Ibiza. But their real

test came three years before they got married in 2003, when Pearl was diagnosed with a tumour. “He lay in the hospital bed with me, with the tubes going into me, and wouldn’t let go,” Pearl re-calls. “We didn’t know if I’d make it through the surgery.” When she pulled through, he also helped her get back on her feet. Pearl could only use one arm effectively after recovery, so Nikhil assisted on one gig by supplying, literally, a help-ing hand.

Now married for nine years, they are still romantics. But they’re pragmatic too. “Relation-ships need work; no matter how long a couple have been together,” Nikhil says. “She’s super under-standing of my constant travelling and the nature of my job, but isn’t afraid to voice concerns when I take things for granted. We talk about everything – and I mean everything. We don’t just restrict things to small talk and “work”. In fact, we avoid discussing work at home.”

Nikhil says that being a couple doesn’t fit any one definition. “This is a relationship between two unique identities – there are gen-eral rules about understanding and listening to each other, but to make it work, you’ve got to be able to make up the rules as you stumble along through life together.”

And there are great rewards, Pearl says: “There is nothing quite as inexplicably comforting as the sight of your life partner.”

– Aastha Atray Banan

“Nothing’s as inexplicably comforting as the sight of your life partner”

NIKHIL CHINAPA, DJ and VJ, age withheld; and PEARL MIGLANI, DJ, age withheld

THE SNUG COUPLE THE SMUG SINGLEV/S

test came three years

The best part about being in a relationship is...n You can share responsibilities. She drives while he reads the mapn Having company while listening to old vinyl recordsn You can be embarrassingly cuddly when you travel and hold hands while drivingn Looking at each other know-ingly when dancingn Going on adventure trips – we went to Cambodia last year

The best part about being single is...® You can be yourself without wondering if it will affect you or your partner in any way® You can work long hours and still go out with friends at the end of the day. There are no deadlines!® You never have the stress of arguing with a partner ® You get the whole bed to your-self and can sleep diagonally if you want to!® You end up spending more on yourself because you don’t have to buy gifts for a partner

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

THE SNUG COUPLE V/

They first met at a friend’s party in Mumbai, which ended up with both of them

fighting in front of 300 people. But they met again a few times and soon the anger was replaced by something else. Then they surprised everyone by wanting to get married.

Then it was their parents’ turn to be angry. Reemma’s mother re-fused to have her Bengali daughter move to Delhi for a “brash Punjabi Delhi boy”; Shiv’s parents didn’t want a film actress for a daughter-in-law. “It was like a Vicky Donor moment,” Reemma recalls.

The marriage has been a hit. Three years on, they have a two-year-old and Reemma says she doesn’t miss films. The man sees the bigger picture too. “Today the majority of people get married

without understanding that it is a lifelong commitment. People lack patience – the most essential ingredient for a happy marriage,” he says. “Reemma takes care of me while giving me space and respect. If she wants to return to acting, I’ll be the first to encourage it.”

Neither celebrates Valentine’s Day. When Shiv tried, years ago, to send Reemma flowers on February 14, she immediately called him to say, “Why are you wasting money like that?” Though some issues remain unresolved: “Most fights are about his driving,” Reemma says. “I tell him he goes too fast which, considering he’s been doing this for 20 years, drives him up the wall.” – Veenu Singh

SHIV KARAN SINGH, restaurateur 42; and REEMMA SEN, actress, 33

The best part about being in a relationship is...n Not worrying about dying alone n We can discuss every petty thing with our spouses without worrying that it will be used against usn We take out our frustrations on each other, not let them fester n We can have babies legitimately!n The endless gossip sessions

“Patience is the most essential ingredient for a happy marriage”

Photo: RAJ K RAJ

COVER STORY12

“Marriage is not an achievement, a contract, or a thing to fall back on”

I am a Punjabi, and Punjabis place a lot of emphasis on marriage, but my parents have

been pretty chilled out about the fact that I’m happily single at 33. My younger sister has been mar-ried for almost eight years, but that doesn’t bother me or anyone at home. The only person who’ll sometimes raise the subject is my father and that too in good hu-mour. My folks tell me to be happy in whatever I do.

Even though marriage is not a priority for me (at least not right now as I’m more focused towards expanding my business and I want to travel to a lot, learn new cuisines and just have fun) I’m not averse to the idea. I don’t see it as a contract or an achievement or something to fall back on. I see how marriage has become more of a social thing than a personal thing today – many of my friends are already divorced or in a bad marriage. I don’t want that to hap-pen to me. I need someone I enjoy being with, who won’t stop me from being who I am. I have had boyfriends and dated people; none of them made me want to settle down immediately.

This is a good time to be single. Society has changed, so much so that now my relatives say that Kishi has become an example for the younger generation in the fam-ily. Spending time by myself is an indulgence I’d never have if I had a partner. I travel when I feel like, watch the movies I want, and am equally happy meeting new people or catching up with friends. But,

what I enjoy doing most is spend-ing time with my parents and getting pampered by them. I was raised by my grandparents in Del-hi while they were in Singapore, so I’m enjoying what I missed.

I’m quite a practical person. I don’t believe in this concept of having one special day to profess your love. For me every day is a happy, loving day. Valentine’s Day, though, is the busiest time for business – I’ll be helping people show their love with my cakes and cupcakes. But after that, I will be enjoying a session of Dastangoi!

– As told to Veenu Singh

THE SMUG SINGLE/SKISHI ARORA, pastry chef and consultant, 33

LET’S TALK ABOUT LOVE, BABYBrunch is celebrating singles and couples this week on Twitter. Tweet your pics, with a buddy, a loved one, or just yourself, to @HTBrunch. Let’s show the world that ribbons, teddy bears and pink hearts are so yesterday!

13

The best part about being

single is...n You can pack your bags and go

wherever and whenever you want

and stay on for as long as you want

n Friends take better care of you

n If you like someone, you can

happily flirt. If not, just pretend to

be married. A married person can’t

pretend to be single without guilt

n You can focus on your career

n You can stay up all night at a

party and make all the married

friends jealous of your freedom

FROM THE moment Ameri-can First Lady Michelle Obama stepped off Air Force One in Delhi two

weeks ago, the Indian media tripped over her knee-length dress and matching jacket. The outfit graced the front page of every newspaper, was splashed on TV screens over and over again, has been compared with other ensem-bles, praised and criticised.

Much ado over nothing, you’d say? Not quite. Because some-where in all that frenzy, the real star of the show shone through: Indian-born, New York-based designer Bibhu Mohapatra is sud-denly hot news.

I tell him so over the phone. He chuckles appreciatively and says, “It’s heavenly! I feel like my entire family is cheering for me.” His voice is still heavily inflected with Indian tones, his attitude is still that of a small town boy, but his etiquette, aspirations and energy are very first world. “All these years, I never made a conscious ef-fort to speak like an American. In fact, I still wobble my head when I talk,” says the 42-year old fashion designer and chuckles again.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGSHailing from Rourkela in Odi-sha, Bibhu grew up in a modest, middle-class household, with parents who were traditional, yet progressive in their thinking. “I was surrounded by things my mother sewed and I was curious about them. When I was about 12, my mother taught me how to sew on her old machine. In most households, a boy wanting to learn

how to sew would be met with criticism, but not in mine.”

Bibhu, however, followed a conventional educational path with a Bachelor in Economics from Municipal College, Rourkela. All along though, he remained fascinated by the technicalities of taking something flat, cutting it up and using a sewing machine to make something that one could

wear. And all along, he honed his skills by making ‘things’ from old sarees and table cloths for his older sister, who, he claims “wore them out of the sheer kindness of her heart”. “Poor girl, she was so patient!” he says.“I’m so glad that some of those things I made do not exist anymore because those were real atrocities (laughs). My sister who didn’t want to discourage me

ever would be like, ‘Is it okay if I wear these at home?’”

ACROSS THE SEVEN SEASFollowing his graduation, Bibhu enrolled in a Masters programme in Economics at the Utah State University on a partial scholarship and enough money from his father to last him a quarter. “It was my ticket to America. I set off for the US with a suitcase full of clothes and Indian spices, and a heart full of dreams,” he says, melodra-matically almost. He had promised himself not to take any more money from his father, and so he set off to find a job on campus. “One day, I saw a posting for a 20 hours-a-week job at the university inn for the post of something called a janitor. I didn’t know what it meant but I applied anyway. Dur-ing the interview, I kept thinking that maybe I’ll get that computer to sit at. And then my supervisor took me to the janitor’s closet – it was full of brooms and mops,” he laughs. “For the first two weeks, I would lock myself in a room in the middle of all the cleaning, think of my mother and cry. But then I got over it and did it for nine months for the minimum wage of $4.25 an hour. It made me appreciate the saying that no job is small.”

During this time, he also took fashion merchandising classes and on a professor’s insistence, applied to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for a com-pressed course. New York was a different ball game altogether. Af-ter paying for tuition and housing, his student loan left him with $1.75 for food. “I had to have a job or I would have been on the streets.” He printed 20 copies of his resume, walked across 7th Avenue where all the major design houses are based, and dropped them at the offices of Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and other such names – amidst take-away food menus! “Out of those 20, I got two calls. One was for an intern-ship with the house of Halston. I was working non-stop: classes, homework, job, running to facto-ries carrying bolts of fabrics on my shoulders, doing embroidery layouts, cutting, being in the fit-tings. I was like a kid in a candy shop; I was living my dream.”

NEXT BIG LEAPOn graduating, he joined the design house J Mendel and for the next nine years helped build it from a four-member team to over 20 in the design department alone.

American Odishi

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

Bibhu Mohapatra went from Odisha to NYC, from making outfits out of table cloths to designing for Michelle Obama.Here’s his storyby Satarupa Paul

DEEPLY ROOTED Bibhu Mohapatra still exudes the attitude of a small-town boy

Photos: GETTY IMAGES16 STYLE FILE

Then in the fall of 2009 during the recession, Bibhu decided to launch his eponymous label Bibhu Mohapatra. “When you start something new, you have to do the groundwork for a few years to es-tablish yourself before it takes off. I thought I might as well do that when the economy was slumping, so by the time it turned around, and I survived, I would be right up there. It worked for me; at a time when no one was launching even a little chai shop, forget a luxury brand, I got a lot of attention.”

He has since designed gor-geous couture evening gowns, glamorous cocktail dresses and furs for a clientele he had culti-vated while at J Mendel, including Hillary Swank, Jennifer Lopez, Glenn Close, Eva Longoria and more. And of course, Michelle Obama. “The first time she wore one of my creations (to the Jay Leno Show), I showed a photo to my dad. He had seen movie stars and musicians wearing my designs, but for him this was the ul-timate moment.”

INDIA AND THE WILD WESTBibhu’s creations are edgy, classy, modern and sexy. His techniques are a play of opposites – tailor-ing with draping, organic versus geometric, florals set off with architectural lines. He draws his inspiration from people and trav-els, and from his heritage. “Grow-ing up, I took all those beautiful fabrics, the amazing handicrafts and the dazzling combination of colours in jewellery and clothes, for granted. After I left India, all those things became very vivid. Now they make their way into all my collections.”

He remembers seeing a flower in the spring time while travel-ling through Odisha as a kid. “It’s called palash and it’s bright orange-red with a velvety black base. It’s like the whole tree is on fire.” Two seasons ago, he used his memory of that flower and mixed it with water colour to create a stunning garment.

Bibhu says it’d be a dream come true to bring his creations to India. “I really miss being in India with my people, whether my family or my friends, and also the food.” For now, in his free time, he’s content with cooking for his friends (including Odiya food), when he’s not watching Bollywood movies or documentaries on India. “During the weekend, I go to my

country house in upstate New York,

which is this tiny, wooden

farmer’s house built in the 1840s.” He goes there not only to process and absorb all the inspirations and ideas he’s had

through the week, but also to look after his chickens. “I started with 17 of them, all named after supermodels. Then we had a fox attack, and Naomi Campbell and a few others perished. But Christie (Brinkley), Heidi (Klum), and oth-ers are still living and laying eggs,” he says, with the chuckle I’m familiar with now.

satarupa.paul@

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Follow @satarupapaul on Twitter

RAMP ON FIREBibhu used his memory of the palash flower and mixed it with water colour to create this stunning garment

17

The First Lady in this Bibhu Mohapatra dress took the Indian media by

storm

When Art Goes Places...One of the most glamorous events in the Indian art circuit, the India Art Fair turnedseven this year. A look at some of the artists whose work invited a third glanceby Asad Ali, photos by Gurinder Osan

18 CULTURE CANVAS

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

The Threshold Into A Dream

Serenity Of Desolation

Artist: TV Santhosh Supported by: The Guild

Artist: Veer Munshi Supported by: Popular Prakashan

One of Mumbai’s iconic landmarks – the Chhatrapati

Shivaji Terminus (CST), for-merly Victoria Terminus – lies at an angle of about 30 degrees. TV Santosh’s detailed installa-tion of the city’s famous station has several digital timers (all set differently) attached to it. The project, which took close to two years to complete, serves as a striking reminder of the Mumbai attacks – the timers ticking away eerily on loop. Santosh says, “After 26/11 when I visited the CST, I realised how the meaning of this beautiful structure had changed, and how it had emotionally shaken me. I

wanted to revisit that experience through my work.”

Santosh says that the best medium he could think of in the context was a structure intrinsic to the lives of the people who livein the city. He describes the sta-tion as a colonial structure that’s like “an ever-pumping heart ofthe city”. Explaining the tilt, he says, “We lift up something in or-der to see what is underneath it. It is a metaphorical act of inves-tigating into history to see how violence leads to more violence.” While the work resonated with most people, Santosh adds that “children seemed to understand it faster!”

Close to the entrance of the India Art Fair grounds lay a

large-scale model of a toppled Kashmiri house: dark in colour with darker interiors (there are no windows to let in light). You can go inside the house from its ‘base’. Inside, on one of the walls,

hang watercolour portraits of50 local faces. At the other end of the house, video footage ofthe recent Kashmir floods keeps playing on loop.

This is Delhi-based artist Veer Munshi’s interpretation ofthe floods in Kashmir and its af-

termath. Munshi says that often the news of a natural calamity gets drowned in the noise of other news stories that keep hap-pening in a country as large as India.

Hence a site specific project like this serves as a good reminder of what the situation still is in Kashmir post the devastating floods that happened in September 2014. The model took about three months – and about 30 workers – to complete; Munshi will use the proceeds

from its sale towards helping rehabilitate affected people in the Valley.

Explaining how the idea came to him, Munshi says, “Me and some other artists were supposed to visit Kashmir for a wedding. That’s when the floods

happened and all communica-tion broke down... eventually I started drawing portraits of100 people from the place, all ofwhom I knew in some measure,and had spent time with in the past.” For the video footage he asked friends and acquaintances for help and put together all the resources into one file. The video that’s projected on the house wall inside, has a window frame around it – to suggest the inti-macy of the disaster right at the doorstep of most homes.

The collapsed house has an-other interpretation too: “It also symbolises the houses a lot of Kashmiris left behind... in a way these houses have experi-enced collapse twice, one was a political fall and the other was a natural fall.”

Overall, Munshi says he is happy with the reception he got at the fair. “People have been appreciative mostly. Some though asked me if I brought the house from Kashmir, and how I man-aged to do it!”

twitter.com/HTBrunch 19

The Art Of Papilio Demoleus (or how to become The Lemon Butterfly)Artist: Priyanka Choudhary Supported by: Gallery Maskara

Eeew!” went a fetching young lady as artist Priyanka Choud-

hary started nibbling on the leaves of a potted citrus plant at the India Art Fair.

It had to be the most intrigu-ing performance at this year’s fair. Delhi-based artist Choud-hary, dressed in a white gown, sat on a high stool facing a citrus plant. And proceeded to eat the leaves one by one till the plant was bare except for the lemons. By the time the performance ended (she ravaged two citrus plants), her dress was stained with green dribble. Once the act was over she walked away quietly. But she had placed a card nearby which asked, “Who in our world becomes a lemon butter-fly?” and sought answers from people passing by.

Choudhary says that she wanted to explore the theme of invader-invasion and the violence attached with it. And the best example she could think of was the lemon butterfly, also called the “butterfly of death.” She says, “This little caterpillar

is one of the biggest destroyers of citrus plantations globally and a very successful invader. One small creature finishes off a whole plant and when it turns into a butterfly, it quietly flies away!”

The correlation between the act of invasion by the insect and invasive behavior in the real world is inevitable. “Which is why some of the answers to the question I had asked were so interesting. One person wrote ‘America’, and someone else wrote ‘Politician’! Yet another person wrote ‘Ego’... for me those were very significant reactions from the public. It showed that despite being a radical act, a lot of people got the point of it,” says Choudhary.

Choudhary also says that she had been thinking of this act for a while now but the India Art Fair presented the right platform she needed: “I thought the fair was a very interesting public space suited for this kind of performance.” And how did she prepare? “I do a lot of yoga… and

before the act I go into complete silence, which helps to focus,” says Choudhary, adding that the period immediately after the performance is more difficult, both physically and mentally. “I thought I’d throw up and people

were offering me bins! But sur-prisingly I didn’t feel the need to throw up at all.” However, she suffered blisters in her mouth from the rather harsh meal but laughs it off saying, “Well, I did manage to digest all the leaves!”

asad.ali@hindustantimes.com Follow @AsadAli1989 on Twitter

IN SOME prehistoric era (the late 1980s, actually) when I was editor of Sunday magazine, we did a cover story called something like “Out for the Week-end”. The premise of the piece was the then-novel idea that as more and more middle-class Indians

owned cars, many families were choosing to simply drive somewhere for the weekend.

It was not an original idea. In the Bombay of the early Seventies, many people drove off to Matheran, Lonavala, Mahabaleshwar and other hill stations in the Western Ghats for a break. It is true that those who did go tended to be upper-middle-class or rich, that they took drivers (hill roads can be treacherous) and that the only accommoda-tion available at these hill stations consisted of clubs and relatively modest hotels. But few people I knew went off for a mere weekend. Hill-station breaks usually took a full week or so.

When people wanted a weekend break, they went nearby. Hard as this may be to believe now, I’m told that in the 1950s and early 1960s, people drove to Juhu because it seemed so far away from south Bombay. And I remember going to Manori in the 1980s because the journey (involv-ing a ferry ride) seemed romantic and the best hotel there (Manoribel) seemed a world away from the hustle and bus-tle of Bombay.

By the time I moved to Delhi in the 1990s, the culture of driving to Kasauli or Mussoorie was well established. Many people even drove to Jaipur. I never got very enthusi-astic about those journeys because I just found them too ex-

hausting. When the Oberois opened the wonder-ful Wildflower Hall near Simla, I took a plane to Chandigarh and drove there. The hotel was amaz-ing but the drive took too much out of me. I much preferred Raj Vilas, also run by the Oberois, to which you could actually take a flight. When I did drive to Jaipur, I found the journey so tiring that I went back to flying. The only place I did drive to was Agra (where the Oberois had Amar Vilas) because there were no flights.

But through it all, I kept wondering, why does nobody build a resort that is near enough Delhi

to not make the getting there so painful? It turned out I was not the only one to have that idea. When AB Vajpayee planned his famous summit meeting with Pervez Mushar-raf, he put his hotelier son-in-law, Ranjan Bhattacharya, in charge of scouting for locations. Bhattacharya was unable to find anywhere (Musharraf ended up at Amar Vilas and the summit moved from Delhi to Agra). Bhattacharya com-plained to Habib Rehman, then head of ITC Hotels, about the lack of suitable luxury resorts within driving distance of Delhi and Rehman told him that ITC was working on something.

What ITC had in mind was a new hotel that was origi-nally called Camp Bharat, but which has now become the chain’s grandest gesture and is called ITC Grand Bharat. The hotel is in Mewat, a short distance from Manesar. As Delhi has expanded, it no longer seems so far out (if you live in Gurgaon you can even drop in for dinner) but its loca-tion is secluded enough (through villages and fields) to give you the sense that you are a long way from Delhi (which, of course, you are not.) Now that the Gurgaon highway has improved (and the first toll has gone), it should take just over an hour from central Delhi and about an-hour-and-a-half from parts of South Delhi where the traffic is bad. That makes it perfect for a weekend, a corporate retreat and, of course (though ITC shies away from saying this), for a

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

indulge20

Vir Sanghvi

rude hotelsHOT AND CREAMY The India Room’s cheese soufflé had a tang of paprika in the sauce

A Weekend AwayA new hotel, with luxurious suites, a young staff and hip restaurants, helps continue the tradition of quick, indulgent breaks not too far from home

Heads of Government Meeting.Some of you may know the location. It is where ITC

has run the Classic Golf Resort for many years and owns hundreds of acres of land. In fact, when I first heard that they were building a hotel there, I imagined it would be a golf-clubby kind of place. To my surprise, Yogi Deveshwar, the company’s chairman, and Nakul Anand, its executive director in charge of hotels, decided to treat the golf course as a mere add-on. You can play golf if you like. But what Deveshwar and Anand have built is a luxury resort in the Vilas league. And this has no ordinary entry-level rooms; every single guest gets to stay in a suite.

I’ve been twice to see the hotel and was invited to stay once when the resort had just about opened (what they call a “soft-opening” in the trade.) Each time I went I was curious because, hard as this is to believe, ITC is the only one of India’s three major hotel companies to have never run a major resort. What, I wondered, would an ITC resort be like?

Well, some things were not surprising. The main building was grand (like Chennai’s Grand Chola) and a lot of effort has gone into the food (not necessarily true in the case of most other Indian resorts). And ITC’s characteristic per-sonalised service is as you would expect.

But there are many surprising elements. The rooms break with conventional hotel de-sign in that each unit comprises four separate rooms: there is a very comfortable bedroom, a cosy living room, a large dressing room and a huge bathroom. There is also a sit-out where I had breakfast most mornings and some rooms are connected to spacious terraces. There is a huge pool but every room is also linked to a semi-private swimming pool should you not want to make the trek to the main pool.

The other surprise is the quality of service. With ITC veteran Anand Rao (the Maurya, Gardenia, Maratha, Wind-sor etc) in charge, you expect an unusual level of efficiency because that is Rao’s forte. But what you don’t expect is the youthful vigour, enthusiasm and sophistication of the staff.

I asked Nakul Anand how he had managed to find such a young team. It turned out that the Grand Bharat is using students from ITC Management School (which Rao also runs) for many key functions. Their style of treating guests is completely different from anything ITC has done before and the guest-interface is fresher and graceful without be-ing obsequious.

Levels of enthusiasm and skills are astonishingly high. One young chef came up to me and insisted I try the sashi-mi his section had prepared (it was great!) and when I asked for an off-menu biryani, they got a 21-year-old student to

make it. It turned out he was the grandson of the great Im-tiaz Qureshi. But his biryani was his own: more robust and homestyle than the courtly version his grandfather made famous.

ITC hopes to fill Grand Bharat up with people who drive down from Delhi. It is expensive, as you would expect of an all-suite property, but once you factor in the absence of airfare, it actually works out cheaper than say, going to Udaipur. So far at least, that has worked. Despite a low-key

opening with very little publicity, occupancies and average room rates have been high. And my guess is that they will have no difficulty getting people from out of town to come and stay ei-ther. It is near enough to Gurgaon for anybody who has work there to find it convenient. And why would you stay in an ugly tower block ho-tel when you could wake up to the sound of birds calling and look out of your window and see the hills and the trees?

And most of all I think people will come for the food. Anybody who goes to an ITC hotel and

doesn’t get Bukhara-Dum Pukht food goes away disappointed. So Grand Bharat does all the favourites

but in the coffee shop. The specialty restaurant, the India Room, is a pet project of my friend Gautam Anand and is an ambitious attempt to recreate the classics of European cooking with a twist. So you’ll get a classic roast lamb – but made with carefully sourced wild mutton. The cheese souf-flé will have a tang of paprika in the sauce. The spaghetti carbonara will become a tortellini with the sauce inside each dumpling. And so on.

There is a new bistro still to come, authentic Hunan food from expat chef Lie Wen, a new Serai cuisine that ITC is still developing, focusing on the food of the caravanserais that took traders and their goods from India to Iran, which uses such unusual ingredients as preserved lemons.

And so the revolution continues: first family trips to the hills; then weekend breaks to places within driving dis-tance. And now, sheer luxury in a rustic setting that is only an hour’s drive away!

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

YOUR PALACE AWAITS The ITC’s Yogi Deveshwar (above) and Nakul Anand have built the Grand Bharat as a luxury resort. No entry-level rooms; every guest gets a suite

CONTINENTAL DRIFT The Grand Bharat’s specialty restaurant, the India Room, attempts to recreate the classics of European cooking with a twist

GOT WEEKEND PLANS? I remember going to Manori (top right) in the 1980s because a ferry ride seemed romantic; In the Bombay of the early Seventies, many people drove off to Matheran

MORE ON THE WEB For more columns by Vir Sanghvi, log on to hindustantimes.com/brunch

The views expressed by the columnist are personal

As Delhi has expanded,

Mewat, near Manesar, no longer seems

so far out

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THE BEST time to observe the idiosyncrasies of Indian politics is in the run-up to an election. So it wasn’t in the least surprising that the election campaign for the Delhi Assembly gave us some

fresh insights into the behaviour of that strange creature: the Indian politician. In case you have been (very under-standably) hiding underneath your blanket until the elec-toral coast clears, here’s a brief summary of what we learnt over the last fortnight – or indeed, over the last decade:n Promises, promises: There is nothing that politicians won’t promise in the run-up to an election. Here’s just a random sampling of all the stuff we’ve been dazzled with: `15 lakhs in the bank account of every Indian (our share of all the black money that was going to be brought back

to India); free water and electricity; ‘safety kits’ for women which would include pepper spray and whistles; free wi-fi for everyone; free television sets; dowry for your daughters; education loans for your sons; and so on and on and on.n When in doubt, delete: That’s the first thing that en-trants to any political party – or those who have defected to another – do. They scour their social media accounts to scratch out all the offensive things they once said about their then-opponents and now-allies. Unfortunately, the In-ternet has a very long memory; too many people have dis-covered the art of capturing a screenshot; and television clips tend to live on forever. So good luck with that.n Be still, my beating heart: If the CBI comes calling, then a ‘heart attack’ or, at the very least, ‘palpitations’ are never far behind. The more committed manage to stage a dramatic collapse before the cameras. The more retiring content themselves with looking pale and wan, and exiting their houses on a wheelchair to portray an image of vulner-ability. But then, given that their only choice is between jail

and a nice hospital bed, who can blame them for that Oscar-worthy acting? n It’s cold out there: There’s nothing like a spell in po-litical Siberia to help people discover that they have such a thing as a ‘conscience’. Maybe it’s the icy winds of adversi-ty that strip away those layers of arrogance, corruption and venality, leaving a quivering mass of regret at the core. Or maybe it’s just the desire to bask in the sunshine of public approval. But, whatever the reason, being exiled from the corridors of power tends to bring on a powerful bout of ‘in-trospection’, followed by abject ‘apologies’ to the people for having let them down.n The law of the letter: You can be sure that if one politi-cian has written an embarrassing letter to another, it is only a matter of time before it mysteriously materialises on the front page of a leading national daily. Both the sender and the receiver will feign incredulity and outrage that such a ‘personal’ missive became public, even though it is amply clear than one or the other must have leaked it. And both will take great pleasure in bashing the media over their ‘in-trusive’ ways. As for the media, well, they will devote hours of primetime to ‘debating’ the letter in question: why was

it written; who leaked it; who gains; who doesn’t? And each media organisation will claim to be the ‘first’ at ‘breaking’ the story.n I was only following orders: No matter what a politician says or does in the execution of his or her ‘duties’, nothing is ever his or her fault. It is either the media that are blamed for a ‘witch-hunt’ or for ‘misquoting’ or ‘quoting out of con-text’ (this, even when the offending quote has been recorded for posterity on television cameras, and is thus, indisputable). Or the blame is laid at the door of the party ‘high command’, which ‘forced’

its will on the hapless politician in question. What was that you asked? Why didn’t the politician refuse to carry out a flawed order? Ah but you see, he/she hadn’t spent a spell in the political wilderness yet, so he/she was not in touch with his/her conscience (see above).n Nothing is secret; nothing is sacred: If you are plan-ning to stand for election, then be prepared to have every aspect of your life scrutinised. Nothing is off limits. Not your family life, not your medical history, not your business interests, not your bank balance, not your financial assets, and certainly not your service record. So, if you have been fibbing all your life about having towed the Prime Minis-ter’s car, then you will have to come clean on who actually did the towing (and if it turns out that it wasn’t you, who has been dining out on the story for decades on end, then be prepared to be roasted on primetime television). n Lies, damned lies, and opinion polls: It is almost a tru-ism of Indian politics that no political party will be happy with the results of the opinion polls. Those who have been

written off will complain that the sample size was too small, and that the questions were loaded against them in the sur-vey. Those who fared better will insist that the numbers don’t really do justice to the massive support they have garnered. And everybody will insist that it’s no point discussing opin-ion polls, because opinion polls never get it right, even as they discuss them threadbare night after night in television studi-os. Clearly, if there’s one thing our politicians – across party lines – have in common, it is an irony deficit.

MORE ON THE WEBFor more SPECTATOR columns by Seema Goswami, log on to hindustantimes.com/brunch. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/seemagoswami. Write to her at seema_ht@rediffmail.com

There’s nothing quite like an election to make politicians show their true colours

Poll Fault

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

Seema Goswami

spectator

22 indulge

Photos: GETTY IMAGES

RESTARTBeing exiled from power tends to bring on a powerful bout of ‘introspection’, followed by abject ‘apologies’ to the people for having let them down

The views expressed by the columnist are personal

“Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction”British-Chinese writer Jung Chang talks about her bestselling family biography Wild Swan and about her books being banned in Chinaby Saudamini Jain

24 FINE PRINT

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

JUNG CHANG is the most well-known Chinese writer in the world. But all of her three books are banned in

China. Her family memoir Wild Swans was the book of the ’90s, which is to say, everybody read it. This big green book was published just two years after the 1989 dem-onstrations in Tiananmen Square. The average reader was relatively ignorant about China but keenly interested. And here was an ac-count of three generations of Chinese women: Chang’s grand-mother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother, a revolutionary; and Chang herself, a former Red Guard who eventually moved to England. It was translated into 37 languages and sold more than 13 million cop-ies. Hillary Clinton called it “an inspiring tale of women who sur-vived every deprivation and politi-cal upheaval with their humanity intact.” Martin Amis said it made him feel like a five-year-old, add-ing, it “has the breadth of the most enduring social history.”

In 2005, Chang, along with her Irish historian husband John Halliday, wrote Mao: The Unknown Story, which showed Mao Zedong as one of the most monstrous tyrants of the 20th century.

Her most recent book is a bi-ography of Empress Dowager Cixi who controlled China from 1861 to 1908 and is generally considered a cruel despot. The Cixi in Em-press Dowager Cixi is a feminist, a visionary and “the greatest woman in Chinese history”. The book, Chang says, began after she found out that Cixi had banned the barbaric custom of feet-binding. That’s the practice of crushing the four smaller toes of a woman’s foot under a stone and then binding them to the bones, so they looked small and dainty.

At 62, Chang is very, very glamorous. You cannot picture her as a peasant, an electrician or a barefoot (untrained) doctor living in China. Or walking around the streets of London in a Mao suit, as she did in the ’70s when she moved to study in the UK. We caught up with her at the ZEE Jaipur Litera-ture Festival. Excerpts:

How did you start writing? I started writing Wild Swans in 1988 after my mother had come to stay with me in London. She would tell me stories of her life and of my grandmother. I felt that she really wanted me to under-stand her. And that gave me the impetus to write the book. I also felt that my mother seemed to know that I had this dream of becoming a writer.

Was it painful to write such a personal narrative?The most painful part

was my father’s insanity. The other was my grandmother’s death.

[My] experiences are pain-ful because my family members suffered and I did not. I didn’t go through that trauma.

Moving from China to the UK in 1978 must have been a culture shock.In those days, it was like another planet. Everything was different!

Did you have to deal with racism?Well, we were still wear-

ing Mao suits. We were quite a sight on the streets! The English I had learnt in China was a direct translation of Chinese into English. So I was going around ask-ing people, “Have you eaten?” – it is a Chinese street greeting. But it was an exciting time, living without restric-

tions...

Your books are banned in China... But the regime is doing far worse to other writers, you know, sending them to prison.

You are allowed to visit your sister and mother on condition that you meet no one else... There is a direct flight from Lon-don to Changdu where my mother lives. When she is ill, I wish I could jump into a plane and fly to her. But I can’t, because there is tight control. I can go only once a year and only for two weeks.

In your latest biography, you’ve heaped praise upon Empress Dowa-ger Cixi, who is considered a tyrant...Women rulers always have bad press.

You learnt English late. But that is the language you write in.I was 21 when I learnt English. And it shows in my writing. It’s not a book by a person whose mother tongue was English. But the most important thing in writ-ing is to form the book in your head. And that has to be done in one language. And so I form my thoughts in English.

Are you never tempted to write fiction?In the Chinese world, truth is often stranger than fiction.

Saudamini.Jain@hindustantimes.com

Follow @saudaminijain on Twitter

I was 21 when I learnt

English. And it

shows in my writing

Photo: GETTY IM

AGES

TRAVEL

ONE WHOLE week in Ja-pan? They only eat sushi! How will you survive?”“Don’t take cabs! It’s

`18,000 just from the airport.”“Their toilets are space-age!”“Have you read Murakami/ Watched Lost In Translation?”“Catch a geisha performance. Wait. Do they still have geisha?”“Their trains are so crowded they have officers to stuff people into the com-partment so the doors can close.”“The have weird fash-ions. Don’t shop.”“But have Burger King’s black burger!”

In many ways, my trip started long before I boarded my plane. Those who’d been there, volun-teered tips unasked. Those who hadn’t, somehow had advice to offer too. I suppose I know why. Japan is a country physically and culturally so removed from the rest of the world, it’s almost a parallel universe. Japanese trends mushroom, hold the nation in their grip, and disappear without us knowing (ever heard of bean beards, butt-print skirts or bagel heads?) Its culture is so complex, a

gaijin (an outsider) can get hopelessly

entangled in the clichés. And if

you’re a gaijin only for a week,

like me, it’s a place best enjoyed after some home-work – even if it means

listening to endless

tips.

...ABOUT THAT SUSHIChief among these will be about food. If you’re vegetarian and/or squeamish, how will you manage? Quite well, actually. Tokyo alone has Indian veg-etarian buffets, sophisti-cated meatless din-ners, south Indian and north Indian meals. We lunched at Indian-owned Chatpata in Osaka, where the samosas and curries tasted good enough for us to check if home was really one international and one local flight away. European-style restaurants

abound, and burger chains like the local Mos

(famous for buns made with cooked rice) and Burger King (yes, I had that all-black burger

from BuzzFeed) ensure you never have to look at seaweed or raw fish.

If fish is what you want, Japan’s your oyster, your salmon, your soft-shelled crab and your eel. Make a morning pilgrimage to Tsukiji, the world’s biggest fish mar-

ket, and take a deep breath for two reasons: a) the variety will boggle the mind, and b) you can

...not always true and never entirely false. In between is a country you have to visit to believe text and photos by

Rachel Lopez

Everything You Hear About Japan Is...

26

Only in Japan...

...will vending machines sell you sushi, bananas, freshly cooked burgers and even your horoscope. My fortune

was glowing!

Only in

Japan... ...is it possible to

see a samurai at the bus stop (this guy was in costume in

Asakusa, Tokyo)

GILT TRIPThe Kinkaku-ji temple in Kyoto is covered in gold leaf, and impossibly beautiful in every season

n Japan Airlines operates daily non-stop flights between New Delhi and Tokyo. Air India has flights as well. n One Japanese Yen is approxi-mately equal to 52 paise. n Cherry blossom season in spring and autumn are the best times to visit. Room rates typically double. n Tokyo is the most densely packed city on Earth and hotel rates are per person, not per room. Prepare for

cramped rooms if on a budget.n If you’re travelling across Japan, buy a Japan Rail Pass before you leave India. It lets you travel across all their rail lines in different cities and might save you money. n Most signage is in English. But when using trains in Tokyo, chart out your course before you set out. Locals aren’t always able to help with complicated directions.

TRAVEL INFO

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

twitter.com/HTBrunch TRAVEL

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

take a deep breath because there’s no fishy smell! I’ve had the freshest fish of my life – lightly braised mackerel and sliced raw tuna – in little stalls outside the market .

Of course, they eat more than raw fish. We had buttery, pan-fried dumplings in Gion, Kyoto, where they were invented, and crunched through a tempura meal. A build-ing in Hiroshima consisted en-tirely of eateries serving okonomi-yaki (thick pancake). But sushi is a religion. One Tokyo supermarket had sushi boxes filling a wall as long as a Metro platform – all of which sold out in the time it took me to finish homestyle stew and salad next door. The Japanese will buy sushi from a vending machine. If a Tokyo restaurant is too tiny for seats, they’ll even eat it stand-ing up. But then, so did I.

...AND BETWEEN MEALS?You’ll walk off every morsel sightseeing. They’re all sprawled out in Osaka and Hiroshima. They cover hillsides in Kyoto. Even hyper-cramped Tokyo finds acres of room for temples. Walk, walk, walk up the 16th century Osaka Castle to look out over 21st century skyscrap-ers and manicured gardens. See if you can walk past the half-charred, half-preserved uniforms of child victims at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Museum without weeping (you can’t). Walk, eyes-closed, the 20 metres between two Love Stones in Kyoto’s Kiyomizu temple to have a romantic wish granted. Walk through Gion, Kyoto’s former geisha district, at night, to see painted ladies bow goodbyes to their clients ever so elegantly.

But mostly, walk in Tokyo to see how disciplined citizens can be. They say Singapore has the fastest walkers, but Tokyoites have got to be the best behaved. At Shibuya – the world’s busiest cross-ing, where some 16 roads intersect – walk, briskly with thousands as all traffic lights turn red simultaneously to let peo-ple cross. Pedestrians swarm into “coming” and “going” streams as if guided by an invis-ible policeman.

What will take your breath away in Tokyo are the trains themselves. Where NYC’s subways baffle users and where Mumbai’s trains crush the dignity out of them, Tokyo’s 35 routes cover 13 train lines that go overground, under-ground and in a continuous loop. And they all run unfailingly on time. On the trains – used by eve-

ryone from suited CEOs and Hermès-swathed ladies to

punk-rocker teens – no phones ring, no voices chatter. Everyone moves aside automati-cally after entering a

carriage, making room, unasked. And officers don’t shove peo-

ple in anymore. More trains have

now been added.

...SO THERE IS SPACENot quite. Much of Japan is roomy, but Tokyo is packed

tighter than sticky rice in sushi. I marvelled at

the legroom on Japan Airlines (Row 26 is the most spacious); I could do the Tango in my room in Hiroshima. In the capital, however, a budget double room will have a bed so narrow, you’ll make ba-

bies without meaning to, and pay rates you’d have

saved for its education.Regardless, there’s

room to breathe. No one bothers tourists. Not even if you’re a lone woman

on the train at night with drunk

men in the car-riage. Locals are insular,

but will gladly help if their responses require simple English. Routes (includ-ing train changes) are easy to plot before you head out. Lunch is cheaper than dinner at most places. They have their own Disneyland if you’re so inclined, but honest-ly, the country is a fairground in itself. And the toilets are really space-age: pre-warmed seats, warm bidets, pressure controls, music...

Oops! Looks like I have quite a few tips of my own!

(This trip was sponsored in part by the Japan Nation-

al Tourist Organisation)rachel.lopez@hindustantimes.com Follow @GreaterBombay on Twitter

Only in Japan...

...will you walk out of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and find

souvenirs celebrating the American flag

27

NIPPON ON MY MIND(Clockwise from top) A standing sushi bar; Tsukiji market deals in container trucks full of fresh fish; Hiroshima is both horrific and humbling; sip from the Kiyomizu fountains for long life, success or love; they eat stews and salads too

WORD ON THE STREETSome things are best expressed in Japanese

KUSHINBO: Someone who loves to eat. And who will love the term “Tabehoudai” all you can eat.OMAKASE: “I’ll leave it to you”. This is what to tell the chef if you’re an adventurous omnivore.OMIYAGE: A souvenir for gifting. It’s traditional to bring back a small gift, usually specialty food. HAIKU: Non-rhyming poem. Strictly 17 syllables. Like this one I wrote. KAWAII: Cute. The bright cartoony art that dominates their culture is kawaii. Hello Kitty, who was born in Japan, is so, so kawaii.ARIGATOU: Thank you. This is a nation of compulsive than-kers, with six ways of expressing it. This one is the simplest. MOSHI MOSHI: It’s how they answer the phone instead of say-ing hello. SHINKANSEN: Bullet trains. India and Japan are conducting feasi-bility studies to start them here. OISHII: Delicious. Even packaged food can be oishii in Japan. OTAKU: Obsessive geek with no life. You can be a gadget otaku, a rail otaku etc. But if you’re a fake, you’re a fotaku!GAMAN: Enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity. This is why they never

complain!BIJIN: A beautiful babe. There

are many, many of these all across the country. TSUNDOKU: Buying books and not reading them. You know you’re guilty. KINTSUKUROI: The art of filling cracks in ceramic with gold or sil-

ver, and apprecialting an object for having been broken.

KOI NO YOKAN: The feeling on first meet-ing that you two will fall in love. Aww.NATSUKASHII: A place or object that evokes fond memories and

longing. For me, it’s the tons of matcha tea I lugged home.

Oh and if something isn’t funny in Japan, they just call it an AMERICAN JOKE!

Only in Japan...

...are the kids more stylish than you’ll ever be as

an adult, even in traditional garb

The broadcaster or commentator who inspired you to take up commentary.Initially, Anant Setalvad at the

AIR but I really hoped I could be spoken of in the same

breath as Tony Cozier, who was called the voice of West Indies cricket. How was your match with your wife Anita fixed? We were classmates at IIM Ahmedabad. It is the best thing to have happened to me.Tell us about an incident in the commentary box that made you laugh.A nine-minute YouTube clip where I challenged Australian commentator Kerry

O’Keeffe to have a Naga chilli went viral in Australia.

The crowd began to clap and the players turned around to see what was happening. Eventually I had the chilli, but we didn’t miss a ball. The entire story is told between deliveries.Which are your favourite cricket venues?The Sydney Cricket Ground and the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association ground at Dharamsala. Which are the four teams that you think will make it to the semifinals of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015?

Australia, South Africa and India have the best chances, but my dark horse is New Zealand. You also don the hat of a newspaper columnist. What is your mantra for doing well on television? In television, one should always stay honest to the game and, as a presenter, remember you are a guest in people’s houses and you must always maintain the decency that you would as a guest in someone’s house. Also, too many people on TV take things too seriously. We should never forget it is only a game. What’s the format that you enjoy commentating for the most: Tests, One Day Internationals or T20s? Finally all three are variations of cricket and I enjoy all three – they demand different things from me. It’s like rock and ghazal. What’s on your iPod?

Film music that I grew up listening to – those were the days of poetry in music. My favourites include Madan Mohan, SD Burman, AR Rahman and more recently, Shantanu Moitra. Your sartorial style? I don’t think I have an eye for fashion, it’s overrated, anyway! For all the ties and jackets I wear, I’m more of a T-shirt-jeans person. What is special about

the Indian subcontinent’s cricket fans? Unbridled enthusiasm, almost too much of it. What do you think Virat Kohli brings to the table as the new Indian captain in Test matches? A refreshing optimism, a very positive attitude.Of all the former cricketers in the commentary box, who has a natural flair for it? Most of them are excellent. But of the newer ones, Shane Warne has taken to it like he was meant to do it.

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

— Interviewed by Aasheesh Sharma

PERSONAL AGENDA28

Harsha Bhogle

THE LAST BOLLYWOOD MOVIE THAT

YOU ENJOYED WATCHING 3 Idiots (2009)

Cricket commentator/anchor

BIRTHDAYJuly 19

SUN SIGNCancer

HOMETOWNHyderabad

PLACE OF BIRTHHyderabad

SCHOOL/COLLEGEThe Hyderabad Public School, Osmania University College of Technology, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

FIRST BREAKWhen I began working with the All India Radio

CURRENTLY I AM... Doing live cricket with Star Sports, corporate speaking with my wife Anita and promoting Tourism Australia

WHAT MAKES AN INDIA-PAKISTAN WORLD CUP CONTEST SO SPECIAL? The pressure from almost everyone. It doesn’t only test your skill but also your temperament.

WHICH IS YOUR FAVOURITE WORLD CUP MEMORY? It would have to be Dhoni hitting the six in the 2011 World Cup final.

IF YOU WERE TO PLAY SELECTOR, WHICH INDIAN PLAYER YOU WOULD PICK TO PLAY IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND AT THE WORLD CUP?The first player will have to be Virat Kohli and then MS Dhoni.

YOUR ADVICE FOR THE INDIAN TEAM AT THE WORLD CUP? Play with passion. You are already good enough!

my w

orld

cup