Saaz Aggarwal's Blog

Interview with Ramya Sarma about her book Asha Bhosle: A Life in Music

Ramya Sarma
Courtesy Neeta Kolhatkar

Saaz: You’ve been associated with ‘Bollywood’ for a long timewithout an actual association with it – what’s that been like?

Ramya: I've been part of creating websites on Bollywood and itsassociations. It's been a lot of fun. Incomprehensible at times, annoying attimes, and hilarious very often. It's a world I would normally never step intowearing any mask I might think of, but it's a very colourful, whimsical, crazyyet terribly intense and demanding world which can be daunting if you don't setgood sense, logic and schedules aside and leap in, without thinking too hard ortoo straight.  Running websites is notabout knowing that world, but about knowing the audience that wants to knowthat world. And ‘people’ is a far more interesting realm, one that makes mewant to know more. I've never been glamour or star struck, so the desire tomeet stars or even watch films has never been strong. I have always beencurious about the people who make up that starry world - like thedetermination, hard work and charisma that has carried Asha Bhosle, ShahrukhKhan and others of their quality to the places they now hold. As far asinterviewing filmi types, doing film reviews, watching shoots, et al...no, notfor anyone who is a little OCD about time and place!

 

Saaz: And now you’ve written a book about someone you never metand yet you managed to create a very vivid, lifelike impression of her within afew pages, which keeps growing through right till the end. How?

Ramya: My editor-publisher Bidisha Ganguly and I have worked reallyhard to make this book something special. I aimed for the unexpected, which iswhat makes me want to read a book. It's really very simple: when you knownothing or close to nothing about something, your perspective is unbiased. Youdive in and explore, learn, question, without preconceived notions orpreconditions. It's like eating those filled chocolates...what they're filledwith, you never know until you bite in. And AB is a PERSONALITY, someone whohas done fabulous things with the life she has lived. What I admire is herresilience and that chutzpah to keep going, and going higher. If I conveyed that, great! But a lot of people don'tsee that she's not just a star, she's a human being, with very human reactionsand behavioural quirks. In glorifying her, that aspect rarely comes through.And while she's earned the right to that glory, there's so much more to her.Talking to people who are not obviously connected to filmbiz brought out thatpart of her, I think...I hope.

 

Saaz: Why Asha Bhosle of all people?

Ramya: It kinda landed in my lap, honestly. And I agreed to do itbecause it was a challenge and I was bored of the same old, same old. And onthe way I found that she's the kind of woman I'd like knowing, someone who hastalent, intelligence, sass, strength and, yes, frailties that have only givenher power. I think that is an embodiment of Shakti, power, a realm that rules.I like the concept of feminine power,  ofShakti!

 

Saaz: What was your most memorable event in the process ofwriting this book?

Ramya: Well there were some very fun and some very memorablestories. Like learning about AB eating crisps with Shujaat Khan in London. Likeher sitting and snacking in the car in Delhi with Parveen Khan. Like herdelight at being recognised at the airport for a non-filmi work. Like her firstmeeting with Boy George, and admiring how he did his eyebrows. But my favouritemoment, apart from the friends I made – by the way, almost every interview Idid was food linked somehow! – was that email I got from Boy George. I openedit as soon as I woke up at 5.30 am one dawn and squeaked! Woke up lots ofpeople – who really didn't care – and chirped excitedly at them...Why was thatso special for me? It's a little silly, but when I was a teenager and trying tofigure out how to be a girlie girl without overdoing it, I got an album of BoyGeorge and Culture Club; BG was on the cover, with glorious eyes made upbeautifully. And that is still my ideal when I do my face!

 

Saaz: And the most challenging?

Ramya: There were two aspects that were not just challenging, butplain hard on me, playing tricks with my self-worth and my mind. One was thedelay that the project went through (if that's the right way of putting it?) atevery stage, almost every page, with the first publisher. That was frustrating,hurtful, annoying, all those negative emotions that have been, frankly,scarring. The second was to pin down the few film types that I did get to speakto me. One of them made up for it in style, for which I am forever grateful anda fan – Sonu Nigam, who changed his mind about meeting me often, even when Iwas right outside his house. But he made up for it by doing the whole interviewand singing fabulously on WhatsApp voice messaging! The others...that wouldmake one of those really funny personal memories books that so many people arewriting. I've mentioned some of them in the book’s intro.

 

Saaz: Looking back to the time you started working on this,what has changed in you, what did you learn?

Ramya: That life may throw you stinkers and more will come out ofleft field, but you will eventually do what you set out to do if you reallywant to do it. I guess it's like Asha Bhosle herself, hard work, grit anddetermination gets you to the end line. What changed in me is very little, I'mstill me, albeit with more silver and less hair and a few extra lines thatdon't come from giggling, usually inappropriately!

 

Saaz: How about sharing a few stories that didn’t make it tothe book?

Ramya: There are many … like the time my sandals broke rightoutside Lesle Lewis' studio and I trudged through the building barefoot. Seeingmy woeful state, he made me put my feet up on his squishy sofa, talked to mefor ages and then sang songs from his new album, then offered me a pair ofoversized rubber chappals to get me back to my car! Then there was Sumit Dutt,who was in a meeting but came out for "ten minutes" and then sat withme for over an hour telling me stories about Ashaji singing under a large yellowumbrella in a waterfall! People surprised me with their generosity, kindnessand plain niceness.

 

Saaz: Asha Bhosle is writing her autobiography. What do youexpect that to have which your book doesn’t have?

Ramya: Obviously, a great deal, since it's her own life that shewill write about. But the book has been announced many times and shelved manytimes. In fact, when I was with Poonam Dhillon, she called Ashaji to ask if shemay speak with me. The lady agreed, telling her she could say what she wanted,since her own book was almost done and would be out soon. A couple of monthslater, she announced that she had decided that her life was her life and shesaw no reason for other people to know about it, so her book would not bepublished. If it ever is, I'd line up to buy it!

 

Saaz: Finally, what do you expect from the release of thisbook?

Ramya: Obviously good sales, since that would make my publisherhappy! And, of course, for readers to learn something new about Asha Bhosle,something that they had never seen or heard of before. Because that's what wewere looking to do!

This interview was published in Hindustan Times on 27 Aug 2025.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/...

Ramya and Saaz at the launch on 12 June 2025

Daneesh Majid: “History has mostly been written by those in power”

What struck me most about Daneesh Majeed’s book about whattranspired during princely Hyderabad’s integration into India in 1948, is itsparallels with the Sindh story. People did not consider their experiences worthdocumenting, eclipsed as it was by the much larger-scale violence elsewhere.Despite the dramatic lifestyle changes, colonization by dominant cultures,being sidelined in the administration and left to fend for themselves, theyfaced their plight with bravery and stoic acceptance. The book also exposescaricatures showcased through pop culture, media, and India’s many filmindustries.

Saaz: Why now, Daneesh? Whatgave you the courage to address this important piece of our history and theunjustifiably long gap in public discourse? And how did you approach writingabout that politically sensitive moment?

Daneesh: It wasn’t necessarily courage. An epiphany back in early 2020propelled me into action. A little before Covid, a video interview I conductedwith Arshad Pirzada crystallized something I had been thinking about whencarrying out some Hyderabad-centric features for The Hindu Business Line’sweekly magazine two years earlier. Pirzada is a former Gulf NRI whose familycame from a priestly lineage and had ties to the bureaucratic Asaf Jahiestablishment. Post-1948, they had to adjust to life as numerical minorities ina democratic landscape unlike the old feudal setup in which the ruling Muslimminority held sway. The hen Siasat.com chief editor, Ayoob AliKhan, chided both of us for not emphasizing this fall and rise aspect ofPirzada’s journey, one which included him becoming an economic migrant to SaudiArabia and paving the way for his family’s economic revival.

 SThere are plenty of such stories in Hyderabad that have remainedundocumented (not only because many elders are no longer with us) and dilutedthrough generations. A lot of these accounts have not been brought to the forethrough crisp, timely and accessible narratives in the vein of works by authorslike Urvashi Butalia, Anam Zakaria, Aanchal Malhotra and yourself.

 As for my approach, I could not solely rely on oral accounts.Besides my own enormous bookshelf, I scoured various bookstores, accessedpersonal libraries and found some academic articles to recreate the eras andbuild worlds that that the 11 different families lived in. My editor VikramShah’s nudges in the right direction were key to this. 

Saaz: Hyderabad is a city ofsyncretism, but also of stark divides – linguistic, religious, and class-based.How did you navigate these complexities while telling its story?

Daneesh: Some of these divides existed pre-1948.

 For instance, many people believe that the Mulki agitation whichbegan surfacing in the early 1950s was the earliest harbinger of theTelangana-Andhra divide. One story an acquaintance told me was about his father,a participant in the anti-Nizam and eventually anti-Indian government struggle.When his father was hiding out among Andhra Telugu cadres and interacting withordinary citizens during the late 40s in Bapatla, Madras Presidency, some ofthem either wondered how he was able to articulately communicate in Teluguwhile many poked fun at his Telangana dialect outright. That too, despite thefact that the Andhra Jana Sangham which helped foment revolt in Telanganabrought the Telugu populations from Madras Presidency and Telangana together onthe basis of language. He also spoke of how Andhraites monopolizeddecision-making out of a sense of organizational superiority.

 So rather than only looking at these divisions throughpost-colonial, contemporary lenses, finding and citing primary/secondarysources that mention previous iterations of these divisions helped innavigating those present-day discords.

Saaz: Could you tell us about your mostimportant sources, and share any stories that surprised you or changed yourthinking?

Daneesh: Two important ones which altered specific notions come to mind—bothmy own and commonly held ones.

 Dr. Rafiuddin Farouqui’s compilation of the Aurangabad (then apart of the Nizam state)-born Maulana Maududi’s letters, in which he beseechesQasim Razvi to negotiate the best terms of accession with the Indiangovernment. It showed a more farsighted, accommodating side to someone thatmany, including my own great-grandfather who served as a Director in theReligious Affairs Department of Princely Hyderabad, saw as a hardliner.

 Chukka Ramaiah, the now 98-year-old activist who participated inthe early days of the Telangana Revolt not only abhorred the ruled Hindu vs.ruler Muslim angle of looking at the anti-Nizam struggle, but a cruder versionof the Andhra versus Telangana binary too. He was all praise for a class ofAndhraites who arrived in Hyderabad state during the early 50s, not asmonopolisers of the commercial and ruling dispensations. This group ofegalitarian-minded teachers from Andhra uplifted Telangana Telugus who previouslydidn’t have access to education, especially in their mother tongue.

Saaz: Our respective works (mine on theSindhis) trace the afterlives of two distinct but parallel communities deeplyaffected by the reshaping of India after Partition. What does this say abouthow we remember the ‘unwritten histories’ of India – the ones lived not bygovernments, but by people?

Daneesh: History has mostly been written by those in power. Today,various political figures have been rewriting history especially through theirelection rhetoric. Since 2018, state, municipal and national polls saw certainopposition factions referring to then Chief Minister KCR as the “New Nizam.” Theyrecasted national figures as reincarnations of the Iron Man who humbled OsmanAli Khan. The “Nizam culture” was blamed entirely for the city’s so-calledinability to become a global IT hub.

 All this amounts to a constant rewriting of the past by thepowers that be as they evoke the powers that were! But it is the ordinary citizenryof today, the majority of which doesn’t have the time nor resources to (re)evaluatebygone eras, who gets polarized as a result. Cinema, social media reels andWhatsApp forwards, backed by a robust ecosystem don’t help either.

 Yes, the Nizam possessed his shortcomings, and princelyHyderabad had a dark side to it. But this us-versus-them prism, with the Nizamand the Razakars being equated as the sole aggressors, has gained too muchcurrency.

 I was told first and second-hand stories from Kayasthas andTelangana Hindus about Osman Ali Khan’s personal generosity and his patronageof temples. A lot of Telugu and Urdu literature chronicles how religiousMuslims took to the onset of leftism against a feudal set up spearheaded bytheir “own.”

Micro-histories that ask the “big” questions about historical occurrences, inthe “small” places are the need of the hour.

Saaz: Food, tehzeeb, language, architecture– Hyderabad’s cultural distinctiveness is legendary. Which elements do youthink are still thriving, and which are slipping away?

Daneesh: Shervanis as well as Rumi topis are still worn at weddings andvarious functions. The food for the most part is still around. The feudal mentalitythat makes things more hierarchical while also inducing inertia amongHyderabadis won’t disappear anytime soon. That being said, to varying extents,these elements certainly haven’t been immune to the onset of McDonaldization. 

 The Dakhani dialect, which isn’t in danger of being fullycannibalized by shuddh Hindi or khaalis Urdu yet,can still be heard widely. But the nastaleeq script in which one can readDakhani and standard Urdu literary gems, is rapidly fading away.

Signboards on streets as well as government offices and Urdu“jashns/anjumans” that often take place are in no way indicative of anysubstantive revival.

Unless the prose is translated, which to some is code for“diluted,” so much literature risks becoming obscure or an exotic relic of thepast. In the past three years, some of my favourite Old City bookstores haveclosed or aren’t selling non-religious content.

Saaz: Did you find yourself having to leavecertain things out – whether due to space, sensitivity, or complexity? Arethere stories you wish you’d been able to tell more fully?

Daneesh: Yes. Throughout my research and fieldwork, I learned of someinteresting reasons regarding why some Hyderabadis did or didn’t undertakelife-altering migrations to the West, the Gulf, other Indian cities, certainparts of Telangana/AP, or even Pakistan.  

 There are some intriguing anecdotes about why some Muslimsdecided to either stay in India or make the move to Pakistan. After 1948, eventhe apolitical, professional class of Hyderabad’s Muslims, regardless ofwhether they had ties to the nobility, considered settling in Pakistan. Despitethe 1965 War, which put spokes in the wheel of Indo-Pak travel, many left forPakistan in the 1970s out of personal grievances.

 Including such sagas would have provided a more personal,interior context as to why people decided to leave their families and nativesoil. However, if an interviewee requests for the omission of any detail oranecdote, out of respect and sensitivity, I have to oblige.

Saaz: Who did you imagine asyour ideal reader while writing this book – and what do you hope they will takeaway from it?

 Daneesh: My ideal reader was always someone who wants to lookat how people remember tragic episodes alongside common, sometimes militantlymainstreamed interpretations. Irrespective of whether the reader approaches myfirst book as such, at the very least, I hope that they get to experience theflavour of Hyderabad through its 11 diverse families. After all, a city’scultural distinctiveness isn’t only defined by its monuments, cuisine andlanguages, but also by those who call(ed) it home.     

This interview was published in Hindustan Times on 10 Jun 2025.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/...

Interview with Kishore Mahbubani for Hindustan Times

Saaz: Your childhood wasmarked by hardship, malnutrition, and poverty. You’ve spoken of the strengthand skills this gave you – how did you develop them? As a diplomat, whatsolutions would you suggest for helping children in similar situations?

Kishore: Since Singaporeis now one of the most affluent countries in the world, many Indians areunaware that at independence, Singapore was one of the poorest countries in theworld. In 1965, its per capita income was the same as Ghana in Africa: $500. Iexperienced this poverty personally. I was put on a special feeding programmewhen I went to school at the age of 6 as I was technically undernourished. Ourhome had no flush toilet. Debt collectors would come to our house regularly. Myfather went to jail. Yet, I was able to overcome many of these adversitiesbecause I had an unusually strong mother who never broke down under all thesepressures. The resilience I developed in my life was a gift from her to me.

One reason why I wrote mymemoirs is that I wanted to give hope to young people who may be suffering thesame kind of difficult childhood I had experienced. It’s good for young peopleto understand that people like them have overcome difficult circumstances.

 

Saaz: Your book praisesLee Kuan Yew (who often gave you a tough time) extensively. What measures fromhis leadership could India adopt for better development?

Kishore: Singapore’sexceptional success as a country was due in large part to three of itsexceptional founding fathers: Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee, and S.Rajaratnam. One of the great privileges of my life was getting to know allthree of them well. From them, I learnt a lot about how countries could succeedin development. I distilled many of the lessons I learned from them into theacronym “MPH”. In this case, it doesn't stand for “miles per hour” but for“Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty”, which is the secret formula forSingapore's success.

Meritocracy is about choosingthe best people to run your organisation, society or country. Lee Kuan Yew wasinsistent that only the best should be selected to serve in the government.

Pragmatism is about beingwilling to learn best practices from any source anywhere in the world. Dr GohKeng Swee once said to me that no matter what problems Singapore encounters,somebody somewhere must already have encountered it. Hence, Singapore shouldproactively learn lessons from other countries. Dr Goh also pointed out thatsince Japan was the first Asian country to succeed, Singapore should studyJapan carefully if it wanted to succeed as well. India could also learn lessonsfrom Japan's development.

Honesty is about eliminatingcorruption. This is crucial as trust and stability are essential for an economyto thrive. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest principle to implement.

I believe that any society inthe world, including India, would succeed and do well if it implemented thesecret Singapore MPH formula.

 

Saaz: Could you tell ussomething about the different diplomatic communities you encountered?

Kishore: Walking into theUN headquarters and experiencing a real global village of representatives from159 countries was always a thrill for me. Though we all came from strikinglydifferent cultures and traditions, we were able to forge many close friendshipswith each other based on our common humanity.

When I joined the UN in 1984,some of my Arabian colleagues declared that I belonged to their tribe becausemy surname, Mahbubani, comes from an Arabic/Persian word, “mahbub,” which means“beloved.” Most Sindhis are Muslims. Due to my Sindhi roots, I felt some degreeof cultural affinity with both the Arab countries and Iran. And since I sporteda beard then, I was occasionally mistaken for an Iranian diplomat when I wasseen without a tie.

The ambassadors from the fivefounding member states of ASEAN—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,Singapore, and Thailand—came together like comrades in arms to defend ourcommon interests. I also became very close to the African ambassadors, whom Ifound to be incredibly reliable and trustworthy. If you became friends withthem, they would remain steadfast and stick with you through thick and thin.

I also worked with USambassadors who were polar opposites: Ambassador Vernon Walters was incrediblywarm and generous and won many friends for the US, while Ambassador JeanKirkpatrick was harsh and condescending towards the UN community in a bid towin favour with right-wing politicians at home. While American diplomats couldbe very direct and candid, they could also mingle easily with allnationalities. By contrast, European diplomats seemed to have an irrepressibledesire to preach to other countries about human rights issues. I was thereforeshocked to witness the incredible evasive skills of the Western diplomats whenI chaired the oversight committee of the UN Programme of Action for AfricanEconomic Recovery and Development (UNPAAERD). They expertly avoided making anyconcrete and binding commitments to help the African countries despite thepassionate speeches they had given in the UNGA about wanting to do so.

 

Saaz: Please tell us aboutyour visit to Sindh.

Kishore: When ShaukatAziz, whom I had met in New York and Singapore when he was the Vice Presidentof Citibank, became Prime Minister of Pakistan (2004 to 2007), he invited me tovisit Pakistan. I went to Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad and Lahore. It was afascinating visit. Then Pakistani High Commissioner to Singapore AmbassadorSajjad Ashraf also arranged a special visit to Hyderabad, where my mother hadgrown up. While my mother was sadly no longer with us, her brother, MrJhamatmal Kripalani, was able to draw me a map to their childhood home.Fortunately, we were able to find it.

Since I had grown up listeningto stories of how Muslims and Hindus had killed each other during Partition, Iexpected to encounter hostility in Hyderabad when I went to search for mymother's home. Instead, every Muslim person I met in Pakistan received me verywarmly and was delighted to see me. The reception could not have been warmer. Iwas glad to learn that a lot of the hostility from the Partition days haddissipated.

 

Saaz: As someone who hasmade Sindhis proud with your exceptional success, please suggest measures bywhich members of your community could enhance the way they are perceived.

Kishore: Sindhis are aremarkable people. There are very few ethnic groups in the world who havemanaged to succeed in all corners of the world. The Sindhis are one of them.Having visited most of the major cities in the world, I'm always pleasantlysurprised to see members of the Sindhi community thriving and succeeding in allcorners of the world. Indeed, I have first cousins in all corners of the world:in Suriname and Guyana in South America, in Texas and Florida in North America,in Ghana and Nigeria in Africa, in Japan and Hong Kong in East Asia, and ofcourse in Mumbai and Kolkata in India. I also have relatives in Europe. Theentrepreneurship of the Sindhi community is truly admirable.

In the next chapter of itsdevelopment, India will have to engage the rest of the world more. Its tradeand investment links with other countries will also increase. One of its majorassets as it plunges ever more deeply into globalisation will be the strong andsuccessful ethnic Indian communities overseas. Undoubtedly, the Sindhis willrank among some of the most successful Indians overseas. Their contributionsshould receive greater recognition within India.

 

Saaz: Your advice foryoung people who wish to follow a career in diplomacy?

Kishore: Diplomacy is oneof the best professions in the world to join. Since we live in a small andshrinking world, all countries must now make a major effort to understand othercountries and cultures all over the world. And the people who are best placedto do so are diplomats.

As I explain in my memoirs, Ihad no intentions of staying on in diplomacy, as I wanted to return to academiaafter graduating. However, I discovered diplomacy to be a more fulfillingprofession than academia. I realised that in trying to defend the interests ofa small country like Singapore in the international community, I was defendingan underdog. Ambassadors from smaller countries have to work harder thanambassadors from larger countries. Fortunately, with the help of reason, logicand charm (as I describe in my memoirs) I managed to succeed in furtheringSingapore’s interests in the United Nations and in the ASEAN community.

Golf proved to be very useful.Indeed, one reason why Southeast Asia, the most diverse corner on planet Earth,has had no wars in 50 years is that many of the Southeast Asian diplomats andleaders play golf with each other. This is also a lesson that South Asiancountries can learn from Southeast Asian countries: it’s important to investtime in developing personal connections with each other. Trust building andcooperation at the national level is incredibly difficult when there is nowarmth or trust on the interpersonal level.

a

 This interview was published in Hindustan Times on 30 April 2025.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/kishore-mahbubani-india-will-have-to-engage-the-rest-of-the-world-more-101746012772995.html

Review of My Silk Road by Ram Gidoomal for thewire.in

The most striking – the most intense – experienceRam Gidoomal describes in his memoirs is the feeling that overwhelmed him whenhe arrived in Bombay at the age of 14. Suddenly, unexpectedly, for the firsttime in his life, he knew what it felt to fit in. It brought home the paradoxof “home” for an immigrant: on one side homesickness for the country of origin,a sense of cultural belonging, allies in appearance, and the freedom from fearthese bring. And on the other, the cords of daily life that tie one to thebirthplace and local community.

Ram’s family endured the transition fromcitizen to refugee twice. Displaced both times by political whim, theyexperienced a harsh wrenching from community, culture, status and education, andwere summarily swept from wealth and comfort to situations of continued struggle– twice. Once as refugees when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned andPakistan was formed, and the second when his family was removed from Kenya. Asa teenager he would discover, in immigration queues, that he was an “alien”.And, despite his academic brilliance and significant contribution to earlyworkplaces, he would remain painfully conscious that he was different.

In this book about his life, Gidoomal beginsby describing his happy childhood in Kenya, followed by the challenges of adaptingto Britain in the late 1960s – unwelcoming, and one where this family with amultinational trading operation begins afresh with a corner shop – and yet anobvious choice for the time.

There are intimate glimpses into a familyof large and complex but congenial groups, and the poignancy of familytragedies including the loss of his birth father and then of his father-figureuncle who brought him up; precious memories handed down from the past,including those of links to the lost homeland of Sindh. There are fascinatingpeeps into business practices and secret codes. Later, during his blissful dayswith a young family in Switzerland, he was that role-model father who changedhis working hours so that he could spend time with his children, returning tooffice after they went to bed. As the years passed, Ram moved from his life inthe corporate world to one centred on social issues and philanthropy, using hisbusiness skills to transform others’ lives. His contribution earned him a CBE,Commander of the British Empire, from the Queen of England in 1998.

In between comes a huge, surprising transformation:“By my early twenties, I had lost two fathers but gained a heavenly one inGod.”

This wholehearted embracing of Jesus isdisconcerting, coming from one whose community sacrificed all they had toescape conversion. As a child in a Sindhi family, Ram grew up Hindu with Sikhinfluences. At the Aga Khan School in Mombasa, he absorbed Islamic teachings. Thechoice he later made, with the backdrop of his exceptional intelligence andcrystal-clear rationality, resulted from the pull of faith. Succumbing to thewarmth of its embrace, he selected a life of devotion to the Church.

Through it all, his Sindhiness remainedintact. He writes of his feeling of comfort on reading Matthew chapter 27 verse59, about Joseph of Arimathea wrapping the body of Jesus in cloth: “The Greekword for this cloth is Sindhon, a cloth from Sindh. A cloth created in my homeland,holding the body of Christ.”

Indeed, the Sindhiness pervades his life:English was the language of instruction but Sindhi was the language his motherspoke to him in, the language the old men swore in, the language he was scoldedin. When he fell in love, it was to a highly eligible Sindhi girl – one who,however, was initially forbidden to him as she was of another “caste”. Sunitawas from a progressive Amil family, too progressive to consider caste and perhapsjust worried about how she would adapt in his traditional Bhaiband family. Indeed,Ram Gidoomal observed with admiration that his father-in-law treated hisdaughters and sons equally, inspiring him to do the same with his own children.

One of the most prominent themes of thisbook is Ram Gidoomal’s tremendous network of relationships in every area oflife. As a young executive in the 1970s, his complacent and supercilious managersfailed to comprehend this tremendous asset which could have taken the bank intonew markets with valuable new customers. For Ram, the connections were simply away of life, partly the community and business networks inherited from hisfamily; partly his own aptitude to thrive on and develop relational networks – tiesof location as much as shared cultural traditions among the diaspora flungacross the continents. Working at Inlaks, a global company with a huge base inNigeria, he could speak in Sindhi with the senior executives who preferred todo so when communicating confidential commercial information.

This book has an elegant story-tellingstyle, weaving in humour, and creating a build-up of suspense as the plotunfolds. Despite being put together by a professional writer, Ram Gidoomal’s voicecomes through clearly and is the same as in his 1997 UK Maharajas whichwas also written by a professional. Throughthe book, Ram Gidoomal’s personal motto stands out clearly: “Don’t let what youcan’t do stop you from doing what you can.”

My Silk Road

The Adventures & Sturggles of a British Asian Refugee

Ram Gidoomal CBE

Pippa Rann books & media

MRP Rs799

270 pages

Review by Saaz Aggarwal

Published on 4 December 2022 https://thewire.in/books/ram-gidoomal...
    

Interview: Mark-Anthony Falzon, author, The Sindhis; Selling Anything, Anywhere

 By Saaz Aggarwal

How did you manage all this research during lockdown?

My first and most intensive period offieldwork was in 1999-2000, in London, Malta and Mumbai. I was at the Gatewayof India for the millennium celebrations, and remember watching the firstsunrise of the third millennium at the lakeside in Borivali. I have since beento India six more times, and the results of that work are contained in myscholarly writing. I also draw on them in this book, though SellingAnything, Anywhere is not aimed at the academic reader. I did intend tospend some months updating my notes in India in 2020-1, but had to resort toZoom. There was also a fair bit of desk research, which was unaffected byCovid.       

2.      Was it really the Sindhibusinessman Bhojoomal and his sons who founded Karachi?

If the memoirs of Seth Naomul Hotchand areanything to go by, then yes. Hotchand was a merchant who lived in Karachi inthe nineteenth century, and who wrote the history of his family. He wrote thathis ancestor Seth Bhojoomal (who originally hailed from Sehwan in Sindh)settled and established business in Kharrakbandar around 1720. The place,however, quickly silted up, and Seth Bhojoomal and his fellow Sindhi merchantsrelocated to a new place, later named Karachi, and developed it into a port ofconsiderable prominence.      

3.      Claude Markovitspublished his findings about the Sindhi global traders in 1999. Why did it takeso long for this centuries-old phenomenon, well known among the Sindhisthemselves and the local populations where they live, to be identified andwritten about?

The Sindhworki network goes back to the1850s, and involved traders from Hyderabad-Sindh who travelled quite literallyaround the world in search of potential markets (usually in port cities,especially in the earlier phase). That of the Shikarpuris goes back to at leastthe early eighteenth century, and involved men from Shikarpur who ran anelaborate banking trade in Central Asia. You’re right in saying that it tookscholars a long time to get the hint. Some early examples were Anita Chugani’s1995 MA thesis on Sindhworkis in Japan, my undergraduate thesis on Sindhworkisin Malta in 1996, Markovits’ benchmark book of 2000, and my book of 2005. Ithink the reason is that Sindhis are so adaptable and flexible in their ways,that they are easily overlooked as generic ‘Indians’. It took Markovitsconsiderable detective work to tease out the Shikarpuri presence in CentralAsia; and Sindhworkis can be even more difficult to identify as such. For alltheir globetrotting and business acumen, Sindhis tend to fly under theradar.            

4.      Why are there no womenin your book? There’s a brief indication of them as secret agents, and laterthe ones to prepare ‘poppadums’ and pickles which the men hawked. What aboutthe many who had the gene and the connections and used them, the entrepreneursand the captains of industry?

I do mention that in some contexts Sindhiwomen are increasingly directly involved in business, and that women played akey role in the circulation of information – crucial to business success – backin Shikarpur and Hyderabad, and that well-connected Sindhi women in India andelsewhere play an important part in the making of networks. Still, I think yourobservation is justified. Mine is a partial story that leaves room for manymore. Some have already been told by Rita Kothari, Subhadra Anand and yourself,and there’s a new breed of scholars (some are Sindhi women – TrishaLalchandani, Radhika Chakraborty and others) who are researching doctorates onvarious aspects of Sindhis, and there's Aruna Madnani’s ‘Doorway to Sindh’webinar series for her Sindhi Culture Foundation.          

5.      “Poppadums”? Seriously Mark?

It’s papad I had in mind – not least sinceI must have consumed hundreds in the course of my fieldwork. Sindhis can begood hosts. You’re quite right to say papad is iconic. In part that’s becauseof their unique peppery taste and blistered appearance (they always remind meof Neapolitan pizza dough). But as I mention in the book, the making andselling of papads and pickles is a defining episode in the story of how manySindhi refugees survived, and overcame, the economic hardships of Partition. 

6.      Why does your book notmention the Sindhi tradition of philanthropy? And why do you have mostly onlystories of plodders and small-time dealmakers - yes, the bell-curve people –but no representative of the huge population of rags-to-riches and the "mymother's blessings took me to where I am" people, who would have loved tobe mentioned by name?

This book does not cover every aspect ofSindhi business and culture. It was prescriptively intended as a short andreadable text, aimed at a popular audience. Besides, I cannot claim to haveworked with a mathematically representative sample of Sindhis. That's also whythis interview is welcome: it complements the contents.

Many Sindhis are in fact involved inphilanthropy. In the case of some of the big Sindhworki and other firms, thiscan be as prominent as full-scale hospitals. But I’ve met people of more modestmeans who funded and ran small homeopathic clinics, for example, in India andelsewhere. I think the point really is that, contrary to some of the more toxicstereotypes, Sindhis do not form isolated moneymaking enclaves; rather, theyare embedded in the societies they live in in various ways that include philanthropicgiving. Seth Naomul writes that on one auspicious occasion in 1805, hisancestors spent “large sums of money in charity and in feeding Brahmins andfakirs, and acquired such renown on account of their liberality that Bhats andBrahmans chanted their benevolence in songs especially composed”.  

7.      Did you observe culturaldifferences between the solidly Sindhi communities in Panama, Hong Kong, theCanaries (and other locations) through local influences?

You’ve put your finger on one of the mostfascinating parts of the Sindhi story. Simply put, Sindhis live in places.

The very first Sindhi I interviewed ran aretail business in Malta which had been in the family for many decades. In acorner of the shop was a little shelf, and on it photos of departed familymembers and figures of Ganesha, Lakshmi and the Virgin Mary. When I asked, hetold me he was ‘100% Hindu’ but also a follower of a number of Catholicdevotions.

In Indonesia today there are about 10,000Sindhis; many are businesspeople involved in many different lines. Perhaps thebest known is the production of sinetron (soap operas), which they have beenheavily invested in since the 1980s. The Sindhi producers even came up with aninnovative product, sinetron Ramadhan, which in turn evolved into a new genreof Indonesian television known as sinetron Islam (Islamic soap opera). Theseare two small examples of their linguistic, cultural, economic and social diversity.And yet, Sindhis retain a strong sense of a networked cultural affinity, whichmakes it possible for them to relocate should they wish or need to.        

8.      Priya Ramani sent me anindignant message about the title of this book and I realised that it could beseen as demeaning to the community. I told her I’d ask you.

There’s the joke about the Sindhi on themoon who approached Neil Armstrong and tried to sell him a flag – old andweary, but telling. Everywhere you look you will find pockets of Sindhisselling things as diverse as souvenirs, textiles, electronics and carpets;financing films and developing real estate; manufacturing industrial plasticsin West Africa and snack foods in Ulhasnagar, making bespoke suits in Hong Kongand running restaurants and hotels in dozens of locations worldwide. SellingAnything, Anywhere is my homage to a tremendous lifeforce of adventure andenterprise.  

 Published on 11 November 2022 in Hindustan Times

https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/...

Keeping in Touch by Anjali Joseph

A writer's life

Her father, Mathai Joseph, is one of India’s earliest computer scientists. Her maternal grandfather, Principal Bannerjee of Elphinstone College, was one of the most revered educationists of his time. Anjali Joseph studied English at Trinity College, and completed PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at University of East Anglia. In 2010 she was listed by The Telegraph as one of the twenty best novelists under forty. Her books detail ordinary life, delving inner lives and familiar realms.

A reader and a writer all her life, in her youth she may have experienced, as many of us do, the torturous periodic shedding and renewal of skin. The years passed – perhaps not (as she once wrote) as painlessly as that clause implies. She followed her whims and explored possibilities. Call them massive research projects, or immersion experiences, or the ashram life of renouncing this and that. And then out comes a novel, a space to lose yourself, experience new things, understand life in a different way – in the process, as she says, of becoming the person who wrote that novel. 

1.      What got you started with writing this book?

I was chatting to a friend in Norwich some time in around 2014 and she said she was terrible at keeping in touch. The phrase hovered in the air, illuminated for me, and I went home and wrote it down, convinced I’d write a book called Keeping in Touch. That was also the year I moved from Norwich to Guwahati in search of a new adventure, both at home and very much not at home, but fascinated by Assam. I had the character of Keteki in mind for a while as I was finishing The Living, and had even started writing about her, but Ved came along a little later, in 2015 when I wrote a short story that turned into the opening chapter of the book. The lightbulb called Everlasting Lucifer was a short story I’d begun writing when I was about eight years old, and not finished.

2.      And the symbolism of that lightbulb?

Maybe it’s some form of the light that’s in everybody. Maybe a sort of objective correlative of something that is much bigger. Besides, each of us wants to light up. But maybe the prospect is also a little threatening. What would really happen if that light were seen?

I don’t know where the name came from.  I was reading a lot of F Scott Fitzgerald at the time, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and several other of his stories. I must have at that time or sometime earlier learnt that Lucifer meant ‘light bearer’ or read about the story of how Lucifer was the fallen angel, but that it’s not necessarily a pejorative name. It was there as one of those ideas and half-ideas, some of which you write down and some that remain at the back of your mind.

3.      Did your characters change as you wrote?

Well, they meet at a time in their lives when they are ready for change. Their encounter is the catalyst that makes them step outside the comfortable shells they have created.

Both of them evolved as characters in the way I wanted to show them. My friend, the wonderful writer Tim Pears, was kind enough to read a draft and from his responses, I realised that the initial iteration of Ved was too off-putting, and Keteki a little too oblique.

At the opening of the book, Ved is a toxic bachelor, but he’s also in coming to the end of a time of getting over his earlier geekier self. He’s enjoying a period of his life when he feels he can be in control. But obviously he’s also still at least in a latent way open to the possibility of more. And then he falls for her. And Keteki – I had to say more about her in subsequent drafts; initially I wanted to show her mainly through the effect she had on other people.

4.      Your books have always run quite close to your own life adventures.

When a child growing up in a provincial English town I was waiting to start my life, the fiction that I read was about all sort of things and these novels almost seemed to be carrying messages, telling me, maybe your life will be like this! Or maybe it will be like that! I drank it all in. In a way, reading fiction is a way of thinking about how to live.

Now I get interested in one thing after another, and sometimes that’s what my next novel will be about. Maybe the other things that I’m learning around that time also become relevant. But I wouldn’t say most of my life goes into my novels. There are lots of things I do and read about that don’t directly feed into what I write.

I suppose for me, writing a novel is partly about finding out more about the characters and place I’ve decided are interesting. But it’s also a process of becoming the person who will have written the novel I’m writing. It’s something that gets revealed as I go along. Each individual step is in the dark, but there is a kind of feeling of what the next thing is.

5.      Why Assam?

When I went to live in Guwahati in 2014, Assam was a new place for me. I started learning Assamese, a beautiful and elliptical language. I think there might be a flavour of that in the book. After a while of studying, I realised that being able to say what you mean in Assamese hardly means you can speak it. That is not how Assamese is used. As I wrote in an essay for Unbound, most people  say something indirectly related to what they mean; the person they are talking to then responds by saying something indirectly related to the first thing.

I had two lovely teachers of Assamese, Dimpy Deka and my friend and neighbour Babu’s grandmother, Bimal Rajkhowa, herself a writer and lyricist. My Assamese remains halting but I can read and write, and some of my learning comprised reading aloud books in Assamese and asking about the phrases or words I didn’t know. It was a beautiful introduction to a sensibility as well as a language. The culture of Assam has so much depth, so many layers. There is a certain way of seeing life. It was just lovely to live there. And in Assam, everyone is a reader, it’s a place where people understand books and literature. In Bombay or Bangalore or Delhi if you say you’re a writer people will ask whether you know this writer or that writer, or if you’ve written for films, things like that. But in Assam people will want to tell you about what they’ve been reading. I’ve had conversations like that with a taxi driver, the man who works in the gas agency. Everybody is excited about reading, and for a writer that is truly special.

6.      And your book has such a strong yoga component too!

Well, I had a scientific, post-enlightenment sort of upbringing. In my family, there was not much ritual or religious observance. Still, as a child I was fascinated by religion, magic, and wonder. I’d read a storybook and hark back to the missing word in a spell, thinking, one day I’ll find out what that word is! And then I’ll be able to be invisible or do whatever the spell was for. That interest in spirituality found its expression much later, in my thirties, when I did a yoga teacher training. And there we studied Vedanta and some yoga philosophy: that was the first time I felt, here is a description of the world that makes intuitive sense to me.

Yoga training, then learning about tantra, were ways into these systems of thought. It was kind of liberating. And of course, if you are a fiction writer, you can use that fiction to offer people the idea that reality might not be quite as monolithic and quite mechanically materialist as we – certainly my generation – were told when we were young. The idea is important to me and the book is sort of soaked in that.

7.      The uses of a novel, then?

I believe in the novel as a machine that can re-configure a reader’s way of being in some way, perhaps for more lightness, or just more joy. Imagination can bring us back to ourselves, and that’s something I’m always aiming to do. Here I wanted to take the reader, while reading about Ved and Keteki, through the idea that in some ways the past is imaginary, and its weight that we have been carrying can be exploded into lightness. I don’t necessarily see ‘enlightening’ as a one-off process after which one transcends and everything is bunnies and angels. I think it’s part of human experience that there is an intermittence to keeping in touch with that real self inside, as well as with others and the way we really feel for them. It doesn’t matter that this awareness drops; we can pick it up again, and that’s the process of keeping in touch which also enables compassion, for ourselves, and for others.

8.      Your life has centred around writing since a very young age but in your books you come through as someone who has led many lives through others. Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen another path?

I didn’t really choose writing; I just always knew that was what I would do. And as you say, in a way through writing I can do anything else I like.

First appeared in the Hindustan Times books page on 10 July 2021

Colaba The Diamond at the Tip of Mumbai by Shabnam Minwalla

Shabnam's vale of serendipity It was an online talk in which the author presented some of its intriguing photos, experiences and learnings, that led me to this book. Her discoveries, couched in the easy wit and bubbling energy so compelling in the talk, were just as much of a pleasure to read. 

“What Colaba doesn’t have is easy to list. What Colaba does have, is not. Its qualities are concealed by voluminous skirts and peeling paint,” writes Shabnam Minwalla, and proceeds to treat the reader to a comprehensive expose, weaving personal experiences from a range of people interviewed, with widely diverse secondary sources.

The latter include facts and administrative data from Gazetteers; iffy maps and exaggerations from travellers’ accounts; colourful descriptions from novels; even gravestone epitaphs (“doleful postcards from the past”). The one I enjoyed most was an August 2002 Busybee column which lampoons the Arabs who for decades holidayed in Colaba to revel in rain, a novelty rendered anachronistic by global weirding. The exuberant snippets provide information, they create atmosphere, and their depth and diversity well represents contemporary Colaba, a place whose character transforms from corner to corner, sometimes quite dramatically.

As for the people interviewed, most are long-term residents and colourful neighbourhood characters. The best stories come from the author herself, memories of Colaba haunted houses, lingerie shops that date back to before the word lingerie arrived in Colaba, glimpses of a prim schoolgirl, one of a horde, who transformed into hoydens tumbling down the staircase the instant the evening bell rang, only to be harangued on the way home by the fierce battleaxes of Cusrow Baug. Biographical details are introduced not in a self-congratulatory or coy manner or even in bland lists, but in a festive jumping-about that interweaves energetic adjectives, provides vivid pictures, and sometimes has you laughing aloud. The creative happiness is impressively balanced with deep, fault-finding, nit-picking research into this unabashedly grimy district of India’s financial capital.

Colaba has no medieval fortresses, tales of tragic queens, or echoes of bloody battles. Just two hundred years ago it was a jackal-infested island – fine-grained diorite, composed of feldspar and hornblende! – separated from the emerging metropolis by a temperamental creek, ghastly shipwrecks, and a cemetery greedy for colonizers. When a causeway was built, the inconvenient outpost transformed into a place of buzzing industry, and the malodorous creek with mosquito-riddled mangroves and criminal-infested bays was eventually replaced by traffic-choked streets lined with art galleries, cakeshops, and more. Who doesn’t love Colaba for its street shopping – those cool, billowing cottons, coolly-replicated designerware? Amidst the thronging crowds, familiar faces pop up and cheery “Hieee!”s ring out in Shabnam’s vale of serendipity, the place of which one well-known resident (read the book to know who) is reported as having instructed, “When you go shopping down Colaba, Ma, don’t forget to give everybody my love.”

Besides the extraordinary energy of the haphazard streets of the southernmost tip of a city rapidly sprinting northwards, this book also documents nooks and structures: Colaba Lunatic Asylum, Royal Alfred Sailor’s Home, the garden of a Mrs Hough and its magical mango tree which fruited twice a year; the reincarnation of Buckley Court from a haunted Indo-Saracenic mansion to a guesthouse packed with fascinating residents to a ‘luxury skyscraper’; dragonflies fluttering by enroute to East Africa. And the fascinating stone which clarifies the boundaries between Colaba and Old Woman’s Island of yore – inside a residence encroaching into, of all places, the trendy and laidback Colaba Police Station.

When I called Shabnam Minwalla to tell her how much I had enjoyed her book, we naturally compared notes and, though we’ve never met, and even claim different territories of Colaba, found much to celebrate.

Colaba is still somewhat in the nature of ‘native place’ to me, the venue of childhood winter vacations escaped to from bone-chilling frost, sultry evenings strolling on the Cuffe Parade promenade, playing in the piles of rubble waiting to take their place in swanky buildings, snacking on peanuts and sometimes even illicit bhel (because typhoid). “Which building?” Shabnam asked and when I replied, she knew exactly which one, and together we moaned the decaying grandeur and eventual demise of the townhouse with its authentic stained-glass windows, Minton tiles, sagging wooden staircase and unpolished banisters, residence of former presidency magistrate KJ Bijlani for nearly fifty years.

Every chapter of this book ends with a pithy ‘Colaba lesson for life’, and the one I’ve picked to pass on here, one that sears me with regret, instructs: “Quick! Talk to your grandparents before it’s too late.” 

First appeared in Hindustan Times books page on 2 July 2021 

Wall Paintings of Sindh by Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro

Secret treasures

In India, Sindhis are most often seen as a mercantile community – hardworking and enterprising, but almost entirely focussed on material gain and pursuits, with limited interest in art and culture. Sindh itself, the ancestral homeland which the Hindus left after Partition took place in 1947 and to which they have almost no access today, is seen as a hot and dusty place of limited opportunity. So this book is a real eye-opener which showcases a very unexpected dimension for Indian Sindhis to understand something about their lost heritage.

In 1998, early in anthropologist Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro’s career, a field visit took him to the necropolis of Mian Nasir Muhammad Kalhoro, where he saw many beautiful paintings on the exterior and interior walls of its monuments. He could see that they were crumbling and in urgent need of restoration. Feeling overwhelmed by the beauty of the art around him, feeling equally disturbed that it would all soon be lost, Zulfiqar resolved that he was going to travel all across Sindh to seek out every other similar site he could find, and record whatever he saw in them. This book is a result of many fulfilling journeys the author made over more than 20 years, to do so – and a great gift to people who are interested in the history of art, and in particular the history of the art of Sindh.

What I learnt from this book is that Sindh is strewn with monuments of many kinds and these include tombs, places of worship, and palaces. Most of these are filled with works of art, and besides architectural flourishes, ceramic embellishments and tiling, many of the walls are covered with paintings too.

In many places, Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro noticed that in the process of maintenance of the tombs by their followers, they were whitewashed on the inside, and the paintings were damaged. For example, in the tomb of Mian Yar Muhammad Kalhoro in Khudabad, Zulfiqar found it all whitewashed except for some paintings which may have required too much effort to reach. From these traces, he deduces that

“the whole interior of the tomb was adorned with stylized flower vases, fruit dishes and a variety of flowers covering every panel, soffit, niche, squinch and arch recess of the tomb.” 

His research indicates that the art was a tradition of long-standing, but very little of what was created before the seventeenth century remains and this book largely covers art of the Kalhora, Talpur and British periods of Sindh’s history. Many of the previous era, glimpses of which sometimes pop up in historical records, no longer exist.

Zulfiqar has covered tombs of rulers and tribal chiefs, as well as the tombs of Sufi saints, and the book has excellent illustrations of the structures as well as of the art inside them. 

Royal tombs, Zulfiqar points out, are not embellished with figural motifs, except for birds. They carry gilded Quranic verses in striking calligraphy; traditional geometric patterns; and floral, vegetal, plant and tree motifs. The lily flower, Zulfiqar points out, is a favourite motif of the Kalhora artists in both paintings and glazed tiles. Zulfiqar also explains the symbolism of other favoured motifs such as the cypress tree, and varieties of birds and flowers. Monuments of other rulers and saints, however, carry all kinds of figural depictions including scenes of a bird feeding its offspring, rooster fight, mourning scene in a tomb, action-packed animal fight scenes, hunting scenes and battle scenes, as well as representations of cultural activities, such as dance, music and sports, and many romantic folk scenes. In all, they provide a rich illustration of the social and political life of Sindh. There are even tombs which also show domestic activities such as dancing, cooking and churning, such as the tomb of Othwal Faqir, located south of Mian Nasir Muhammad Kalhoro’s shrine. In fact, locations of each monument have been meticulously provided – a poignant resource for the many who may want to visit but are unlikely to ever be able to do so.

Through Zulfiqar’s commentary, and through the rich colour schemes of the illustrations, we get a sense of the people of Sindh and their daily occupations through history. He has also linked these paintings with recognized schools of other neighbouring regions, and compares their features. All these give us a rich visualisation of various historical events as well as folk stories and together they bring alive folk romances, battle scenes, and a broad spectrum of social life in eighteenth-century Sindh.

Zulfiqar has detoured with extensive coverage of the folk tales he found illustrated, sometimes two or three adjacent inside a single monument. Along with the commentary and symbolism, he has also recounted some of the most loved folk tales to accompany the illustrations, and these add depth to his book.

We also learn from this book that Mihrab, the arched niche on the qibla wall that indicates the direction of prayer in every mosque, is also seen in the monuments of Sindh. It was a common feature in the tombs, and evolved into the depiction of actual mosques. Many tombs carry these and most tombs built during the Kalhora, Talpur and British periods also depict Makkah and Medina.

I was also intrigued to observe the presence of Khudabadi on some of the monuments, because this was a script thought to have been developed and used by the Hindu traders of the province.

Most of these art treasures, Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro reports, are in sad repair. In the twenty years of his quest, he has seen them decay before his eyes, under the ravages of extreme climate. It is sad to think that in the decades to come, most will vanish, unrestored, and live on only in the pages of this book. It’s not just the government which is responsible for the neglect – but who can blame needy peasants who till the protected land close the beautiful monuments to fulfil their simple needs?

What I learnt from this book moved me deeply. What I saw and read made me feel connected with a precious and distinctive heritage which has been frittered away and is only saved from complete obliteration by books like this one.

BEYOND THE CARICATURE by Rajesh Pant

Many years ago, as a child in class three, I saw something amazing. A tall for his age boy, a classmate, proudly walked up to the Maths teacher and presented him a cake. “It’s my birthday”. The Master who was about to read the results of a quiz, stopped him; read out his marks. He had failed the boy. Then in a rage he threw the cake on the ground, kicked it out the door and roared “don’t try and bribe me you dirty Sindhi”. (Those were the days of course, where Teachers were forgiven for being impolitic!)After class, the boy went out, quietly picked up the cake, and took the first bite himself and shared it with us saying his mother had baked it, why waste it? The memory of the incident has not left me because it was the first time I had heard a Teacher being abusive and the first time I had heard of someone being called a Sindhi. Before that I only knew that the boy’s name was Pooran. The ‘Sindhi’ caricature of a scroogish person who accumulates cash and real estate while constantly prattling ‘vari sai’ is widespread; egged on by actors playing bit stereotypes of Sindhis in yesterday’s Hindi films. And thereby hangs a tale.Caricatures are an unfortunate sociological phenomenon, particularly in our country; we draw upon them and use them very matter of factly mostly disrespectfully. This in turn causes diminution of our strength as a society. Constant usage somehow cements these social and untruthful caricatures till they becomes part of our believed folklore – said by elders, repeated by the young who will ape anything. And so it will go till we mature as a Society.Murli Melwani's collection of short stories ‘Beyond the Rainbow* goes a ways in breaking the caricature. It is a melange of colourful people, exotic locales and some adventure. All characters and events are supposedly fictional. But I suspect, very strongly, each story is true or at least has a broad element of truth. It is said that a people whose homeland is sparse – or who have no homeland at all - causes them to move to far and foreign lands. To make their living or ply their trade. True of Marwaris, Jews and Scots and certainly Sindhis. The sweep of the locations of the people and stories is ample evidence of the truly international spread of this group of people.Stereotypically Sindhis have settled in Haang Kaang and have shops in Chunking Arcade! Melwani’s book serves us a different and exotic cocktail – Curacao, Toronto, Taipei, Bangkok, Bombay, New York, Honduras, Darjeeling and of course HK and Ulhasnagar. He paints a picture of their fads, foibles, beliefs, customs, strengths, weaknesses. These stories illustrate the ease with which they adapt to (or do not) to stressful, and strange situations.In one of the longer short stories – the protagonist is called to the Holiday Inn in HK for an interview. This took me years back on my own first trip overseas and to HK; I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Kowloon and was amazed to see a small statue of Lord Shiva near the entrance with a ‘fountainette’ from his locks depicting the source of the Ganges. I was told that the property was owned by the Harilela’s. “Sindhi, you know, flom your contly” – the Receptionist informed me Though I believe they are Hongkongers stretching back a century. Coming back to the tale, ‘Head of a Chicken’ is a textbook narrative of poor boy, with remarkable insights “…but, a Sindhi would not ask a question without a motive…” he is economical with ethics, makes good and then faces the same situation he had left his earlier employer. An interesting take on ethics and business, a motif which runs through a some of the other stories.Another facet about Melwani’s writing is the simplicity and honesty. In one of his stories he writes “there’s a writer in each one of us”. He does not use artifice; the story is what the story is – and that is where the writer’s true craft comes in. It is very complex to keep a narrative simple. This is exemplified when he writes a commentary on one of the most intricate machinations of our society, almost like a Rube Goldberg contraption – the fixing of a marriage, narrated by the Marriage Broker. It is mirth and thought provoking in equal proportions. Explaining it is like instructing a Martian the process of lacing-up shoes and knotting them. ‘The Bhorwani Marriage’ is a treat. Having made a fair amount of money in the transaction, which is what arranged marriages generally are, the Broker adds his punch line “One must be grateful for the crumbs that life throws one’s way”.Sex is is not taboo. This is refreshing because our public posturing is prudish and fairly Victorian. So when a well off and retired businessman has a romp with a Bar girl; it does not seem shocking. The twist is later in the tale like in the thought process of a man in another story, watching a call girl undress. And more – a Father who can shoot to kill – to dictate a marriage in his family. As they say - you can take a man out of the home but you can take the home out of the man.Like all those who have spread across the globe and settled; names soon change to suit or accommodate or better still to merge with the chosen country of abode. Meaning we are here to stay and be a part of you. An endearing quality which makes Jetharam convert to Jimmy and Metharam change to a more suitable Mike. A subtle change of status too? Which brings me to another story.Years ago in the middle eighties, my Boss called me to substitute for him and make an unscheduled presentation to two gentleman sitting in the Conference room. The object was to present India, as a country full of promise yet not hide the pitfalls. The two were obviously ‘from overseas’. Post the presentation I introduced myself and the young guy stuck out his hand saying “Tommy, Tommy Hilfiger. I’ve just started a line back home with him and this guy brought me here because he’s very hot on India though he’s never lived here.” The other gentleman’s calling card was a folded affair. The top read Gloria Vanderbilt and the card opened to reveal his name ‘Mike’ Murjani.Rajesh PantPune, December 2020*Beyond the Rainbow. Murli Melwani. Published by Black-and-white Fountain.

Learning to read all over again

When the lockdown commenced, life turned grim overnight; stranger than fiction. I was reading the Memoirs of Seth Naomal Hotchand of Karachi (1804-1878), a well-told narrative of a wealthy merchant of Sindh. Being the elaborate personal account of someone who belonged to a community about which not much documentation exists, the book, with an interesting history of its own, is fascinating. However, my eye lazed mid-sentence while my mind wandered, and the pages stayed put.

In despair, unable to read, unable to write, I dug into my files seeking comfort, and came across Forgotten Stories from my Village, Harwai by Hari Govind Narayan Dubey. In 2015, I worked with the author to translate this charming book, based in rural India during the freedom struggle, into English. It has dramatic stories – pots of gold uncovered by a farmer ploughing his fields, a spectacular jailbreak, the impact of caste division and social boycott, and more. What makes it a classic is the ringside view of the lifestyles, thought processes, and other subtleties of an epoch of Indian history invariably dominated by political figures with vested interests. To make it easily accessible to all, I uploaded it for free download on this link .

Still unsure about being able to concentrate, I decided to attempt a slim volume with an uncomplicated cover: The Impossible Journey by James A Coghlan. This lovely story of a Scottish boy’s experience of serving in the Indian army is fiction, but, based on the diary of the author’s great uncle’s accounts of a road journey from Rawalpindi to London in 1936, is quite as alive with engaging detail as Naomul’s memoirs. Along with glimpses of world history and geography, the reader understands a little about the connection between India and Scotland, while revelling in the wry turn of phrase that permeates the book.

And then, a drowning woman who miraculously began to swim, I picked up The Strange Case of Billy Biswas by Arun Joshi. This book shows that IWE were quietly turning out classic prose decades before the term IWE was coined. Billy Biswas belongs to two peculiar and mutually exclusive communities: the privileged anglophiles who once governed India, and an ancient tribe, both groups reduced today to appendages verging on extinction. Though I found its traces of schoolboy fantasy a little annoying, the plot captivated me and I read in long happy bursts, freed at last from lockdown.

This column was written for  The  Hindu and appeared on Monday 3 August 2020