Act 1, Scene 1

(A series on childhood memories)

The grave illness of his sister and meeting K.P. Ummer in the flesh were some of the memorable events in actor Sidhique’s childhood

By Shevlin Sebastian

When Sidhique was growing up, a lot of men would drop in at the house in Edavanakkad, Vypeen Island. “They would say they were going to some far-away mosque and would ask us for money to place as a donation, on behalf of the family,” he says. “Sometimes, we would give Rs 10. We have no idea whether the men actually went to the mosque. Most probably they just pocketed the money.”

Realising this, one day Sidhique’s father, Mamathua, told a man he wanted to give an offering. “My eldest son had fallen ill and I promised that I would give something if he became well,” he said. The man readily agreed to accept the donation. “Then my father brought an amikallu (a stone roller) from the kitchen,” says Sidhique. “The man said, ‘Are you making fun?’ My father replied, “I am serious, but if you can’t take it, no problem.’”

Sidhique laughs at the memory, as he relaxes during a break in the shooting of the Shaji Kailas film, ‘Red Chillies’ at Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Limited (FACT), Eloor.

Like in any family there were good and bad times. When Sidhique was in Class 7 his elder sister Arifa, 17, contracted typhoid and was taken to the St Vincent De Paul hospital at Kuzhuppilly.

“This was the first time that somebody in our family was being hospitalised,” says Sidhique. “At the hospital I experienced new smells and saw the strange sight of nuns as nurses.”

As the days went by, Arifa’s condition declined alarmingly. One evening when Sidhique went to the hospital he saw that his sister’s long and curly hair had been shaved off and two tubes had been inserted into her nose. “My mother said, ‘Please pray for Arifa,’” he says.

Just next to the hospital was a church. Sidhique went and sat on the steps and began crying. “I feared my sister would die,” says Sidhique. Some time later a nun took him back to the hospital.

However, unknown to him, the intravenous feeding had kick-started the healing process. The next day when Sidhique went to see Arifa, the tubes had been removed and she was sitting up and talking. “I burst into tears of relief,” he says.

It was a close-knit family. Apart from his sister, Sidhique has an elder brother, Majid. His father had a small plot which abounded in coconut trees, while his mother, Biwi, a talented story-teller cum singer, looked after the children and the house.

Sidhique inherited his mother’s creative bent. When he was ten years old he made a film projector. It was a box with a lens in it. Then he placed a cardboard, which had a hole, on the window sill. “With the help of a mirror, I directed the sunlight into the hole and it would hit the lens,” he says. “Behind it were some film strips.”

Sidhique and his friends had collected these discarded bits of film from near the projection room of cinema theatres. Sometimes they would ask the projectionist and he would give some pieces.

The image which was beamed on the wall was the equivalent of a 42” TV image. “It was a thrilling experience,” he says. However, his exasperated mother would always say, “You are always watching films. Be careful or your eyes will get bad.”

Indeed, a few months later, Sidhique’s eyes started watering. His father took him to an eye specialist, Dr. C.I. Mathew. “He said that a white spot had appeared on the retina of my left eye,” says Sidhique. “He asked me whether too much light has fallen on that eye.”

Sidhique had to admit that he was always looking through the lens with one eye closed. “The doctor prescribed an ointment and, fearing for my eyesight, I stopped using the projector,” he says.

One day, Sidhique had a wonderful surprise. He was sleeping when Arifa woke him up and said, “K.P. Ummer has come.” It was 11 p.m. Sidhique sprang out of the bed and went to the living room.

Since the family was not certain that the actor, who had been befriended by Majid, would come to the house, they had not told Sidhique.

“I was staring at him not knowing whether this was a dream or not,” he says. “He was handsome and fair. He asked me my name and in which class I was studying. The next day I still could not believe that I had met Ummukka in the flesh.”

Another excitement for Sidhique was when he saw a gramophone player for the first time. During the summer holidays he spent a few days at his businessman-uncle, Abdul Rahman’s house in Aluva.

One morning, his cousins said, “Today our father will be bringing a Chemmeen plate.” Sidhique was puzzled. “I could not understand what they were saying,” he says. “Was it a plate on which you ate chemmeen?”

In the evening, the mystery was solved. It was a 45 rpm record of the film, ‘Chemmeen’. He remembers vividly the His Master’s Voice (HMV) logo with the dog peering into the trumpet-like horn of the gramophone player.

The first song that was played was Puthan Purakkare. “I kept asking my cousins to replay the record till I knew all the songs by heart,” he says.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Chronicling a saint’s life

The Kochi-based Thomas Mundakel has just published an English translation of his Malayalam biography of Saint Alphonsa

Photo of Thomas Mundakel; cover of the book

By Shevlin Sebastian

On January 26, 1984, Thomas Mundakel and his wife Mary went to the tomb of St. Alphonsa at Bharananganam. For long Mary had suffered from an eye ailment. In desperation she had prayed to Sr. Alphonsa and had been miraculously cured. The couple had gone to pay homage to the saint.

“I saw so many people who had come to pray,” says Mundakel. “Apart from Indians, there were several foreigners.”

Curious at this steady stream of believers, Mundakel told Mary, “I want to see more. Let us stay here for a day.” Mary agreed and their room where they stayed overlooked the cemetery. The couple noticed that till 9 p.m. people were coming and going.

Mundakel, himself, went thrice to pray at the tomb. And he was surprised that despite other well-decorated graves, people always made a beeline to Sr. Alphonsa’s simple grave. “The question, ‘Why?’ was like an atom bomb inside me,” he says. “I wanted to know the answer.”

Mundakel bought all the books about Sr. Alphonsa in Hindi, English and Malayalam. After reading it, one day, he claims, he received a message from the nun: “You write as I say.” So he sat with pen and paper and the first question she gave him was, ‘How do you know me?’ “I felt inspired,” says Mundakel.

Unlike a biography written in a chronological manner, Mundakel wrote it as if Sr. Alphonsa was penning it, in the first person. “I would write something and then would go to Bharananganam,” he says. There, he would meet nuns who knew her well and they would provide all the information he needed. He would come back and write it down. “I went twice or thrice a month,” he says. “I was following the instructions given by Sr. Alphonsa.”

The book took six months to write. When it was completed Mundakel went to Fr. Antony, of the now-defunct Mar Louis Memorial Press, to get it published. But there were objections.

“Antony asked me whether it was right on my part to write in the name of Sr. Alphonsa,” says Mundakel. “He said that if he published the book it might lessen the chances of Sr. Alphonsa being declared a saint.”

The publisher asked Mundakel to get the permission from the Vice Postulator (a vice-postulator pleads for a candidate’s beatification or canonisation).

Mundakel felt disappointed. He took the manuscript and went to the tomb of the saint. “I said, ‘Sr. Alphonsa, you know how much of trouble I went through to write the book. I am going to burn it after reaching home. There is nobody to publish it.’ But she consoled me,” he says.

When Mundakel returned to Enakulam he met the Vice Postulator, Fr. M. Moothedan, and said, “I have written a book on Sr. Alphonsa. Do you have any objections to it being published?”

Moothedan said, “Please go ahead.” The book, ‘Alphonsamma Katha Paranjal’, published by Fr. T.A. Anthony, of the Janatha Press, came out in 1985, just after Sr. Alphonsa was declared a Blessed by the Vatican. The first 2000 copies were sold out within two months, and it has been in print ever since.

Recently, the English version, ‘Saint Alphonsa,’ was brought out by the Kochi-based Sargadooth Publications. Unlike the Malayalam text, this is a chronological version.

“It is a highly readable book,” says engineer Sebastian K. Joseph. “Mundakel has done an immense amount of research. You get a deep understanding of Sr. Alphonsa’s life.”

Asked about the most notable quality of Sr. Alphonsa, Mundakel says, “It was her ability to forgive.” Apparently, this was a trait which she showed right from childhood.

One day she was climbing a stile with her friend, Lakshmi Kutty, now 98 years old. A boy came from behind and pushed her. Sr. Alphonsa fell, and her hands and legs were bruised. “Lakshmi wanted to punish the boy,” says Mundakel. “But Alphonsa said, ‘Please don’t bother. Let us forgive him. God will bless us.’”

Fr. Francis Vadakel, the current vice postulator, says, “Sr. Alphonsa was also humility personified and had a loving nature.”

Apart from her sweet behaviour, Sr. Alphonsa is also known for causing miracles. So, as her biographer, did Mundakel experience one himself? He tells a story: several years ago his daughter Tessy Rani lost a brand-new cycle near their home at Thevara. Mundakel informed the police and a few local boys.

Tessy Rani told her father she would pray to Sr. Alphonsa. Mundakel did the same. “I did not have much hope,” he says. But within a day, he received a telephone call from a boy at Kadavanthra saying a cycle had been found. Mundakel went and investigated and saw that it was Tessy Rani’s cycle.

“It was a miracle that we got it back,” he says. “It deepened my faith in the saint.” Incidentally, Mundakel attended Sr. Alphonsa’s canonisation ceremony in Rome last month.

Apart from his biography of Sr. Alphonsa, Mundakel, 76, a former English teacher at Rajagiri Public School, has written 40 books, the most notable being ‘Blessed Mother Teresa-Her Journey to Your Heart’. This was published by Simon and Schuster, one of America’s leading publishers, and has been translated into German, Korean and Chinese.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Glimpses of Nehru

(A series on childhood memories)

Seeing former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru face to face and watching three films in a row were some of the unforgettable memories of politician-businessman K.M.I. Mather

By Shevlin Sebastian

At 6.15 p.m. on January 30, 1948 K.M.I. Mather, who was playing in the courtyard of his house at Chowara, near Aluva, saw his uncle rush into the house. “It seems Mahatma Gandhi has died,” he said.

The Mathers had one of the few radios in the locality and his mother, Sohra, immediately switched it on. “The announcement in English confirmed that Gandhiji had been shot dead,” says Mather. Apparently, his uncle was at the railway station when the news was passed through the phone between stations.

“We all felt very sad,” says Mather. Sohra had a worried look on her face. “At that time numerous Hindu-Muslim riots were taking place and my mother was fearful about whether the killer was a Muslim,” he says. “If it had been, the country would have been on fire.”

The next day, the radio was attached, through a long wire, to a loudspeaker placed on the wall of an adjoining house. Numerous people listened to the commentary on the funeral. “People were crying outside,” says Mather. “We could also hear weeping on the radio.”

Mather’s father, K.C.M. Mather, a well-to-do businessman, was a senior Congress leader. Mather remembers the time when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru came to Kerala to address campaign rallies just before the 1952 general elections.

Nehru flew in a Dakota aircraft from Bangalore and landed at the Navy airport at Kochi. In the small reception hall, leaders like K.P. Madhavan Nair, Ikanda Warrier and Panampilly Govinda Menon waited to receive the Prime Minister. Standing next to them was 12-year old Mather, who wore a stiff Gandhi cap. “On it I had stitched two small Congress flags,” he says.

When Nehru arrived, he saw Mather, touched him on the shoulders, smiled, and moved ahead. “He was very handsome,” says Mather. “He had the red cheeks of the Kashmiri.” Nehru was accompanied by his daughter Indira Gandhi, “who looked very shy and reserved.”

From the airport Nehru went to Bolghatty Palace to freshen up. At the meeting at the Durbar Hall grounds, Mather remembers vividly a sentence that Nehru spoke: “I am the proud son of the greatest nation on earth.”

Later, along with his father, he sat in a car behind Nehru, who travelled in an open Buick, to Chalakudy. “People lined the streets and threw garlands and rose petals at him,” says Mather. “Sometimes, he would throw it back, in playfulness.”

Mather has more political memories. On August 15, 1947 he took part in an Independence Day procession, along with his father and other people at Chowara.

“My father was carrying the national flag,” he says. “He was wearing a khadi shirt and dhoti. I felt very proud of him. Later, my father told me to go home since it was getting late.”

Soon, Mather had a change of home. When he was in Class three, in order to get a better education, his father told him to stay at a family-owned house opposite the Ernakulam Town railway station. He lived there with his elder brother, Abdul Rahman, and cousin, Mayinkutty Mather and started studying at St. Augustine’s school.

“I missed my mother a lot,” he says. But his pain was compensated by the fact that the trio was seeing a movie once a week. And, on one unforgettable Saturday, they saw three in a row.

For the matinee show, at Padma theatre, they saw a Tamil film, 'Maya Khudira'. Then it was another Tamil film, 'Nam Naadu' at Laxman Theatre, followed by the Hindi film, 'Shabnam' at Menaka theatre.

To see a film, each ‘chair’ ticket cost 9 annas. Hence, for three films, it cost 27 annas per person or one rupee and 11 annas for the three of them. “We had been given the money by our father’s office cashier,” says Mather, a politician-businessman, in his firm opposite the Town railway station.

His father, who was mostly in Thiruvananthapuram at that time, because he had become an MLA, had one condition: the children should get permission from an elderly person in the family before they went for a film.

“Usually, my grandfather was a regular visitor to the house,” says Mather. “So we would say, ‘Give us money or allow us to go for a film.’ So, naturally, he would give permission.”

Out of the numerous films he saw, it was 'Shaheed', which starred Dilip Kumar and Kamini Kaushal, that he liked the most. Released in 1948, it was a film about a revolutionary who was caught by the British and hanged.

“I remember the last scene where a dead Dilip Kumar is lying on a cot and a garland is put around his neck by Kamini,” he says. Then the body is draped with the national flag, more garlands are put and flower petals are strewn all over, while the haunting hit song by Mohammed Rafi is played: ‘Watan ki raah mein watan ke naujawan shaheed ho.’

Apart from films, Mather was passionate about football. A district-level player, he would buy a season ticket and watch all the matches of the Rama Varma All India tournament at the Maharaja’s College grounds.

“I remember the final in 1951 between Bangalore Blues and Young Challengers from Calicut,” he says. “The Blues won by one goal.” He says that even though the Kerala team lost, the crowd clapped for the winners. “We don’t see that sort of polite behaviour at football grounds any more,” he says.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Hot and happening

Subi Samuel is one of Bollywood’s brightest young photographers. His list of clients includes the Who’s Who of the industry

By Shevlin Sebastian

Subi Samuel wanted to shoot a frozen image of a well-known Bollywood actress, Ritu (name changed). “There was a sheet of ice on the floor,” he says. “And we got Ritu to lie on it. It was supposed to be a face shot with the eyes closed.”

To get the chilled look, salt had been put on the upper part of her body. Once the shot was taken Subi told Ritu to get up. But she was unable to do so because her hair was stuck into the ice. “She started screaming,” says Subi.

In this panicky situation the stylist ran outside and managed to get some hot water. He poured it onto the ice so that it would melt. Part of the warm water flowed towards Ritu. Because of the effect of the salt and Ritu’s low body temperature, the skin peeled off her back.

“Ritu still has a scar on the upper back,” he says. “She can cover it with make-up, but she has never forgiven me.”

Subi Samuel is one of the rising young stars in Bollywood and fashion photography. He has shot unusual and candid photos of stars like Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Akshaye Khanna, Aishwarya Rai, Diya Mirza, Esha Deol, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan, Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra and Preity Zinta, among others.

He explains his modus operandi. “If a star knows how the picture will turn out they tend to be a bit more confident,” he says. Earlier, during the analog age he would do sketches and show them how the frame would be cut.

However, in today’s digital era they can check it on the computer immediately. “If they like the picture they develop a confidence in you,” he says.

For models who are always insecure about their looks, he follows a different procedure. “I never tell a model she has put on weight,” he says. “Nor do I ask her age. These are small matters, but they have a big impact on the final image.”

Interestingly, he says, all these established stars and models have one common character trait. “They are go-getters,” he says. “That means they will go the extra mile to see to it that they achieve the goals. That is the difference between the successful and the not so successful.”

Subi belongs to the successful breed. His photographs can be seen in magazines, calendars, film posters, books and catalogues. Asked the secret of a good photograph he says, “Nowadays, a photograph is not about just shooting it. You do extensive changes in photoshop. So what you are seeing is not reality but an illusion.”

Subi’s USP is his unusual depiction of film celebrities. For example, the cover photo in his coffee table book ‘Subi’, shows an unusual Sushmita Sen. “At that time all images of Sushmita were that of a beautiful diva,” he says. “I wanted to break that. So I did a picture of her screaming.”

Subi, the son of a Malayali businessman, grew up in Mumbai. In 1983 he came across an encyclopaedia of photography called the Camera Book. It sparked his interest but it would be several years later, after graduation from Mithibai College and a management degree from Narsee Monjee Institute that he would get serious about photography. “I hated my MBA course,” he says.

In 1995 he became an assistant to one of the country’s leading fashion and Bollywood photographers, Rakesh Sreshtha. “In terms of lighting a subject Rakesh is the best,” he says.

He remembers a turning point in his life during his association with Rakesh. One day Rakesh was shooting Sushmita. He suddenly got a call and because the music was blaring inside the Andheri studio he went outside to speak.

Subi began to look at Sushmita through the lens and she caught him doing that. Since the lights were on she asked him to start shooting. Subi did not want to offend Rakesh so he said no. But Sushmita insisted.

“I literally shied away from the situation,” he says. “But she said, ‘Now I will pose only if you shoot.’ So I had to take a couple of frames. That was for me a memorable experience. One of my ambitions at Rakesh’s studio was to use his lights. And then there was this God-given chance to shoot with an ex Miss Universe. The whole thing was like a dream come true for me.”

After a few years Subi branched out on his own, and established his reputation fairly quickly. “To be frank I did not have much of a struggle,” he says. Rakesh says by working with him Subi understood that a lot of people -- the make-up man, the stylist and the light person -- are needed to get a good shot. “You also need to know the mind-set of the person who is being photographed, so that he or she is able to relax,” he says. “What Subi needs to do now is maintain consistency and quality.”

Apart from celebrities Subi also takes pictures of ordinary people. Asked the difference between the two he says, “Celebrities come with pre-conceived notions of how they should look. It is difficult to break that. For ordinary people they are always thinking they are not good enough to be photographed.”

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Chennai)

Showing a little Mercy

(A series on childhood memories)

Seeing the roof of her home in flames and watching The Ten Commandments were some of the vivid memories of Cochin Corporation Mayor Mercy Williams

By Shevlin Sebastian

One day when Mercy Williams was in Class 4 at the Edward Memorial school at Fort Kochi, she was told her house was on fire.

“I immediately rushed home,” says Mercy. “The roof was burning.” The family lived in a thatched house. There was no time to call a fire engine. Instead, the neighbours threw buckets of water. Another group managed to take out a cupboard which contained all their clothes.

Eventually, the fire was doused, but one side of the roof was gutted. Thankfully, both her parents were away at work: her mother was a ‘Birth and Death Registrar’ in the municipal corporation at Fort Kochi, while her father worked in a private firm at Ernakulam.

Unfortunately, this was not the only encounter with fire for Mercy. A few years later the fence around their house caught fire one night. She awoke suddenly and saw the flames through the window. But Mercy did not panic.

Instead she ran outside, drew water from the well, and poured it on the blaze a few times. Thanks to her quick response the fire was doused. “Later, my mother complimented me on my presence of mind,” she says.

Mercy admired her mother, Teresa, a lot. “She had a sacrificial nature and cared deeply for the family,” says the mayor of the Cochin Corporation.

“I remember when I was very small, I was sleeping when I suddenly opened my eyes,” she says. Mercy saw her mother standing in front of the cupboard arranging the clothes on the various shelves. “It must have been past midnight,” she says. “She always stayed awake late, doing some chore or the other.”

When Mercy was three years old, her mother was transferred to Malabar for a two-year stint. “In those times the salary was paid only after three months,” she says. So the family had to buy everything on credit. It was then that she realised there was not enough money in the house.

When she was a little older she overheard a conversation between her parents: they were discussing the future marriages of the children – two girls and a boy – and wondered how they would raise the money for it. “I felt very bad,” she says. “As the eldest, I realised I had to study hard, and get a good job, so that I could help my parents.”

Still, despite the hardships, it was a happy family. On weekends the family, along with cousins, uncles and aunts, would go to the beach at Fort Kochi. “We would walk from one end to the other,” says Mercy.

However, because there were so many children, her aunt Lissy would carry a stick. “She wanted to make sure none of us entered the water,” says Mercy.

But as she grew older Mercy felt embarrassed, as onlookers stared at Lissy. “I would walk behind her and say, ‘Ammai, please throw the stick away,’ but she would not listen,” she says.

Apart from beach trips, Mercy remembers seeing films at the Patel Talkies at Fort Kochi. The most striking was ‘The Ten Commandments’. “I remember vividly the scene where Moses parted the Red Sea,” she says.

There were other memorable scenes: when the tablets of the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God and the large-scale migration of thousands of people towards the Promised Land.

“Years later when I read about the mass movement of Muslims and Hindus during the 1947 partition of India I would always recall this scene,” says Mercy, who lives in Thammanam, with husband, Williams, lawyer-son Anup Joachim, his wife Mridula and their son, David.

Mercy had a vivid imagination, which was stoked by her habit of reading. She would read articles in newspapers and magazines, short stories and poems. One of her favourite poems was Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali.

“I remember a scene where a king asked for alms from a beggar,” she says. “But the beggar gave him only a tiny grain of corn.” But, later, the beggar got a jolt. To quote from the poem: ‘How great my surprise when at the day's end I emptied my bag on the floor to find a gram of gold among the poor heap. I bitterly wept and wished that I had had the heart to give thee my all.’

In school, Mercy was an above-average student. She says most of the teachers were nice, but she especially remembers her Hindi teacher, Mother Theresa of the Canossian Convent.

“When she had to scold the children all she could say was, ‘There are two horns sticking out from the top of your head,’” says Mercy. “That was how mild she was. She was a loving teacher and very beautiful. Her peacefulness had a big impact on my life.”

Today, as Mercy struggles to improve the functioning of the much-criticised municipal corporation, she would be looking to recapture the sense of peace that Mother Theresa exuded.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Up close and personal

(A series on childhood memories)

A ruler broken by a friend and listening to Pankaj Mallick when he was only three years old were the unforgettable events in singer K.J. Yesudas’ childhood

By Shevlin Sebastian


“One day my father gave me a ruler,” says singer K.J. Yesudas, 68. “I had never seen such a beautiful one before.” Yesudas was studying in Class I at the St. John De Brito school at Fort Kochi.

His classmate, Peters (name changed) looked at the ruler and exclaimed, “Ha, it is very good!” And then with one smooth movement Peters picked it up and snapped it into two. “It broke my heart,” he says. “And a rage erupted in me.”

He went and hid near the entrance. As soon as Peters came into view Yesudas stepped out and gave a powerful blow to his face. “His nose started bleeding,” says Yesudas. “And I ran away.”

And Yesudas never went back to the Brito school. Instead he got admission in the Santa Cruz school where his father, Augustine Joseph, was once a student.

But Yesudas was a poor student. “I never looked at the text-books,” he says. “When I would read about Tipu Sultan killing this person or that, I would think to myself, What do I gain by learning about what this man did or did not do?’. Inside me, there was only music.”

Yesudas still remembers the first song he had heard in his life, at the age of three. He had an aunt, a Navy officer’s wife, who owned a gramophone record.

“One day she played a song by Pankaj Mallick called ‘Chale Pavan Ki Chaal,’” he says, and hums the tune. “I was enraptured” (for those who are curious, this song, from the 1941 film ‘Doctor’ can be heard on You Tube).

One day when Yesudas was ten years old he fell ill and was lying in bed. He cleared his throat and spat through the window. To his horror his father was passing by and the phlegm fell on his shoulder.

“My father wiped it away but seeing the tears in my eyes he came running in, hugged me and said, ‘Son it is nothing. Why are you so upset?’” says Yesudas. “That was how affectionate he was.”

His father, an accomplished singer and actor with the P.J. Cherian drama troupe, would hardly be at home because of his professional commitments. But when a show was over and if he were close by he would rush home.

On the way he would buy grapes or oranges. “Sometimes he would come at 3 or 4 a.m. and would awaken us children and give the fruits,” says Yesudas. “We would be in deep sleep but he would put us on his lap and feed us. I still cannot forget the sweet taste of those fruits because it was given to us by a loving father.”

The legendary singer hero-worshipped his father. “On the stage he looked so handsome,” he says. “Do you remember Raj Kapoor in his prime? My father was very fair and there was a look of the Kashmiri about him. We are four brothers, but none of us have his looks except, maybe, my sister, Jayamma.”

Yesudas says a woman admirer of his father came many years later to the house and told his mother, “I still remember how handsome Augustine was. None of your children are like him.” His mother, Elizabath, did not respond at all.

Yesudas was also very close to his mother. “One day she was making chips and I was standing next to her and eating it hot off the stove,” he says. As expected, like any mother, she warned him not to eat too much because he would get a stomach ache. But like any naughty boy he ignored her warnings.

“In the end my stomach bulged out and I could not breathe properly,” says Yesudas. “Soon I had an intense stomach pain.”

His mother came up with an instant solution: she took a slice of soap and slid it into that ‘delicate space’. Immediately, Yesudas rushed to the toilet. “All the stock came out and I felt some relief,” he says, with a big laugh.

He needed his mother for other reasons. At their house in Mattacherry there were no attached bathrooms. Instead, it was at some distance from the house. On most nights he would get up to have a piss. There was a coconut tree near the entrance and on the trunk there hung a bulb.

“I would stand on the other side of the tree and do my business,” he says. “But with one hand I held my mother’s hand because I was so scared of the dark.”

It was a decidedly lower middle-class family which slipped into poverty when Augustine was afflicted by Parkinson’s Disease in 1960 and could no longer work.

One day, as things became more and more difficult, his younger brother, Justin, said, “Amma, there are a lot of women who are going to pluck chemeen. Why don’t you go and earn some money so that we can eat?”

For food it was rice and dal all the time. “Now I am sitting in this big palace (he gestures at the large air-conditioned lobby of the Le Meridien) but I always remind myself that I must not forget the early days of my struggle,” he says. “And I have not forgotten. Once you come through you become fearless. You are ready to face anything in life.”

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Eternally vigilant

Dr Thomas Sebastian, the oldest practicing anaesthetist in Kerala, was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Society of Anaesthesiologists

By Shevlin Sebastian

In 1985, a two-year-old girl Abida (name changed) was brought for a cleft lip surgery at the Specialists’ hospital at Ernakulam. At that time the anaesthetist was Dr. Thomas Sebastian. The operation was done successfully and the girl was able to lead a normal life.

She grew up, got married and had a baby girl. Surprisingly, the baby also had a cleft lip. In 2005, Abida brought her daughter to the hospital for a similar operation. The anaesthetist? It was Thomas once again.

Today, at 73, Thomas is the oldest practicing anaesthetist in Kerala. So far he has done a few thousand operations in his 38-year career. And in view of this the Cochin branch of the Indian Society of Anaesthesiologists (ISA), conferred on Thomas a Lifetime Achievement Award on October 16, World Anaesthesia Day at a well-attended function at the Grand Hotel.

Thomas, who was born in Changanassery, is the fifth child of the late P.J. Sebastian, Pullamkalam, the freedom fighter cum socio-political leader.

After college he did his medicine at the University of Padua in Italy. However, the initial days at Padua were not easy since he did not know Italian. But thanks to a few senior Malayali students who were already there, he was able to pick up the language soon.

It was while in Padua that Thomas was able to solve a problem that would have affected his career.

“For several years I had been suffering from hyperhidrosis,” he says. “This is an ailment where my hands and palms would sweat profusely. I realised this would be a handicap especially if I had to interact with patients and needed to touch them.”

So he consulted a neurosurgeon in Padua who, in an operation, cut the nerves in the spinal cord that led to the hands. “As a result the sweat glands did not receive any nervous energy and stopped sweating,” says Thomas. “This saved my career.”

From Italy, Thomas went to England and did his house surgency at Maelor General Hospital, North Wales. It was while working at the anesthetist unit that he decided to become one.

In 1971, contrary to all expectations Thomas returned to Kerala and joined the Malankara Medical Mission Hospital at Kolencherry as a consultant anaesthetist.

“I always wanted to come back and serve my countrymen,” says Thomas. “And I have no regrets about it. I have had a good life and career.”

Interestingly, his younger brother Jacob, who also studied in Padua and became a gynaecologist, settled in Chicago, USA.

In 1984 Thomas moved to Ernakulam as a freelance anaesthetist and has been working with several hospitals, including the Specialists’ Hospital, since then.

“An anesthetist is known as an artificial doctor,” he says. “We provide artificial sleep, respiration and relaxation. Our motto is ‘Eternal Vigilance’. We are the first to come to the theatre and the last to leave.”

He says the anaesthetist provides a serene atmosphere for a surgeon to work in because it is an ‘apparently dead’ person that the latter is dealing with.

To make a patient, ‘apparently dead’, anesthesia is given intravenously. “It takes five seconds for a person to lose consciousness,” he says. “Once he or she sleeps we administer all the other medicines necessary for a safe surgery.”

The end result is that the patient has a painless experience in the operation theatre. “When he opens his eyes and says, ‘Is the operation over, doctor?’ I know the anaesthesia has worked perfectly,” says Thomas.

As a result of doing a good job for so many years he has earned the respect of his peers and juniors. “Some people find job satisfaction as a means to avoid burnout in life,” says ISA Cochin branch President, Dr. Mohan Mathew. “Thomas is one of them.”

He lauded Thomas’s honesty and his friendliness with staff and colleagues as the primary reasons for his long and enduring career.

Says anaesthetist Dr. V. Chandra Bhanu of Specialists’ Hospital: “Thomas can be trusted 100 per cent to do the job perfectly,” he says. “For my own wife’s operation I preferred that he be there rather than me.”

Nowadays, Bhanu says, Thomas is offering his services for free especially for those who come from financially-strapped families.

It has been a blemish-free career but in his personal life Thomas experienced tragedy when his wife Kochamma died of breast cancer on March 5, 1992, leaving him to look after four daughters on his own.

However, the pressure was relieved to a great extent when he got married to Mariamma Ambooken on January 2, 1995. Now all the children are married and well-settled in life and Thomas has seven grandchildren. But he continues his job as an anaesthetist.

“He loves his job and I don’t think he will call it a day,” says Bhanu. Thomas has a slightly different view. “I want to carry on as long as my health permits,” says the doctor who listens to Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and Beethoven during his spare time.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Battling hate and fear

Civil rights activist Teesta Setalvad has been battling majority and minority communalism for several years now.

By Shevlin Sebastian

During the 1992-93 riots at Mumbai, Teesta Setalvad, who was working a journalist, along with a few others ran an unofficial police control room. “We were getting distress calls till 4 a.m.,” she says. “The callers would say, ‘This place is burning, or that place is burning,’ but when we informed the cops they would not respond. That was how biased they were.”

When the unrest ended Teesta wanted to do several follow-up articles but as memories of the riots faded, the editors provided less and less space for her stories.

“I felt I should use my journalistic skills to combat all this hate and anger,” she says. So, in August 1993, she, along with her husband, Javed Anand, started a journal, ‘Communalism Combat’ (www.sabrang.com).

“The aim of the magazine is to promote dialogue,” says Teesta. “In a multi-religious pluralistic society there is going to be disagreement. But how do you settle it?” she says. “Instead of violence we should have discussions.”

The magazine also wanted to expose the machinations of communal politics. “We are against majority and minority communalism,” says Teesta. “It is two sides of the same coin.”

And both threaten Indian democracy. “If you have a Bal Thackeray or a Narendra Modi who indulge in hate speeches, then there will be minority leaders like Syed Abdullah Bukhari (the former Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid) or Abu Asim Azmi (Samajwadi party leader) who will do the same thing,” says Teesta.

Because of this freedom to spew hate, communalism has infected the whole county. “The Sangh Parivar is very organised and systematic,” she says. “It has plenty of resources.”

The sad thing, Teesta says, is that right through the history of mankind a vicious ideology always spreads faster than something good. “People get excited when others are targeted,” she says. “The Parivar people say, ‘Hai, those Muslims have so many wives’. There is a sexual angle to it, and they use it to demean the other side.”

She says the tactics are similar to the one used by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels during Hitler’s rule in Germany. “We need to understand that an in-built bias against Muslims already exists within people,” she says. “Hence when Muslims are attacked, there is a quick acceptance.”

This not only happens with ordinary people but also with the custodians of law and order.

“In Maharashtra, 30 per cent of the police force is biased,” says Teesta. “The rest go along with the herd.” However, she says, the constabulary is less prejudiced than the officers.

Teesta says this pattern is reflected in society also. “The poorer sections are less communal,” she says. “During the 1992-93 riots at Mumbai, at cocktail parties people were justifying the riots by saying that the Muslims deserved to be taught a lesson.”

The Muslims were also taught a bloody lesson during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Six years later Gujarat has the peace of the graveyard. “There is a lot of flourishing economic development at one level, I don’t want to deny that,” she says. “But the Muslim community has been told how to behave.”

Teesta talks about the shrewdness of chief minister Narendra Modi. When the Nano car project came to Gujarat every television picture of Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata with Modi had Muslims, with their distinctive white topis, standing in front.

“Modi is consciously projecting an image he is a friend of the Muslims so that he can isolate people like us who are fighting for their cause,” she says.

So what is the mood inside the Muslim community after a state-sponsored genocide and years of hate propaganda, riots and bomb blasts?

“There is a deep feeling of alienation and fear,” says Teesta. She says Muslins feel estranged because of state discrimination in terms of jobs and other opportunities.

Then they experience police brutality first-hand. When riots or bomb blasts take place the maximum pick-ups are from Muslim areas. “This has been going on for 20 years,” says Teesta. “Now, because of the bomb blasts, there is an increase in extra-judicial killings, and that has created a lot of fear.”

Teesta talked about all this when she came to Kochi recently at the invitation of the Forum for Faith and Fraternity.

Says V.A. Mohammed Ashraf, joint secretary of the forum: “We are against all forms of communalism and terrorism. That is why we invited Teesta, an acclaimed campaigner against communalism.”

At the Maharaja’s College hall, the audience, which has a smattering of women, claps enthusiastically as Teesta says, “I have not read much of the Scriptures but I know the Constitution of India and it is as good a guide for any Indian to follow.”

Says businessman Ibrahim Kutty: “In her speech she voiced the feelings of a neutral person. She is a person without any prejudice.” Says I.K. Jayadev, lecturer in Islamic History at Maharaja’s College: “She came across as a person of deep humanism. Her speech was very truthful.”

And it is this truthfulness that is ruffling a lot of feathers, especially those of the extreme right. “I receive threats several times a week, either through e-mails, SMS or phone calls,” says the 2007 Padma Shri awardee. “Most of the time it is filthy sexual abuse. The problem with a fascist mind-set is that they don’t want to talk about the issues. Instead, they will only launch deeply personal attacks.”

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Joy to the world

(A series on childhood memories)

A youthful trip to Kashmir was the turning point in businessman Joy Alukkas’s life

By Shevlin Sebastian

One day when Joy Alukkas was in Class 1 at St. Joseph’s school at Thrissur the school principal Sr. Fatima came into the class and said, “Who has come to class without having breakfast? Please raise your hand.”

The reason she said this was because there was a food shortage raging through Kerala in the early sixties and many families were going through a hard time. Joy, who came from a well-to-do business family, raised his hand because he had actually forgotten to have breakfast.

“Apart from me, another boy raised his hand,” says Joy. Sr. Fatima took them to Class 2 and asked the same question. “Nobody raised their hands,” says Joy. “My sister was in that class and she gestured to me that she would box my ears after school was over. I also gestured that I would do the same to her.”

Joy had ten sisters and in each class there was a sister present when the principal swept into the various classes asking for hungry students. “By the time we reached Class ten, there were ten hungry students and all my sisters were very angry to see me in that group,” he says.

Thereafter Sr. Fatima took them to the convent and gave them something to eat. When school got over Joy usually walked home with his sisters. But that evening they all ran ahead of him.

“I shouted at them, ‘Why are you running away? I got a banana, an egg, and a glass of milk,” he says.

At home the sisters said, “Amma, Joy has embarrassed us by saying he has nothing to eat at home. We cannot show our face in school again.”

As expected, his mother took a stick and began beating him. “Even then I had no idea why I was being hit,” he says. “I ran into the fields as my mother chased me. Her anger lasted till the next day.”

Here is another memory: when Joy was in Class six he remembers how he bunked classes to attend the inauguration of the Ramdas theatre at Thrissur. A Hindi movie, ‘Purab Aur Paschim’ was being shown. The ticket cost 50 paise and Joy sat on the ground right in front of the screen.

Suddenly somebody called out to him. When he turned back he saw that it was his elder brother Paul. “He was studying in Class 8,” says Joy. “He shouted, ‘I am going to fix you.’ I got stunned. Then I recovered my wits and shouted back, ‘You have also bunked class, chettan. I will tell our parents if you open your mouth.’ He had no option but to keep quiet.”

When he was in Class 10 he got permission from his father, who had a shop selling umbrellas, apart from other businesses, to go to Kashmir along with two friends. “We wanted to experience the winter there,” he says.

So, one December day in 1970 they got onto a train at Thrissur and went to Delhi. From there they took the Jamu Tawi Express.

“When we arrived at Srinagar there was ice all over and it was bitterly cold,” he says. “We went to the Dal Lake and hired a house boat.” But within a day they fell into a crisis. Somebody stole their bags which contained Rs. 4000. “At that time, it was a lot of money,” he says. “We were penniless now.”

They managed to hitch a ride back on a truck to Delhi. There the group went to the Madras Café and begged the Malayali owner for some money. “He said we would have to work there to get some money,” he says. “We begged on the streets, to keep hunger pangs away. Finally, we got on to a Kerala-bound train and told passengers about our plight but nobody believed us.”

They ate leftover food. Twice, the Ticket Travelling Examiner threw them out. They would then get on to the next train. “We were so foolish that it never occurred to us that we could make a telephone call to our homes and ask them to send a money order,” he says.

Finally Joy reached Thrissur and went home. “I was so hungry I just ate and ate, had a long bath and slept for 24 hours,” he says.

It was the turning point in his life. “I understood how difficult it is to survive if you don’t have any money,” says the chairman of the Rs. 4000 crore company as he sits in his elegantly furnished first-floor office on Marine Drive.

Joy also felt confident that he could go to any place and even if he did not know the language and the social norms he could survive. So he had no hesitation to go to Dubai as a young man and start his own business. “I became fearless after the Kashmir fiasco,” he says. “I also learnt to be successful.”

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

The world of books and writers

For a writer stuck at his desk for years, a literary festival is an opportunity to meet fellow authors, publishers and readers. But there are downsides too

(Photo of Patrick French)

By Shevlin Sebastian

In 1990 when writer Patrick French was just out of college, he attended the world-famous Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales. However, he got a shock when he realised that to attend a talk he would have to pay 12 pounds. But that did not prove a deterrent to the quick-thinking French.

“I noticed that if you walked in through the exit nobody asked you for a ticket,” he says, with a grin, at the Kovalam literary festival. “So I was able to attend several talks.”

In 1991, former diplomat and author Shashi Tharoor was attending the same festival. “The programme advertised a dialogue between the Israeli writer David Grossman and British author Martin Amis,” says Tharoor.

What he found interesting and odd was that numerous policemen and Special Branch agents were hovering around. Everybody assumed it was because of the presence of Grossman.

Suddenly Salman Rushdie appeared on stage. He had been in hiding because of the fatwa issued against him in 1989 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini for his book, ‘The Satanic Verses’.

“That was extraordinarily exciting,” says Tharoor. “I was in the front row and had a chance to ask him a question and have a chat afterwards. At that time many of us wondered whether we would ever see Rushdie again.”

For French and Tharoor, who have attended dozens of festivals over the years, they have had exciting and not-so-exciting experiences. So what are the pros and cons of attending a festival? Says author Jaishree Mishra: “Since writing is a solitary occupation, you sort of lose touch with what is going on. So it is useful to talk to other writers and feel a sense of camaraderie. It is also a good place to meet publishers.”

At some events, like at the Jaipur festival, last year, agents landed up and authors had a chance to promote their work, she says.

V.K. Karthika, chief editor, HarperCollins, says she enjoys the intellectual stimulation that occurs at festivals. “As a publisher I am usually concentrating on what my company is doing and am involved with our writers,” she says. “But at a festival I get a chance to meet other writers and publishers. It gives me a new perspective, and I am able to see the big picture.”

For Jnanpith Award winner M.T. Vasudevan Nair, a festival is a place where you can meet a writer you admire. “It is the best place for an interaction,” he says.

Tharoor feels the biggest plus point is in seeing writers in the flesh. “They are not just bylines in newspapers or names on the covers of books,” he says.

Of course there are negatives, too. Karthika says there is a tendency on the part of organisers to focus on a writer’s body of work. “What I mean is that the spotlight is on the bigger writers and not on those who are coming up,” she says. “There should be an equal focus on emerging and established writers.”

Tharoor says that talking about writing does not make one a better writer. “It is taking away from what it is that has brought you here,” he says. French has similar views. “You become a performing writer, rather than a writing writer,” he says.

Meanwhile, Malayalam writer K. Satchidanandan repeats an oft-stated complaint: the alleged bias against regional writers at English festivals. “At the Kovalam festival only Malayalam and Urdu writers were represented,” he says. “However, this is just a beginning.”

Yes, indeed, this is the inaugural festival in Kerala and south India. Festivals are slowly catching on in India while in countries like the UK, USA, Japan and Australia it has been around for decades. And it seems Indian festivals are quite different from those abroad.

Says French: “Festivals here tend to be more official. They have felicitation ceremonies. They propagate the idea that the writer, especially those in the regional languages, is a major cultural figure.”

This can have a stifling effect on writers. “It can stop people from producing good work,” he says. “At the same time it is nice to give writers this elevated status, which we don’t enjoy in Britain.”

Karthika agrees: “In India the spotlight is always on the writers while abroad, it is on the public.”

However, the public at huge international festivals, like the Hay-on-Wey rarely get a chance to interact with writers one-on-one. “In Hay there is one entrance for writers and another one for the audience,” says Jaishree Mishra. “You need a security pass to get through.”

In stark contrast there is a homely atmosphere at Indian festivals where readers are able to have off-the-cuff conversations with writers.

Jaishree says British author, Ian McEwan, a 1998 Booker Prize winner, told her how enjoyable it was for him when readers came up to him at the Jaipur festival and said they loved ‘Atonement’. “You don’t get this sort of buzz at other international festivals,” he said.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

"If communalism wins, India dies"

Tehelka magazine editor and author Tarun Tejpal talks about the fissures that are tearing the country apart.

By Shevlin Sebastian

(Photo: The author with Tarun Tejpal (right) at the Taj Green Cove, Kovalam)

Tehelka magazine editor and author Tarun Tejpal came to the Kovalam literary festival to give a talk on new trends in journalism and to read extracts from his upcoming novel, 'The Story of My Assassins', which will be published by HarperCollins in December. Barely had he sat down at the outdoor café at the Taj Green Grove to have a conversation that a young woman came up with a paperback edition of Tejpal's best-selling novel, 'The Alchemy of Desire'. "Please, Mr Tejpal, can you sign it?" she says. The author obliged, as she says, with deep feeling, "I loved the book. I feel very close to the characters."

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Any idea why Alchemy has had such a strong impact?
If you write about emotions and human experiences it has a resonance. People love and suffer in the same way everywhere in the world. I get emails every week from people who have been moved by the book. And it keeps getting published in more and more languages. Right now, it is doing well in Romania, so I am getting mails from there.

Which role do you like more: writer or editor?
Journalism is what I do day in and day out. It is the priority of my life. So, I have to struggle very hard to find the time to write the literary fiction. There is no fixed schedule, time or place. I take my laptop along with me and whenever I find time I write. Being an editor in India and to do the kind of journalism Tehelka does is very challenging.

How is Tehelka doing?
The magazine is losing a lot of money. I have to keep finding investors. It's a daily struggle. But, on the positive side, Tehelka's work garners global acclaim. In fact, former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown, when she was inducted into the Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in the US, named Tehelka as among her five favourite magazines. There is acclaim in India also. Those who count, from the Prime Minister’s Office downwards, read it. We do the best we can to uphold public interest journalism.

How is Indian journalism doing these days?
There is too much of an obsession with Bollywood, business and cricket. There is a fixation with the trivial and the decorative end of journalism, and very little with the genuine, societal, deep end of journalism. We need journalism of empathy. Journalists must fight for the fundamental virtues – the values of liberal thought, tolerance, equality and justice. It is sad, but I don't think the Indian media is living up to its enormous challenges.

What about the middle class? Is it living up to the challenges?
The middle class is just too self-serving. It fails to see it needs a commitment and engagement with the idea of India. It should think outside of itself. When the house collapses it takes everybody along -- not just the poor, but also the rich. So, it is in the self-interest of middle class and elite India to start giving back to society, to start constructing a society that is unbiased.

Your comment on the attacks on the Christian communities in Karnataka and Orissa?
It is shameful. All bigotry and hate should be curtailed. It is time for India to enact hate laws. No hate in speech, writing or education. Mahatma Gandhi was a great believer in individual liberty but there was one thing which he believed in strongly: The state must be absolutely firm in imposing laws to prevent the creation of any kind of enmity in schools and colleges.

Today, there are thousands of educational institutions of the right wing and the minorities, which are creating a culture of hate. If you sow hate, you will reap hate. And that is what is happening now. In Karnataka and Orissa we are seeing the absence of empathy. We cannot imagine the other's lives, that they are as human as you and I.

Apparently, private surveys suggest that the support for the BJP has increased after these attacks.
If it is true, it is frightening and tragic. If the idea is to polarise the country and thereby win elections, it is the worst thing that can happen to India. We need to fight it. The very idea of India is under threat. We have regional wars, caste wars, language wars, religious wars – we are in real trouble. To put it simply, if communalism wins, India dies.

Does that mean India will break up?
Anything is possible. We always think the world is what it is. But things are changing all the time. Sixty years ago there were 550 principalities and kingdoms in India, but all that was yoked together to create the idea of India. Remember, East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971. If we do not protect the idea of India in the way the founding fathers had envisioned, anything can happen.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

‘There is a thirst for non-fiction in India’

Interview: Mike Bryan, CEO and President, Penguin Books India

By Shevlin Sebastian

When Mike Bryan, 52, the CEO and President of Penguin Books India sits down at the outdoor café at the Taj Green Cove, at Kovalam, and stares out at the beach, he exclaims, “Isn’t this paradise?” Moments later author William Dalrymple stops by, and Bryan says, “Pirated copies of your books are being sold at major traffic signals in Delhi and Mumbai.”
“What are you doing about it?” says Dalrymple.
“We have been conducting raids,” says Bryan. “But these guys are always one step ahead of us. The one way to counter them is to sell at traffic signals ourselves but that is, of course, illegal.”
“Play it dirty, Mike,” says Dalrymple.
“I could get arrested for it,” says Bryan, and they both laugh.

Excerpts from the interview:

What sells more these days in India: fiction or non-fiction?
There is a thirst for non-fiction. There is an aspiration in most Indians to get on in their lives and careers.

In non-fiction, which genre sells the most?
Self-help books. If you read interviews of Bollywood stars or Page 3 personalities they are reading books by Paulo Coelho, Richard Bach’s ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ and Antoine de Saint Exupery’s ‘The Little Prince’. These are the perennial classics in this genre.

Management self-help books also do well. One example is Subroto Bagchi, the COO of MindTree Consulting. His latest, ‘Go kiss the world’, is a wisdom book. It is emotional, enthusiastic and written well. If you are looking for a book that touches the Indian nerve, it is Bagchi’s book.

What about literary fiction?
There is a market for that also. So you have books like ‘The White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga and ‘Sea Of Poppies’ by Amitav Ghosh, both nominated for the 2008 Booker Prize short-list, and selling in prodigious amounts.

How has been your foray into local languages like Hindi and Malayalam?
We are about to launch in Malayalam. Between Hindi and Malayalam, we will be publishing 60 titles. Hindi is growing at the same rate as the English division.

How serious is the threat from audio and e-books like Amazon’s Kindle? Audio and Kindle are opportunities. Audio books have been with us for a long time. It is a small part of the market and will continue to remain so. As for e-books Penguin is selling quite a number of them. According to Amazon, it has sold 2.5lakh units of Kindle, so that is potentially a huge market. While e-books are the quick, easy, almost ephemeral way of reading, there is a move in the other direction.

What is that?
Producing books as art. These books have high quality binding, illustrations and paper. Recently, we published ‘The Life of Pi’ by Yann Martel in this format and it sold well. We brought out Penguin classics, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Gustave Flaubert, created by major designers, priced at 100 pounds and it was a success. We just published the latest James Bond book, ‘Devil May Care’ in a limited edition with [car manufacturer] Bentley at 750 pounds and it sold out immediately. There is a community of bibliophiles who want top quality stuff. And I think it is bigger than we think.

Is this a surprise for you?
Not at all. I am a bibliophile myself and love beautiful books. What surprised me was the size of the market for these books.

You have announced that Penguin is planning an entry in Pakistan and the Middle East countries. How big is the market in these countries? There is a big English-reading population in Pakistan and they are interested in Indian writing because of a shared history. There is also an avid interest in India for Pakistani writers. This is potentially a huge growth area for Penguin India and its authors.

How good is Pakistani writing?
There is a great new wave of Pakistani writers coming up: Mohsin Hamid, the author of ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and Mohammed Hanif, of ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ are examples of this.

What about the Middle East?
We are opening shops in Dubai because we expect Indians and Pakistanis as well as the expatriate population to buy our books.

Who is your most successful author?
I am not prepared to answer that. There are far too many, to mention any single one.

In terms of sales somebody must be No. 1.
I can’t possibly say it. It will be unfair to the other authors. But this is what I can say: mass market titles sell more than literary fiction.

What is the new development in Indian writing?
There is a wave of commercial authors coming up. Writers like Meenakshi Reddy Mahadevan, Anuja Chauhan and Chetan Bhagat. Earlier, there was only Shobhaa De.

Rupa’s Chetan Bhagat has sold lakhs of copies of his novels. Any idea why he is so successful?
Chetan Bhagat writes very well. It’s not literature, but he strikes a chord with readers.

Is Penguin looking for somebody similar?
Definitely. Of course Chetan could publish with Penguin if he wants. We would love that. However, I can’t do that to R.K. Mehra (publisher of Rupa). He is a good friend of mine.

What does Penguin hope to gain from the Kovalam literary festival?
It’s a great way to publicise writing of different genres and getting people together. There is nothing quite like an author talking about his book. Listening to Jaishree Mishra talk about her book, ‘Rani’, was very illuminating. For the public here in Kerala it is a great opportunity. I wish more local people were involved because they are missing out. The public needs to understand this is for them. It’s better than watching some awful quiz show on television.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)

Sea, sand and a cocktail of ideas

The Kovalam literary festival, the first of its kind in Kerala, has been well received. Authors, publishers and readers enjoy the close interaction with each other

By Shevlin Sebastian

"You didn't know that Jaishree Misra is the grand-daughter of the great Malayali writer, Thakazhi," says one visitor, with arched eyebrows, to his friend at the first Kovalam Literary Festival.

"You learn something new every day," says the friend. Yes, indeed, the Kovalam literary festival is a place where writers, readers and publishers get a chance to know each other better and learn something new.

"The crowd is a little sparse today." But even as she speaks several students of the Arya Central School stream in.

Outside, near the aquamarine swimming pool television journalist Sunil Sethi is hustling his crew to set up things for an interview with poet Gulzar, who looks resplendent in a starched white kurta-pyjama.

Earlier, Gulzar had told the audience about his excitement when former diplomat Shashi Tharoor, raised in Kolkata, had spoken a few words in Bengali to him. "Rabindranath Tagore is my guru," he says, by way of explanation.

The view is splendid: coconut trees and flowering plants all over. And in the distance there is the soothing sight of waves hitting the beach in a relentless flow.

"It's probably one of the most beautiful places to hold a festival," says Patrick French, the author of 'The World Is What It Is', the biography of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, who has already attended 12 books festivals all over the world this year to promote the book.

Jaishree Misra, who had given a talk on her book, Rani (of Jhansi) spoke of her chance opportunity to travel with Malayalam writer, K. Satchidanandan in a cab.

"In 15 minutes I learnt more about translations by talking to Satchidanandan than in my entire life," she says.

There is an enthralling conversation between Patrick French and William Dalrymple about the pros and cons of writing a biography on an irascible subject as Naipaul. "But he never interfered with my work," says French. "For Naipaul the truth was paramount."

French gives some statistics behind the 500 plus page biography. "I must have read around 50,000 documents, more than 400 letters of correspondence and did hundreds of interviews across three countries," he says. The audience exhales a collective breath.

Jnanpith Award winner M.T. Vasudevan Nair spoke about the great impact of the poem, 'Ramanan', written by Changampuzha and how, as a child, he was deputed to race to the next village to obtain a copy.

On the sidelines, chick-lit author Meenakshi Reddy Mahadevan, of 'You are Here' fame tells a photographer, "Oh my God, I am not properly dressed for a photo shoot."
But he is a personable guy and is able to persuade Meenakshi that she looks just fine.

In the discussion of 'Writing in a globalised world', Satchidanandan speaks at length about the philosophical impact of the theme. When it is the turn of Mike Bryan, the CEO of Penguin Books, he says, "The only thing similar between me and Satchidanandan is that we are both wearing black shirts. Otherwise, our views differ. And I have a decidedly commercial attitude."

Karthika speaks about how frustrating it is that just a few writers, who have been published abroad, receive all the attention. "It is very sad," she says. She adds that in 11 years of visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair she has changed her attitude. "Now I don't give a damn about whether I can sell the rights of Indian authors abroad. The market in India is huge."

The Kovalam literary festival is a cosy affair and the atmosphere is informal. So, you have the pleasant sight of William Dalrymple and Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal sitting on the steps and having a chat. "It's great that a festival like this is finally taking place in Kerala," says M.T. Vasudevan Nair.

(Copyright: The New Indian Express, Kochi)