HOW UP DEFINES INDIA 2019 BREXIT IS NOT A PARTITION STORY WHO’S AFRAID OF DANCE BARS? w w w o p e n t h e m a g a z i n e c o m “Trump has a boyish crush on Putin” OPEN AN CONVERSATION february 2019 / rS 50 ENTER PRIYANKA CAN SHE SAVE THE DAY FOR RAHUL? THE FUTURE OF CITIES IS OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS There are moments in life we don’t want to miss That’s why Hitachi is co-creating solutions that help cities move towards what matters With longstanding expertise in both operational and information technologies, we’re making complex systems more responsive, intuitive and efficient, allowing people to travel smoothly through cities It’s one of the many ways we’re using our IoT platform to analyse data, predict what comes next and deliver Social Innovation for all social-innovation.hitachi contents february 2019 50 INDraPraSTHa aLONe IN SHaDOWLaND By Virendra Kapoor Tamil author Cho Dharman talks about his art and politics 34 By By V Shoba 54 MuMbaI NOTebOOK By Anil Dharker DraWINg THe LINe 44 14 Artist and writer Molly Crabapple on the joys and heartaches of journalism in a post-truth world 18 By Rahul Pandita OPeN eSSay Absolutely English By Roderick Matthews 58 aN INSTruMeNT Of geNIuS 18 Celebrating the extraordinary life and art of Vilayat Khan THe reTurN Of THe OrIgINaL gaNDHI MySTIQue By Devapriya Roy Rahul Gandhi gets the perfect ally 60 By Ullekh NP PreSeNT CONTINuOuS 24 uTTar PraDeSH THe STaTe Of THe NaTION 40 The India Art Fair returns with the fantastical, familiar, political and the ecological By Avantika Bhuyan Modi faces changing alliances and attitudes By PR Ramesh 65 50 HOLLyWOOD rePOrTer 30 Amy Adams on her new TV series Sharp Objects DaNCe barreD By Noel de Souza No matter how often the courts decide in favour of dance bars, the Maharashtra government will not let them operate 66 By Lhendup G Bhutia NOT PeOPLe LIKe uS Flight to safety 34 bOrN agaIN IN bOrNeO By Rajeev Masand 40 LeTTer frOM SINgaPOre 44 ‘TruMP HaS a bOyISH CruSH ON PuTIN’ An Indian identity crisis in the eastern Malaysian province of Sabah Family feud in paradise Open Conversation with historian and novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore By Moinak Mitra By Sunanda K Datta-Ray By Nandini Nair february 2019 Cover photograph by Ashish Sharma www.openthemagazine.com open mail editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor Pr ramesh ExEcutivE EditorS aresh Shirali, ullekh nP Editor-at-largE Siddharth Singh dEPuty EditorS madhavankutty Pillai (mumbai Bureau chief), rahul Pandita, amita Shah, v Shoba (Bangalore), nandini nair crEativE dirEctor rohit chawla art dirEctor Jyoti K Singh SEnior EditorS lhendup gyatso Bhutia (mumbai), moinak mitra aSSociatE EditorS vijay K Soni (Web), Sonali acharjee, aditya iyer, Shahina KK aSSiStant Editor vipul vivek chiEf of graPhicS Saurabh Singh SEnior dESignErS anup Banerjee, veer Pal Singh Photo Editor raul irani dEPuty Photo Editor ashish Sharma aSSociatE PuBliShEr Pankaj Jayaswal national hEad-EvEntS and initiativES arpita Sachin ahuja gEnEral managErS (advErtiSing) rashmi lata Swarup, Siddhartha Basu chatterjee (West), uma Srinivasan (South) national hEad-diStriBution and SalES ajay gupta rEgional hEadS-circulation d charles (South), melvin george (West), Basab ghosh (East) hEad-Production maneesh tyagi SEnior managEr (PrE-PrESS) Sharad tailang managEr-marKEting C letter of the week If not for the lone survivor, Sayeb Ali, who managed to escape and tell his story, the Meghalaya mine episode would have been yet another disaster known only to the owner with bodies buried inside that hellhole called a coal mine (‘The Depth of a Tragedy’, January 28th, 2019) The mine would then be temporarily abandoned to avoid any questions from new recruits sent down Local newspapers have been reporting this inhuman practice for long, but these get no traction in the state because the entire political process is fuelled by coal money Without money from the coal lobby, many of the present members of the Legislative Assembly and ministers in the Meghalaya government would not have won elections The Election Commission is a body with good intentions but unwilling to go the extra mile to check money power in politics The cost of mining in the state to the environment is incalculable, with three rivers—the Myntdu, Lunar and Lukha—in Jaintia Hills rendered toxic owing to acid mine drainage Despite this rampant destruction of the environment and loss of human lives, the state allows laissez-faire mining to continue on the plea that Meghalaya is a Sixth Schedule state Will the Supreme Court rise to the occasion and stop this deplorable practice once and for all? Patricia Mukhim Priya Singh chiEf dESignEr-marKEting champak Bhattacharjee cfo anil Bisht chiEf ExEcutivE & PuBliShEr neeraja chawla all rights reserved throughout the world reproduction in any manner is prohibited Editor: S Prasannarajan Printed and published by neeraja chawla on behalf of the owner, open media network Pvt ltd Printed at thomson Press india ltd, 18-35 milestone, delhi mathura road, faridabad-121007, (haryana) Published at 4, dda commercial complex, Panchsheel Park, new delhi-110017 Ph: (011) 48500500; fax: (011) 48500599 to subscribe, Whatsapp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com or call our toll free number 1800 102 7510 or email at: customercare@openmedianetwork.in for alliances, email alliances@openmedianetwork.in for advertising, email advt@openmedianetwork.in for any other queries/observations, email feedback@openmedianetwork.in Disclaimer ‘open avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing initiatives and Open takes no responsibility for the consequences of using products or services advertised in the magazine volume 11 issue for the week 29 January february 2019 total no of pages 68 fake news alert Fake news on social media will have far-reaching effects on the tone and trends of the General Election this year (‘WhatsWrong’, January 28th, 2019) Apart from regulating it, governments also need to adapt to it The irony is that political parties—in or out of power—are more likely to exploit the situation than come together to remedy it before the Lok Sabha elections Let’s hope after a new government is sworn in, all parties will meet to find ways to mitigate if not eliminate the problem 28th, 2019) As all sorts of marketing techniques like over-the-top advertisements become kosher, more and more misleading promises are made to influence voter sentiment Everyone and everything is fair game in this race to the bottom come up with an alternative Brexit plan quickly as the March 29th deadline is nearing No one seems to have the faintest clue about what lies ahead and what should be done Those who voted for Brexit two years back are still unsure about what to now, especially if there is a second referendum The interests of around 1.3 million Britons in the EU’s other 27 countries as well as of 3.8 million EU citizens in Britain are at stake Bal Govind cross-border voices Manisha Gera Baswani’s essay on her experience of and motivation for photographing Indian and Pakistani artists is yet another reminder that though politics M Kumar might separate us, history ensures we can never part what’s next for britain? ways (‘Home: A Divided British Prime Minister Memory’, January 28th, 2019) Theresa May should ideally Sadly, Pakistan, by banning have resigned after her EU Indian content on its TV and withdrawal plan was radio, betrays a lack of politidefeated in the House of cal maturity Its globetrotting Commons by a margin of Prime Minister Imran Khan over 2oo votes (‘Brexit Lesmust realise that countries Jaideep Mittra sons’, January 28th, 2019) But cannot live in isolation A free unlike David Cameron, she media is essential to a democthe electoral market chose to stay Her bet seems to racy Similarly, India should Politics is as much marketing have paid off, as she survived also allow Pakistani media now as electioneering a subsequent no-confidence broadcast rights Mahesh Kumar (‘NaMonetisation’, January motion But she will have to february 2019 INDRAPRASTHA virendra kapoor F inance Minister arun Jaitley’s decision to go to new York for a medical check-up was only known to his immediate family and a couple of doctors at the premier all india institute of Medical sciences (aiiMs) in Delhi no, not even his closest friends had a clue about it Of course, Prime Minister narendra Modi and BJP President amit shah were in the loop and knew why he needed to go for a check-up—to rule out even a remote chance of suspected cancerous cells in his body everyone else, including senior cabinet ministers, came to know when a viscerally anti-BJP internet portal splashed the news Who could have leaked it was the question that confronted top aiiMs doctors there was no question of any of the doctors having breathed a word, given their commitment to professional ethics the suspicion was now on hospital technicians, who handle medical monitors and other equipment used in the check-up of the Finance Minister some half-a-dozen technicians are now suspects, but no action is contemplated in the absence of firm evidence Meanwhile, as of now, the word from the Us is that Jaitley should be back only in the second half of February, depending on the doctors’ advice His wife Dolly and son rohan, a lawyer, are with him Jaitley remains in touch with the Finance Ministry and PMO through a hotline i DOn’t tHink MOst people notice such things, but the two sikh ministers in the february 2019 t Modi Government who even otherwise cut dashing figures follow a predetermined colour schedule for each day of the week for their turbans Minister of state (with independent charge) for Housing and Urban affairs Hardeep singh Puri, formerly india’s permanent representative to the United nations, and Minister of state for electronics & information technology ss ahluwalia have always sported colourful turbans for as long as i can recall if, say, it is blue for Puri on Mondays, it can be red for ahluwalia, or vice-versa, but no colour is repeated on any day of the week However, if you are looking for staid-coloured turbans in Parliament, you have to look at what the few sikh members of the congress party wear—that is, mostly white On the other hand, unsurprisingly, it is always blue for the akali Dal MPs and other senior members of this Punjab-centric party By the way, when it comes to turbans worn by former Prime Minister Manmohan singh, colour is the least noticeable part of it instead, what you notice is how far back on his cerebral forehead he manages to tie his ‘pugdi’ He MOvers anD shakers of Lutyens’ Page set may have spent several evenings bitching about it, but this modern tale of love breaking all barriers of age, class and career must be shared with the hoi polloi as well it seems a well-known businessman is divesting all his assets to set up a love nest far away from these shores Last heard, the two had zeroed in on south africa for their new home they met at a party sometime ago and, as they say, love blossomed she, a Latino beauty barely out of her teens, and he, a well-maintained gent from the minority community who looks a good decade or so younger than his mid-sixties, were so taken up with each other that they virtually cut themselves off from the rest of the world soon they decided on a life-long union coming from a large business family of Delhi now mired in all manner of controversies, the infatuated gent is giving it all up to spend the rest of his life with his lady love Of course, money is no problem, but what the passage of time would to the lovebirds remains unknown Meanwhile, talking of Page denizens, it is time suhel seth came out of his self-imposed purdah now that he has the statuesque fashion model Lakshmi Menon on his arm as his lawful spouse—the two cut a pretty figure—he should be seen more often than we have in recent weeks suhel should get back to being his usual boisterous-but-entertaining self Minus him, the party scene in the big metros is rather dull n www.openthemagazine.com MuMbai Notebook Anil Dharker J anuary starts in november in Mumbai Let me explain: the first month of the year has become synonymous with the Mumbai Marathon Early in november, as soon as the city’s oppressive October is over, you see early-morning runners on Marine Drive, Pedder road and Worli sea Face a few may fall by the wayside (‘Hey! running is hard work!’), but most of them will be taking the first painful steps to the marathon (or more likely, a half marathon) this year’s tata Mumbai Marathon attracted a record number not all 46,417 who registered were serious runners: the full marathon (42 km) had 8,414 entries, the half marathon (21 km), 15,457 then there were the senior Citizens’ run, Disabled run and Open 10K run Most entries were for the Dream run (17,661), which isn’t a run at all, but a 6-km saunter through Mumbai streets right from the start, brothers anil and Vivek singh of Procam, who founded and organise the event, have ensured the Mumbai Marathon isn’t just about running, but a cause as a result, a considerable amount of money is raised for nGOs every year i have always regarded the Dream run as a bit of a joke, but it’s a vital part of the event for a number of reasons First, as long as one registers quickly enough, anyone can enter it, helping spread the word widely—about the marathon itself, and about keeping fit secondly, it’s a great platform for promoting causes, and there are many vying for attention Predictably this year, the Metoo movement was prominent, but so was the more quixotic ‘Men’s rights are human rights’, complemented by the chauvinistic ‘Husband is not an atM’ Both the Dream run and ‘Champions with Disability’ event, by their very nature, are full of human-interest stories Like the participation of 650 epilepsy patients from the Epilepsy Foundation and their caretakers; army veterans who lost both legs but now compete in wheelchairs; special Children campaigning for accessibility in public places; children with Down syndrome taking part with help from their parents… that’s the human face of the Mumbai Marathon the athletic face is of elite runners, almost all of them from africa, who run to win, and run to win big ($45,000 each to winners of the men’s and women’s marathons) that’s the real thing: tall, thin, black bodies from Kenya, Ethiopia, uganda, tanzania, striding rhythmically for two hours or more, bunched together for most of the distance, till one makes a break for it chased by others this year, the men’s winner, Cosmos Lagat of Kenya, broke away as early as the 29-km mark, and put so much distance between himself and the pack that he was finally running against himself He finished in hours, minutes, 15 seconds that’s like running the whole distance at nearly 20 kmph Drive at that speed in your car and see how amazingly fast that is W Hat Wasn’t runninG at 20 kmph or even kmph were BEst buses for nine full days in early January when BEst’s employees went on strike Hopefully, the resulting chaos drove a point into obdurate Mantralaya heads that Mumbai’s bus service is not a nuisance to be tolerated, but a vital cog in the city’s transport infrastructure that needs to be nurtured, developed and helped to grow nearly million commuters use BEst’s red buses for their daily office commute, either directly from home to workplace, or from train stations to the office since Mumbai’s population keeps growing, you would expect the figure of bus commuters a decade ago would be much lower than million in fact, it was nearly 4.3 million in 2007-08; and that figure was more or less constant in the previous 20 years Why on earth would the number decline? the primary reason is that bus journeys are uncomfortable and now take too long Discomfort is due to overcrowding and poor maintenance of already rickety buses, while slow journeys are due to the daily increase of private cars, taxis and autorickshaws the government sees the increasing demand for public vehicles for hire (taxis, auto-rickshaws), and licenses more and more of them, thus clogging roads further, slowing down journeys even more, so that more people abandon buses and go for taxis, auto-rickshaws and cars… now suppose you had fewer of these, and better buses, wouldn’t you reverse the trend and make commuting less painful? that’s what London has done: efficiently run and comfortable buses come by frequently, while an electronic ticker at each stop helps track the waiting period London has changed its emphasis to public transport by improving it while making private transport expensive Mumbai is doing the opposite, and as a result everyone loses Correction: not everyone Big-ticket projects like the coastal road, flyovers, etcetera, cost lots of money, which means i didn’t say it you thought it n february 2019 APOLLO PROTON CANCER CENTRE A NEW FRONTIER IN CANCER CARE NOW IN INDIA Cancer is one of the most devastating Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Proton is a bold, decisive step in India’s fight against cancer A milestone in Apollo Hospital’s commitment to tackle the tsunami of NCDs It is a moment of pride for every Indian as we welcome the first Proton Therapy Centre in South East Asia Dr Prathap C Reddy Chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group 1860 500 2850 www.apolloprotoncentre.com sauraBh siNgh openings Siddaganga Mutt (1907-2019) NOTEBOOK The Seer wiTh a Social conScience I n the late 50s, for students of Siddaganga Mutt school in Karnataka’s tumkur district, the day began at 5.30 am with prayers, after which they would be sent to gather stones from fields to build educational institutions as a 12-year-old, Chambi Puranik hated that task Being from the city, he found it difficult to adjust to the discipline and rigorous routine at the school, often slipping out with friends to watch english movies then one morning, he heard the head pontiff Shivakumara Swami say in a lecture that one should be honest to one’s “antaratma” (soul) It was a lesson he kept in mind all his life, even though after four months Puranik left the school and returned to the city “I could not manage that was my shortcoming But that short stay taught me integrity,” says Puranik, an educationist and former professor of political science at University of Mysore, who continued to visit the seer regularly every morning, the pontiff would engage with children as part of an exer8 cise to impart what some describe as ‘education with ethics’ In 1958-59, the school had a few thousand students and Puranik recalls they came from all religions and castes “he was a visionary he realised the importance of education for all, particularly the poor It was till then a privilege of the elite It is injustice to call him a ‘lingayat pontiff’ he was much more than that,” he says When Shivakumara Swami took over as the head of the math in 1941 it had just four educational institutions under it today, it runs around 130 schools with 15,000 students Fires in the math kitchen have been burning since 1917 to serve rice and raagi balls with curd, apart from vegetables grown in its fields Shivakumara Swami carried on the tradition of anna Dashooha, providing three meals a day, inspecting the food himself almost daily In the late 70s, he is believed to have agreed to a demand for ‘sah-pankti bhojanam’ (all castes eating together) later, then Chief Minister Ramakrishna hegde gave land to maths to set up institutes Puranik says at one february 2019 meeting with him, the seer expressed sadness over corruption and told him officials and politicians were demanding bribes to release grants to educational institutions By the time he passed away on January 21st, at the age of 111, he was called nadedaduva Devaru (‘walking god’) Condolences poured in from leaders across parties, including Prime Minister narendra Modi and Congress President Rahul Gandhi Politicians, from the last Maharaja of Mysore, the Gandhis, Modi to state leaders, have travelled to tumkur, 70 km from Bengaluru, for the pontiff’s blessings he, however, remained equidistant from all parties Mubarak ali Chhote Saab, a hostel in-charge at the math, says Swami treated poor visitors and politician alike Mubarak, who did his secondary school from the math in 1998, recalls the day eight years ago when he went back to it “Guruji told me there is no religion or caste here Whoever comes should work truthfully.” On another occasion while giving Mubarak fruits when he was about to break his Ramzan fast, he told him there is one God, but everyone has different ways of praying In the early 90s, the seer reportedly condemned the demolition of the Babri Masjid, saying that nobody had the right to destroy another’s place of worship his apolitical stance did not deter politicians “he had enormous influence on the people If he endorsed somebody, people would believe him,” says harish Ramaswamy, a political analyst the entire economy of tumkur, which became a centre for learning, changed “an educated ascetic himself, he taught the locals how to improve their lives and instilled spirituality in the hearts and minds of those who revered his math against a mere ritualistic way of life he was a model worth emulating even for the ordinary.” Initiated into the Viraktha ashrama in 1930 at 22, he believed in the ‘Kayaka’ (work) and ‘Dashooha’ (contributing to society) philosophy of Basavanna, a 12th century philosopher, poet and social reformer who revolted against caste and founded a community of lingayats whose political preferences are decisive in Karnataka the math was dragged into a political controversy in the run-up to the state elections in September 2017, when the Congress government granted the status of a separate religion to lingayats in a bid to wean away votes from the BJP, which was then led by BS Yeddyurappa, a lingayat himself the math had put out a statement at the time, clarifying it did not favour any division of the community “as head of one of the oldest maths, Shivakumara Swami was seen as one of the most revered and powerful voices among religious institutions and had the respect of all political parties,” says Sandeep Shastri, another political scientist Born Shivanna in Veerapura, Ramanagara district, he embodied what he preached Beginning his day at am, he would study for an hour By 3.30 am, he would be ready for meditation, puja and bhajans he spent two hours in the morning and evening with students at night, he would spend three hours studying the works of philosophers n By AmitA shAh february 2019 aFTErThOughT falSe alarM Puerile politics over eVM hacking allegations casts india in a bad light M UDSlInGInG anD OUtlanDISh accusations among rivals is normal fare in Indian politics It is also not unusual to hear allegations about abuse of official positions to further political ends at one time, in the 80s and early 90s, it was routine to hear about ballot stuffing and tampering of electoral processes this came to an end after the tn Seshan era at the election Commission of India (eC), when the first steps toward ensuring free-and-fair polls by creating processes to that end were taken Voter identity cards, once held as quixotic if not downright ‘anti-democratic’, were introduced a model code of conduct was put in place and preparations made to introduce electronic Voting Machines (eVMs) Indian democracy became all the more robust as a result of all this Unfortunately, that era seems to be at an end Recently, an unknown individual in london sought to demonstrate how eVMs could be hacked this was denounced by the eC and legal action has been initiated against the person But not before the Indian media lapped up these dubious claims, giving them the much-needed oxygen this is to the detriment of India’s democracy, as accusations against eVMs have never been substantiated last year, the eC held an open house of sorts where all parties were invited to participate and try their hand at hacking eVMs It is notable that one political party—known for making rather strange claims—did not participate all such charges of eVM vulnerability to hacking have remained unfounded It is interesting to note that almost all parties have claimed at some point or the other that eVMs can be manipulated this has become a joke First, usually before an election, it is claimed that eVMs can be tampered with and doubts are cast over the outcome of a yet-to-be-held ballot Second, once an accusing party wins the polls, these accusations are quietly buried Finally, it is the turn of the losing party to make wild allegations this has been seen repeatedly over the last five-odd years in state elections from Punjab to Bihar and from Madhya Pradesh to telangana It is another matter that none of these allegations have been substantiated this trend in Indian politics is dangerous, as it potentially erodes popular confidence in democracy It also casts some doubt on the maturity of political parties and both cast India in a bad light n www.openthemagazine.com openings POrTraiT Kamala Harris The ConTender They call her the female Obama but can she what Hillary Clinton couldn’t? W e don’t know the extent to which sexism played a role in the 2016 US presidential vote we cannot tell if Hillary Clinton failed to win the white House primarily because of her gender But what we can say with certainty is that trump won despite numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and a video clip of him bragging about groping women And yet, less than a term later, we already have four high-profile women democrats—tulsi Gabbard, kirsten Gillibrand, elizabeth warren and now kamala Harris—who have announced plans to run for president in 2020, with a fifth, Amy klobuchar, also said to be considering it Already, this means the largest number of female candidates at a presidential primary, at least in recent times there’s good reason to believe America is at an inflection point when it comes to matters of gender justice the trump presidency appears to have galvanised women they took to the streets in large numbers on trump’s Inauguration day And more recently, they ran and won in record numbers in America’s mid-term polls From the current list, there are few who have generated as much interest as kamala Harris Her announcement was bathed in symbolism She chose to enter the race on January 21st, on Martin Luther king Jr holiday, an overt nod saurabh singh to the historic nature of her candidacy the design for her campaign logo was reminiscent of the pin-on buttons used in 1972 by Shirley Chisholm, the first woman and African-American to seek a major political party’s nomination for president Harris, although a first-time senator with little sway outside her home state of California, is seen as a formidable candidate She is something of a star in the making in the democratic Party Born in 1964 to immigrant parents—her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher, was born in India; her father, donald Harris, an economics professor, was born in Jamaica—she was already dubbed the female obama when she ran for the senate a few years ago Much of the excitement is justified If she were to win the primary race for the democratic nomination, she’d become the country’s first woman of colour to be put up by a major political party for the white House And it isn’t just about optics Since arriving in the Senate, Harris has built a reputation for tough talk Her prosecutorial style of questioning trump administration officials at congressional hearings has won admirers In one particularly combative exchange with Jeff Sessions, a former attorney general, he even said her rushed questions were making him “nervous” during the recent mid-term elections, Harris campaigned on behalf of women and minority candidates She has a Bernie Sanderslike liberal agenda, backing ‘Medicare for All’ and vowing not to accept donations from corporate political action committees (She raised $1.5 million from 38,000 donors in the first 24 hours of her campaign, matching Sanders’ record.) She is said to have close ties with the African-American community of course, even if Harris—or any other female candidate—goes on to get the nomination, the going won’t be easy women candidates face more suspicion and scrutiny the New York Times reported a study conducted by political scientist dan Cassino in 2016 when half a sample of male voters in new Jersey were told women now out-earn men in several households, asked if it was true in theirs, and then asked to choose between Clinton and trump for president, they favoured trump those who didn’t have the question posed that way chose Clinton Asked to pick between Sanders and trump, the two groups showed no such difference Clinton came quite close to shattering the proverbial glass ceiling If one is to go by all the excitement kamala Harris’ announcement has sparked, there’s no reason another woman won’t take a stab at it in 2020 n By Lhendup g Bhutia 10 february 2019 books Drawing the line Artist and writer Molly Crabapple on the joys and heartaches of journalism in a post-truth world By Rahul Pandita In the 2000s, the New Yorkbased illustrator-journalist Molly Crabapple worked briefly as a nude model she had a certain clarity about it “I simply wanted to earn more than minimum wage in retail and to be able to get time to focus on my work,” she says the ‘work’ then was to just draw It is in the last few years that Crabapple has used her drawing skills, combined with writing, to tell some of the most tragic stories as a journalist Drawing is in Crabapple’s blood her mother was a book illustrator, a Jew married to a Marxist professor whose roots were in Puerto Rico About ten years ago, Crabapple became an in-house 54 artist at the Box, a night club in Lower east side, famous for its burlesque performances Crabapple remembers the first time she saw the club on the invitation of a performer in one of their revues “It looked like a Victorian brothel,” she says It was a place for fun and frolic for the moneyed—from saudi princes to hedge fund managers she remembers them coming there night after night, ordering over-priced champagne to show off to each other she had earlier worked as a dancer But in the club, on seeing her drawings, one of its co-founders was impressed and appointed her as the place’s own ‘toulouse-Lautrec’, a reference to the artist henri de toulouse-Lautrec who in 19th century painted scenes at the Moulin Rouge every night, Crabapple began to draw—among other things—the audience as pigs snorting cocaine But Crabapple also remembers the club for great performances there were dancers, acrobats, fire-eaters and a “little person” who became her friend together, they displayed a certain cruelty towards the audience “It was class war in the form of a nightclub,” she says It was a defining time for her and her art Among the artists there was a famous anecdote about how in 1890, edward VII, then Prince of Wales, visited the legendary Parisian cabaret Moulin Rouge, february 2019 a studio,” she says But that is not how it was seen by many “Because in their minds, a nightclub is a feminine space and women are basically trivial,” she says When she was eight, Crabapple’s parents got divorced and she moved to Long Island Childhood meant feeling an acute sense of isolation and cutting school to visit libraries in New York “I just wanted to get out I wanted to be done with school, with childhood and come to the big city and make myself,” she says she insists that she was not an oppressed child, but that even normal parental restrictions and school rules shaped her world view “It gave me a visceral sense of anger that nobody should be told what to do,” she says At seventeen, Crabapple passed high school she used the money her grandfather had left her around that time to travel to Morocco A year later, she went to turkey all the way up to the syrian border It was a mad thing to do, she recalls she fell in love with the Arabic language and Arabesque architecture “I used my money to take night classes in Arabic till I whom she asked how the towers were and he replied they were gone and then went hysterical she remembers for days seeing missing-people posters — of men and women who worked at the Wall street to undocumented people who worked in the restaurant on the top floor of the World trade Center What made her angry, she says, was how the rest of America appropriated what she calls a ‘New York tragedy’ “they look down upon us for a variety of reasons And then they appropriated our tragedy to justify things which we didn’t want,” she says the thing at least Crabapple didn’t want was the War, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq the Iraq War particularly terrified her “I thought that the invasion of Iraq will be the end of the world,” she says she started spending all her free time going to the anti-war protests she felt she had limitations “the Left at least in America can sound very exclusionary in the sense that you don’t deserve a place unless you have read the right kind of books and can put forth the right theory.” “I started envyIng journalIsts What Were We doIng as artIsts, I thought, sIttIng In our studIos, plagIarIsIng our last most successful Work and tryIng to Woo rIch people?” molly crabapple Photograph by ashish sharma and the popular dancer Louise Weber, popularly known as her stage name of La Goulue, took his hat off with a flying kick By the time she started drawing at the club, her name had been Molly Crabapple for six years her real name is Jennifer Caban, but a man she knew then gave her this name and it stuck the greatest learning from her work at the club was that she learnt to draw fast Crabapple remembers that it came very handy when later she got a chance to draw at the Guantánamo Bay in 2013 she could quickly capture the changing scene, and distil essentials in a short time “It was the exact opposite of working in february 2019 ran out of money,” she says It was also the year when 9/11 happened that morning Crabapple remembers being at an uptown café she was just two days short of her 18th birthday On tV, news of the first plane hitting the tower came in But she did not think too much of it she had heard the story of a B-25 Mitchell Bomber plane crashing into the empire state Building in 1945 “I was thinking, ‘here comes the new idiot,’ and just then, the second plane hit the towers,” she recounts she remembers walking downtown to see what had happened “I walked till I couldn’t walk anymore because there were people from the other side fleeing.” she met a man But Crabapple’s moment with journalism came later in 2011, during the Occupy Wall street protests she lived close to the site of the protest in Zuccotti Park It was winter; there weren’t too many places to hang around indoors so she offered journalists her place to charge their phones, get coffee “It is then that I started envying them What were we doing as artists, I thought, sitting in our studios, plagiarising our last most successful work and trying to woo rich people?” she recalls her interactions led her to collaborate with the British journalist Laurie Penny together they went to Greece to a short book which she illustrated “seeing www.openthemagazine.com 55 books her at work gave me lot of education, from how to ask questions to how to find sources,” she says Crabapple’s arrest during the Occupy protests in 2012 led to her first writing assignment, from CNN, and from that came a column in Vice It sent her to report from Guantánamo Bay in 2013 Gradually, she learnt things A lesson she says she learnt early on was to build expertise if one didn’t have it “early in my career, I didn’t have it so, I worked hard, worked more so that nobody can say, for example, ‘hey, what you know about, say, syria?’” she says these experiences resulted in her first book, Drawing Blood In 2015, Crabapple struck an online friendship with Marwan hisham, a young man from Raqqa in syria, which was the de facto capital of the IsIs he began sending her photos he took surreptitiously and at massive risk, which she drew from and he wrote captions for this resulted in three pieces for Vanity Fair the friendship continued for one-and-a-half years, before the two decided to a book together hisham moved to turkey, and Crabapple spent the next two years travelling back and forth to Istanbul to work with him “I t WAs AN equal collaboration I wrote half of it and [hisham] art-directed every single image,” she says While, in their Vanity Fair pieces, Crabapple had drawn illustrations based on pictures that hisham had sent, such photos were not available for Brothers of the Gun, (which they coauthored) either because the events took place in Marwan’s childhood, or because they happened at moments like checkpoints when it would have been too risky to take out a camera so, he would just describe a scene to her or draw a rough sketch himself sometimes to get the architecture and so on right, he would send her old pictures—for example, of a café owned by his uncle and frequented by IsIs fighters she also used citizen 56 “If I had another lIfe and another career, I Would lIke to lIve In mumbaI It Is one of the coolest cItIes In the World” molly crabapple videos, sometimes creating montages of hundreds of screenshots to produce a single image Back in Raqqa, hisham had taken notes on his phone for a potential book (it would have been too risky to have these notes sitting around on a laptop) “In Istanbul, we would sit together and go through these I would say what details needed to be filled in, what characters needed to be filled out What Americans wouldn’t understand I’d write a chapter, he’d write a chapter And then he would read what I had written and say, ‘this is clichéd’ or ‘this is.’ And he would rewrite what I had written and then I would rewrite what he had written Back and forth, maybe six times that is how we got a fusion You don’t get that by sitting politely but by fighting,” Crabapple laughs she says she learnt a lot from him “Marwan has a degree inenglish literature, and he is the sort of guy who translates Beckett into Arabic just for fun so, he has a literary education I lack in a lot of ways By the same token, he has never been out of the Middle east,” she says, “and I perhaps helped his story become something Americans could understand.” Along came Donald trump Crabapple says she is still not a targeted group; but she has friends who are suffering immigration problems “It is important to focus on people who are actually under threat,” she says In the last few years, she has received her share of online troll abuse But that is part of the game, she feels “If I write about Palestine, someone will call me a ‘self-hating Jew’ If I write about the way America is kidnapping children from parents on its border, someone will say that I want to destroy the country.” But she feels it is also important to realise that a lot of the harassment journalists face is done by states; a lot of journalists who cover syria are abused by Russian bots and employees of Russian state media two books later, Crabapple’s struggle with writing is still alive “Art comes easy to me the way writing does not,” she smiles she has been to India thrice and loves Mumbai “If I had another life and another career, I would like to live in Mumbai It is one of the coolest cities in the world,” she says But she is also aware of India’s “vast amount of problems” she lists inequality and authoritarianism as two of them But America and India also have many tendencies in common “I feel ‘sickular’ will be adopted anytime in America now,” she laughs n february 2019 books ‘Vilayat Khan’s sitar was not an external prop; it had become an extension of his body, another limb He was his instrument, his instrument was him This is why his fingers often moved even when he was not playing His children and students would see his fingers move or tap while he was fast asleep The music never stopped.’ —Namita Devidayal in The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan T getty images An Instrument of Genius Celebrating the extraordinary life and art of Vilayat Khan By Devapriya Roy 58 he trouble with conventional biographies of geniuses is that the greater the number of facts packed in and more numerous the pieces of evidence marshalled by the biographer, the farther the subject seems to recede this is a mistake that Devidayal eschews in her wonderful new book, The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan, an almost unputdownable account of the life and times of the sitar maestro, whose legacy gets undersold at times in a global narrative that invariably ends up championing his arch-rival, Pandit ravi Shankar, as the greater artist (in fact, going straight to the heart of this musical relationship, Devidayal begins her book with an epic concert in Delhi in 1952, when the young and handsome Vilayat hussain Khan, only 24 years old, gatecrashed a performance of ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan during the Jhankar Festival Sparks flew, and how eventually, Vilayat Khan was declared the winner, and later, robu-da and Vilayat-bhai came to the agreement that ‘this should never happen again’) At the outset, Devidayal clarifies her stance: ‘i discovered very quickly that writing about Vilayat Khan is a bit like chasing a hologram everyone has a different memory of him, a different take on the story therefore, rather than obsess about factual accuracy, i have tried to create an impressionistic fluid portrait— of a magnificent artiste and a fragmented human being it would be a mistake to regard this strictly as a biography because february 2019 i am not a historian, but a lover of music and soon after, the Megaphone recording and a storyteller.’ Company produced a 78 rpm, featuring this intuitive approach is what both father and son makes all the difference Devidayal’s however, tragedy struck the family acute understanding of classical music in 1938, enayat Khan passed away at the and her novelist’s eye combine to tell prime of his musical career (over the the story of Vilayat Khan in an unconcourse of his royal sojourns, he’d become ventional narrative that achieves far an alcoholic.) Soon, money began to run more than a conventional biography out and fair-weather friends disappeared might have, especially in reaching out And paradoxically, it is this, the struggles to a non-specialised readership After all, of the next few years—financial troubles not everyone might know a two-note taan and picaresque adventures in Delhi from a gamak, but almost everyone can where Vilayat Khan landed up at All appreciate the anecdotes around the life india radio station, with only his kurta of a great artist, particularly the strobeon his back, clinging to his sitar—that lit arc that, in Devidayal’s telling, gives created a metaphorical furnace for the shape to the twists of destiny, which gold of his talent to be truly tested turned Khan into an extraordinary the biggest contribution to his art in performer as opposed to a these years was his mothmerely accomplished one er’s basheeran goaded Khan was, of course, him to practise and found born to the art form At unique ways to get him a time when music was the training he needed in mostly passed on within Devidayal’s nuanced narfamilies Vilayat Khan rative, basheeran was a scion of the etawah emerges as one of the Gharana, which is also most intriguing characcalled the imdadkhani ters, part-tiger mom and Gharana, after his grandpart-Mrs Morel i was father, the legendary Dada reminded of this anecdote imdad Khan from The Music Room, The sixTh sTring of VilayaT khan Dada imdad Khan Devidayal’s extraordinary Namita Devidayal spent a lot of time in first book: ‘Marriages bengal, where he had first were carefully and strateContext been invited by members gically arranged to ensure 264 Pages | Rs 699 of the tagore family, that the music remained and where the new elite, within known territory products of the bengal the women’s knowledge renaissance, had begun to show more of music was not to be taken lightly than a casual interest in hindustani Dhondutai told me a story about one of Classical music in general and the sitar the senior Khansahibs (Alladiya Khan in particular imdad Khan’s prodigious probably, or Jehangir Khan) when the son, enayat Khan, often called ‘bengal ka old man used to sit down to teach his Jadugar’, became a musician at the court sons, he never announced the raga he of the raja of Gowripur, and it is here that was teaching them he would just start Vilayat was born in 1928 eventually, with a slow rendition of notes, and then enayat Khan moved his rapidly growing stop to take a drag from his sheesh pipe, family to Calcutta, where he acquired after which the boys had to identify the a beautiful mansion in Park Circus: raga and pick up where he’d left off if riyaaz it is here that enayat Khan began they got it wrong, they were in trouble to teach his signature brand of music to Just after their father started, they would his young son At the age of eight, Vilayat fight each other to run into the kitchen opened the All-bengal Music Conference on the pretext of refilling his sheesh pipe at Madan theatre with raga bhairavi, so that they could grab their mother and february 2019 get her to identify what was being sung And she was never wrong.’ basheeran was a living embodiment of this even though she came from a family of intrepid vocalists herself, and her brother and father were quasi-gurus to Vilayat, she forbade him from singing professionally—something he loved— because his father and grandfather’s legacy had been the sitar and, as the eldest, it was his duty to take that forward eventually, this made the young and rebellious Vilayat strike upon a unique artistic compromise: if he could not sing, his sitar would And, subsequently Vilayat Khan reinvented the instrument, re-designing the modern sitar as it were As Devidayal traces the story of Vilayat Khan’s extraordinary life — warts and all—we get a sense of Khan’s obsessions (fine clothes and sumptuous feasts), his magnanimity (both charity and teaching) and his cruelty (that, at different times, drove a wedge between him and his beloved eldest son, Shujaat, who is one of india’s finest classical artists today, and his younger brother, imrat.) we also begin to understand not only Vilayat Khan’s contribution to the postindependence music scene in india but also how he shaped his own generation’s music, and understand why, ultimately, he left india to retire in Princeton Given that in india we hardly value the archival worth of ephemera—letters, posters, concert programmes, and that the only books available on music are academic ones (since training continues to be oral), it must have been difficult to research this book Devidayal has used her imagination with sophistication in excavating Khan’s life from unique resources: conversations with people who knew him closely, both family members and students, photographs, archival material; but most of all, she has relied upon her own appreciation of his music Vilayat Khan used to say that a raga should be performed such that the audience—and the artist—must see it standing in front of them within a few minutes if this rule were to extend to biographies as well, this one would certainly pass the Vilayat Khan test n www.openthemagazine.com 59 art present Continuous The India Art Fair returns with the fantastical, familiar, political and the ecological By Avantika Bhuyan A room engulfed in fog, where one can voice one’s deepest fears; a popup concept store offering products designed by contemporary artists; a series of unique works in beeswax; exploration of digital mediums; and a showcase of the world’s leading artists such as Ai Weiwei and Wolfgang Tillmans—with a series of projects and exhibits such as these, the 2019 edi- tion of the India Art fair seeks to paint a fresh portrait of art in Southeast Asia The four-day event has, for more than a decade, heralded the city’s cultural calendar However, last year, the tenth edition of the fair boasted of a series of firsts: a new leadership under director Jagdip Jagpal, strengthened programming and introduction of segments such as the Arts Project space But if the previous edition was about ‘rejuvenation’, 2019 is all about continuity— about persisting with the strands of thoughts which took root last year, and which connect various aspects of the fair, both old and new “last year, the minute I walked into the fair, I realised that we should have had a bookshop So, we are putting that in this year Also, we are bringing in a strong performance art programme with artists such as Sajan mani, Yasmin Jahan nupur and mithu Sen,” says Jagpal This year CmYK Bookstore with Taschen (leading art-book publishers) will bring a selection of books on the visual arts, along with a specially curated range of signed and limited edition books from Taschen that are tributes to few of the most important artists of all time, such as Annie leibovitz In sync with last year, this edition too will see 70 per cent space reserved for Indian galleries and 30 per cent for those from overseas The list of exhibitors has been pruned further, from 78 in 2018 to 75 this year, with the names ranging from galerie ISA and Chemould Prescott road (mumbai) to Shrine empire and PhotoInk (delhi) to Sokyo gallery (Kyoto), Aicon gallery (new York) and lukas feichtner galerie (Vienna), among a host of others “The focus is on quality and the manner in which art is displayed Also, we have made the sponsorship element as subtle as possible,” says Jagpal Hailing from across 24 Indian and international cities, these galleries will present a selection of works, spanning mediums and formats To ensure that the modernists and their stories are better represented, one will see participation by galleries such as dAg and dhoomimal, and works by artists like raja ravi Varma, Tyeb mehta, fn Souza and ram Kumar Vadehra too will be showing modern masters such as SH raza alongside senior contemporary artists like Arpita Singh, gulammohammed Sheikh, nalini malani, Shilpa gupta and rameshwar Baiju Parthan’s Red Pill- Blue Pill-elixiR foR BosschaeRt Courtesy Art Alive standing Radha in Blue By ravinder reddy Courtesy GAllery SumukhA Broota The highlights include new paintings by Atul dodiya, Jagannath Panda, Sudhir Patwardhan and Broota, besides a bronze sculpture by nS Harsha and an installation by gigi Scaria Contemporary art can be viewed within exhibits of galleries such as nature morte, whose booth has been split into three parts The first features a presentation of a new body of work by Jitish Kallat, which is part of series being showcased in a solo show at daniel Templon gallery, Paris, until march 9th ‘much of Kallat’s work of the past ten years has engaged with systems of time-keeping and chronological structures With these Palindrome Anagram paintings, we seem to be most attuned to a geologic Time Scale, a calibration of dating that relates to the strata of sedimentary rock and soil that constitute the surface of the earth,’ writes gallerist Peter nagy in an essay about this new set of works He further states: ‘While these new works begin with the factual data of scientific observation, technical diagrams, fossilized records, and botanical renderings, Kallat’s juxtapositions and aesthetic treatments bring them into the realm of Pseudoscience or perhaps even the occult.’ The other end of nature morte’s booth will feature a solo presentation of vintage prints from older series by dayanita Singh—black-and-white 62 works from Go Away Closer and colour ones from Dream Villa and House of Love These 20 prints constitute the last editions of these series, and this will be the final opportunity for collectors to acquire these images And right in the middle of the booth will be a group show with works by four artists: gauri gill, Tanya goel, martand Khosla and ln Tallur Another interesting showcase is by Art Alive, which seeks to document the evolving practices of artists such as Sakti Burman, manu Parekh, g Anjaneyulu and Baiju Parthan The idea is to place their oeuvre within the dynamic realm of contemporary art, as it stands today This edition will also see a number of international galleries return to the fair, including david Zwirner from london and Aicon gallery There are a couple of debutantes as well, such as neugerriemschneider from Berlin, which will be showing Red, Green Kaleidoscope by olafur eliasson, who has been playing with light, temperature and spatiality in his large-scale installations In december, his Ice Watch was displayed at the Tate, london, with a big block of glacial ice put to the task of moving viewers on the issue of climate change According to Jagpal, there is a stronger emphasis, this year, on giving people the opportunity to learn about art from the region “We are focusing on new col- lectors, helping them navigate the ecosystem, and aiding their understanding of things to keep in mind when buying their first artwork,” she says Hence, the Forum segment has been designed as a platform to encourage opportunities for the younger generation one will caRBon Wave By shanthamani muddaiah art see writer-researcher-curator, Sitara Chowfla, don the role of a guest curator and celebrate critical experimentation The Forum projects will have a series of talks and performances by artists extending into the main gallery halls A significant one is When All Roads Are One by new York-based artist-designer ghiora Aharoni “We have a couple of significant book launches and signings And also, artist memorial talks, such as the one that Prateek raja [of experimenter] is doing about Krishna reddy and Tunty Chauhan of Threshold Art gallery about Priya ravish mehra,” says Jagpal Then, there is the Hockey talk led by david Hockney’s friend and curator, edith devaney, and also What I did Last Summer by Idris Khan Another change is that instead of the usual panels, the talks this time around will be more case study-led, with more time for questions As always, institutions such as the foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (fICA) and the Kiran nadar museum of Art (KnmA), Serendipity Arts foundation and nepal Picture library will be present with their share of programming fICA will be presenting a project by Sudarshan Shetty, who is collaborating with two other artists, Aradhana Seth and ruchi Bakshi Sharma ‘While Aradhana will set up a photo booth with a scenography of a popular tourist place for people to get themselves photographed, ruchi will run workshops for children to make toys with paper I will set up a booth with small sculptures, which can be won by the fair visitors by throwing a ring over them,’ says Shetty in a note This year will see Bengaluru-based museum of Art and Photography (mAP)—which focuses on education, accessibility, awareness and conservation through loans from the collection, workshops and lectures—attend the fair for the second time In sync with its overall curatorial philosophy, at the fair too mAP seeks to break down boundaries between the different disciplines in its collection, and between what’s been Courtesy GAllery SumukhA “We are focusing on neW collectors, helping them navigate the ecosystem When buying their first artWork” Jagdip Jagpal director, India Art Fair considered as ‘low art’ and high art’, or ‘contemporary art’ and ‘tribal art’ According to Amit Kumar Jain, curator of the show, the mAP booth will look at works by Jyoti Bhatt, Jangarh Singh Shyam and J Swaminathan in a single curated space, thus looking at how these artists were inspired by the traditions of madhya Pradesh, and how their practices intertwined and evolved The idea is to get works that most Indian audiences might not get to see otherwise “To showcase the future of art, we are pleased to work with the Inlaks Shivdasani foundation, which will be showing works of recent awardees, in addition to those by some of its fantastic alumni People need to see the value of building museums and finding art education,” says Jagpal W HIle PAInTIngS Are being covered by the main exhibition halls, a melange of mediums and materials—ranging from sound, the found object, video and interactive installations—is being highlighted in the Focus segment It features seven solo presentations by artists who have found a strong voice of expression using unique materials such as beeswax and thread These include works by Vadodara-based Bhagyashree Suthar (Akara Art), Prajjwal Choudhury (gallery latitude 28), Aisha Khalid (exhibit 320), Thota Vaikuntam (Kalakriti Art gallery), Aditi Singh (Thomas erben/ Chemould Prescott road), and more especially striking are Suthar’s works, featuring a play of the fantastical and the familiar Informed by the roman and gothic construction, her practice is heavily influenced by architecture as well as geometric patterns in nature “Imagining the city of the future has always fascinated me, and I draw inspiration from British-Iraqi architect, Zaha Hadid’s fluid designs,” says Suthar Her practice, so far, has revolved around using beeswax—sourced from her hometown—as a medium to create sculptures and wax painting She considers it an innovative material, which www.openthemagazine.com 63 art can be moulded to create the fantastical world reflected in her mind Then, there is Prajjwal Choudhury’s series, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters—watercolour paintings created by pasting hundreds of layers of paper together to present an altogether new image of the body ‘These works join the autobiographical—they are paintings of Choudhury and his wife, and the fantastical, with punctuated jalees, ominous animals and mysterious volumes enveloping the body,’ writes mila Samdub Instituted last year, the Art Projects section has grown bigger in this edition, with eleven large-scale works being showcased, ranging from immersive installations to sculptures and video works one will get to see the Postcards from Home series (presented by gallery espace) by manisha gera Baswani, versions of which have been shown at the lahore Biennale and the Kochi muziris Biennale 2018 as well In Postcards from Home she has created 47 postcards, featuring 25 Indian and 22 Pakistani artists, photographed by her in their studios Then there is an installation by Pinakin Patel (presented by emami Art), which provides food for thought “In India, every idol you find has an origin in nature as a stone It has no features,” says Patel His work draws on an age-old story of a traveller having placed a stone under a banyan tree The next day, a lady smeared vermillion on it Soon beauty turned into divinity and it started being worshipped According to Patel, this parallel between beauty and divinity invites the creative-minded to focus on this commonality as a reverence for life 64 Also interesting is the work, Change Room, by self-taught artist Baaraan Ijlal, which emerged from a residency at the Conflictorium in Ahmedabad She recorded voices of people, hailing from a cross-section of society, and played them to an audience in a fog-filled room “It has become a space where you can talk about fear in anonymity You feel free to talk about emotions, which you might not express otherwise,” says Anahita Taneja of Prameya Art foundation, which is presenting this work She has chosen to bring it to the India Art fair, as it presents a space where lots of people can engage with it “There are headphones all over, so you can listen to recordings In another fogged up area, there is a recorder for you to express your fears It’s a space where you can just let yourself be,” she says Courtesy the ArtiSt And neuGerriemSchneider, Berlin if the 2018 fair Was about ‘rejuvenation’, then 2019 is all about ‘continuity’—about persisting With the str ands of thoughts Which took root last year continued infinite conveRsation (Red, gReen) By Olafur eliassOn Just like at the Kochi Biennale 2018, where the theme of ecological catastrophe dominated some of the works, at the fair too, one can see a fair share of projects centred around this; take, for instance, Shanthamani muddaiah’s Carbon Wave (presented by gallery Sumukha), an introspective piece that questions our understanding of nature and sustainability The greek myth of Cumaean Sibyl, and its treatment in michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and TS eliot’s The Waste Land, are referenced to in madhusudhanan’s video installation, Alappuzha Lighthouse, presented by Vadehra Art gallery He draws on themes of life and afterlife, and combines these with memories of a lighthouse in his birthplace of Alappuzha, which stopped working in 1947 and stand as a derelict reminder of the past While these projects take place within the fair venue of nSIC grounds in okhla, a parallel programme of collateral events will take place across galleries, museums and art spaces in delhi These include Bharti Kher’s solo at Bikaner House, a retrospective of Arpita Singh’s oeuvre at the KnmA, a show of Bengal masters by emami Art at the Triveni Kala Sangam, and Nowthere—an exhibition of works by eight artists from four countries, India, nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, exploring the theme of responsibility, power, memory and history, the use and enjoyment of it in common spaces, at gallery latitude 28 last year, one of the suggestions was about keeping the fair active throughout the year by supporting art projects This was achieved by acting as an outreach partner for events such as the delhi Contemporary Art Week and the mumbai gallery Weekend This will carry forth this year as well, and Jagpal is already looking at post-fair activation in cities such as Bengaluru through a combination of digital outreach, talks and supporting programmes n India Art Fair runs from January 31st to February 3rd at NSIC Exhibition Grounds, Okhla, New Delhi february 2019 Hollywood reporter Noel de Souza ‘Crime shows on TV are insomnia inducing’ a my AdAms is yet another example of an actor floating between the large and small screen she plays a troubled journalist in the gritty series Sharp Objects on HBO in which she goes back to her hometown to investigate and uncover two unsolved murders and is in the process confronted by her own demons and a fraught relationship with her mother In Sharp Objects, the mother and daughter seem allergic to each other What is your relationship with your own daughter? i try to be the perfect mother, but a friend told me if i’m perfect my daughter would go into therapy because i was too perfect and she would never live up to it so you just go for it, especially in a mother-daughter relationship But i think it becomes important to me at some point in my career to try and leave it on the set i’ll come home and make dinner or homework—something normal, something that gets me back into my own skin i don’t have any nightmares, maybe because i have watched so many crime shows on TV They are more insomnia inducing, to be honest so i’ll just get up and be filled with anxiety and not know where it is coming from The character i play is not my anxiety—it’s my character Amy Adams Again, you are a parent and you enter the grisly world of murder and violence in the series How difficult was that? it was hard to live inside this world of violence and the violence that women execute against one another not only physically but also emotionally it sort of made me examine myself as a parent for sure, but it is always hard to step away Unfortunately, the news is almost as grisly as the show so, it’s something we are all dealing with and find a way of stepping away from and raising our children with hope and optimism No, i tend to be the type of personality who puts a lot of pressure on myself anyway All the accolades give me confidence, but in the same way it creates a pressure i put on myself to try something different And as i’m maturing i’m letting go of that a little bit and enjoying what i get to without that sort of internal pressure But i wouldn’t be where i am today without nominations and awards i think it has made a huge difference in my career because i got a late start so, awards brought attention to the roles people wouldn’t have paid attention to otherwise Congratulations on the best actress Critics’ Choice award Do awards put pressure on you and influence your choice of roles? Do you carry home the heavy dark material you deal with all day? i have insomnia, so i wake up and sometimes there’s a residual effect of it february 2019 There is a lot of anxiety in Hollywood since the MeToo movement When the dust has settled, what kind of Hollywood you envision? Well, the roles Hollywood plays of setting an example for other industries and in supporting women in other industries are what i am more interested in And hopefully we can continue to create a platform for women: the legal defence fund is something i am passionate about and allowing women a voice and a safe environment to come forward And that’s what i hope continues Would you agree there is a fine line, as far as accusations go? if somebody feels violated, then someone at least needs to atone for that person’s experience, but i’m hoping people will have a clear understanding of the boundaries set in place And i am not hoping just for Hollywood, but for the farm workers who have stood in unity with the TimesUp movement i’m hoping that for other industries i’m hoping that for teachers n www.openthemagazine.com 65 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US RAJEEV MASAND Flight to Safety Shah Rukh Khan isn’t the only star feeling the heat and reaching for a ‘safe’ option Last week we reported he dropped out of Mahesh Mathai’s Saare Jahaan Se Achcha, a long gestating biopic of Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian in space Insiders say SRK has chosen instead to Don with friends Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani for the comfort and safety—and insulation against failure, above all—offered by the superhit franchise Turns out Aamir Khan (who’d earlier left Saare Jahaan Se Achcha so he could focus on a seven-part Mahabharata series he was developing) has green-lighted a remake of Forrest Gump (1994) he will star in, with the Secret Superstar director Advait Chandan expected to helm it It is no secret Aamir has long had a Tom Hanks complex; in his youth he preferred the sort of nice guy, everyman roles Hanks was known for Aamir reportedly acquired the remake rights of the Oscar-winning film and spent a good chunk of time with his writers to adapt it before he began pre-production and look tests The actor had a huge hole in his schedule after he dropped out of a Gulshan Kumar biopic, and Forrest Gump fits nicely in his scheme of things, even as Mahabharata continues to be scripted At least one director too is believed to have gone back to the safety of a franchise Aanand L Rai, who burnt his fingers with the ambitious but unsuccessful ‘dwarf movie’ Zero (2018), might have decided to swallow his pride and go back to Kangana Ranaut (with whom, he told his friends, he didn’t want to work again) for the third part of Tanu Weds Manu A day after he was spotted exchanging pleasantries with the actress at the inauguration event of the National Museum of Indian Cinema, she confirmed to the press they had agreed to make the film and that an announcement was coming soon MeToo and Cold Feet The huge success of Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018) made the film’s director Luv Ranjan a hot ticket in Bollywood 66 last year Despite critics savaging his misogynistic take on friendship and romance, the Pyaar Ka Punchnama director had proved he had a loyal fan base connecting with his stories The icing on the cake came when Ajay Devgn and Ranbir Kapoor signed on for his next project However, it looks like that film might be in jeopardy A few months ago, Ranjan was accused by an actress (who chose to remain anonymous) of sexual harassment during an audition some years ago; the filmmaker denied the charges There have been no announcements on the Ajay-Ranbir film since, and industry folks say top stars may have distanced themselves from Ranjan A source though insists Ajay has developed cold feet over playing Ranbir’s father The film has been described as a ‘Maqbool-esque’ drama where father and son fall for the same woman When Roles Serve as Rewards In film circles this top studio boss is well known for his indecent proposals to acting aspirants It’s one of Bollywood’s worst-kept secrets So no one in the industry was surprised when the bigwig producer was outed at the peak of the MeToo wave recently At least two women pointed fingers at him He’s so powerful he managed to drown out their voices in a barrage of testimonials: from his wife who claimed he was the paragon of virtue, and from select women he’s worked with vouching for his professionalism and decency His accusers might have been silenced, but no one in Bollywood was fooled Insiders are saying he’s now returned the favour to a pretty young starlet who defended him She’s landed a significant role in a movie he’s producing with an A-list male star in the lead Such a cynical view of things! But most filmwaalas point out this is the sort of top-tier project she wouldn’t be considered for, given her talent and star-wattage—or lack of both More troubling, of course, is how easily the producer got away Will some things ever change? n february 2019 ... Nandini Nair february 2019 Cover photograph by Ashish Sharma www.openthemagazine.com open mail editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor Pr ramesh ExEcutivE EditorS aresh... insufficient faith in the great British people Brexit thus had little to with the malign incompetence of British administrators, of today or yesterday, though it had a lot to with the unequal... far beyond citizens within city limits While India is one of the world’s fastest-developing economy, equitable growth remains a critical imperative The rural population today constitutes above