Lauren Rosewarne, University of Melbourne

Of all the feminist alleyways one might stumble down online, a noteworthy one is the menstrual community.

A place where period activism is out, is proud. Where blood becomes ink, becomes lipstick, becomes art. A place where Ani DiFranco’s Blood in the Boardroom plays on a ceaseless loop.

Given their way, this sisterhood might even deify Chinese Olympic bronze medallist Fu Yuanhui. In Rio, explaining her third-place swim, Yuanhui blamed it on cramps.

For feminists who spend any time online, the idea of period talk being forbidden is hilarious. In some places online one wonders whether anything else is ever discussed.

In the broader world, however – and most certainly in the blokey realm of professional sport – to bring blood out of the bathroom and into a mixed-company, live Olympic broadcast was outright shocking.

Yuanhui’s story stood out for me not because of the cramps, but for the swimming-while-bleeding possibility. It served as a quiet tale of tampon use.

For those watching in her motherland of China, Yuanhui’s story was one of possibilities. With only 2% of the population using tampons, she provided information about options.

While in the West it’s been a very long time since Courtney Cox taught us about “internal protection”, or since those so white horseriding and windsurfing commercials aired, many women in China report never having heard of tampons or, at the very least, not knowing anyone who uses them.

In 2011, when I was writing a book about menstruation, women – through zero prompting on my part – would share their period stories and ask me incredibly elaborate questions (mistakenly under the impression I know anything at all about what’s going on).

I’d also often hear “I’ve never used tampons” confessions. Seemingly, some women are convinced they’ve committed a kind of anachronistic, feminine hygiene sin for picking the pad. That, by eschewing the more “discreet” option, renders them less feminist, less empowered, less hip.

Figures are rubbery but in the United States it is estimated 42% of women use tampons (and likely not exclusively), compared to 62% using pads. I’d speculate most Western countries have similar figures.

In China – as a developing nation with a very different culture around periods– it makes sense that tampon use is low. But nearly a century into commercial tampon availability in the West, where does our pad preference come from?

I was at high school throughout much of the 1990s. A time when Girlfriend and Dolly were only seemed to publish stories about toxic shock syndrome. I’ve not been able to locate any data on whether the 90s was a particularly bumper decade for the syndrome, but women my age are quick to whisper about the toxic shock.

Dramatically overstated fears of TSS still see some women disinclined to use tampons. While it’s a medical malady easily avoided – by not treating a tampon as a permanent resident, for example – the Death From Tampon spectre still haunts.

An extension of this are vaguer tampons-make-you-sick fears. One version – popularised by the fount of all quality urban legends: the world wide web – claims they’re chock-full of asbestos, thus making you bleed more so you need to buy more tampons. Cue iron deficiency at best, exsanguination when it gets a little worse. Despite asbestos not being an ingredient in any tampons we’d buy in countries such as Australia or the US, such myths won’t die.

Outside of Pete Evans-style medical “information”, a range of cultural and social reasons continue to dissuade tampon use. No woman alive would be unaware of those “will I still be a virgin if I use tampons?” concerns. Aside from the fact that picturing a hymen as a kind of football banner needing to be ploughed through is indicative of truly horrendous sex education, such an image perpetuates the harmful myth that virginity is all about an intact membrane.

Tampon usage also retains an ick factor. Just as Americans are often horrified to arrive in Australia and discover that we mostly go applicatorless, for many women – even those who have read the Female Eunuch– there just isn’t a desire to get closer to one’s uterus lining. It’s for this reason that other internal, having-to-touch-the-blood methods like cups and sponges haven’t yet gone mainstream.

An extension of this is discomfort – physically or just psychologically – at having something inside you for stretches of time each month.

Women are also pretty loyal to managing their periods how they always have. If mum handed you a pad that very first time, you likely kept using them. And for women with a particularly heavy flow, tampons are oftentimes perceived as less reliable.

I’m always a bit conflicted about the deployment of a menstrual excuse: I think doing so has some unintended costs for women; for feminism. On this occasion, however, a happy consequence of Yuanhui’s comments is that she has shed light on options. She let women in China know that, yes, there are ways to swim while you have your period. She also sent a broader message that elite sport and menstruation can coexist.

Nothing could be more personal, more intimate, than how women manage their periods. Doing so effectively can only be done with quality information.

Lauren Rosewarne, Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Advertisers, especially those selling to high-end consumers, are increasingly turning to ‘women’s empowerment’ to tug at the heartstrings of their target audience and create brand value.

This is certainly not a bad thing – just as regressive advertising reiterates and magnifies gender prejudices, progressive advertising can contribute towards breaking stereotypes and facilitating a culture of equality.

However, while it is easy to dream of utopia, it’s harder to make the journey to get there.

Amazon India recently launched a series of ads with the hashtag #MomBeAGirlAgain.

The ads focus on women and encourage them to pick up from where they left off before they turned into mothers.

In one, a single mother’s daughter tells her that she knows her mother has had to give up many things because she was busy being “mom and dad” – “juggling home and business”, “teaching Maths and skating” – while other kids had their fathers to do all of this.

Watch:

This may sound like nit-picking but considering the ad is selling us ‘women’s empowerment’ in an Amazon box, the neat cleaving of “mom” roles and “dad” roles is troublesome. The video also shows the woman changing a lightbulb, suggesting that she’s had to “man up” for the family.

Another shows a middle-aged woman whose son has left home. She appears bored and dispirited. Then she receives a package from her son and it’s a camera!

Watch:

The gift is to encourage his mother to “be a girl” again because she now has a lot of “free time”. She no longer has to cook food for her son, clean his room or wait for him to come back. 

Since she is now “free”, she can go back to her old hobby of clicking photographs and becoming the “different” girl for whom his father fell.

Where to begin? If the son knew that his mother had given up her interests to look after him, why didn’t he contribute to the housework when he was old enough to understand and spare his mother some “free time”? Ah, yes, it’s far easier to order a camera off the internet than actually get your hands dirty doing your own laundry.

The father, who in the opening shot, walks into his wife’s room and demands food, magically transforms into a roti-making husband the minute the camera arrives in the household.

What were these two men doing all these years? Do women have to wait around till the men in their lives decide they can now have “free time” for them to turn into “girls” and pursue their interests?

The third one shows a much younger woman. A PV Sindhu who fell off the path after becoming a mother.

Watch:

The husband in this ad says he knows his wife does not have the time and energy to play badminton anymore because she has to manage the house, her work and their child.

While she was running behind the shuttlecock earlier, she has to run behind the child now. She has forgotten to flash her “little girl” smile that bowled him over when they were courting.

And so, he entreats her to become a “girl” again by gifting her a racquet. The wife then starts playing to entertain their daughter to make her eat.

Nowhere does the husband enter the picture. We see a house-help aiding the woman but there is nothing to suggest any attitude change from the husband. He doesn’t, for instance, say, “Why don’t you practise badminton in the evenings? I’ll come back early and look after our daughter for a while.” Or “Why don’t you play in the mornings? I’ll take care of breakfast.”

Maybe he could have ordered himself a nice pan from Amazon to get the process started. But no, that’s too much work and effort.

Dear Amazon, women cannot turn into carefree “girls” at anyone’s whim and fancy so long as we’re so hell-bent on confining them to their traditional roles and so long as men remain uninterested in participating in domestic processes. And no, participation doesn’t mean clicking a button and spending a few thousands.

 If you cannot bring yourself to address that in your advertising, at least give us the freedom to hold on to a healthy bit of resentment and not simply smile like naive little girls. 

Kelley Deetz, University of Virginia and Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

When First Lady Michelle Obama reminded Americans during the Democratic National Convention that she lives in a house literally built by slaves, it once again sparked discussion of slavery in the United States' history.

The White House is not the only famous building built by enslaved African-Americans. Slaves and the wealth created by their forced labor were used to build many American institutions. For example, the Smithsonian Institution’s storied “castle” was built using limestone quarried by slaves. Universities too benefited from slavery and enslaved labor.

We are slavery scholars who are attempting a challenging task – helping recover the lost stories of those individuals who built some of America’s oldest institutions.

Building schools with slavery

Donors made rich by the products of slave labor endowed schools in the North and South. Sometimes those donors willed enslaved laborers to schools and to churches. That is how a religious order – the Jesuits – ended up as owner of hundreds of enslaved humans in Maryland in the 1830s.

In 1838, Jesuits sold 272 such enslaved humans. Many of those people ended up in Louisiana, where slave labor was needed to provide the labor for cotton and sugar plantations.

Meanwhile, the proceeds from the sale were used to fund buildings on Georgetown University’s campus.

The sale of humans to endow Georgetown is only one of the most dramatic examples of how wealth made from slavery supported education and universities. In some years the vast majority of students at the University of Alabama came from slave-owning families. Even at less elite southern colleges, more than 50 percent of students came from slave-owning families.

The profits from slavery funded education. Indeed, this was often an explicit part of the wills left behind by slave owners. For example, when one Alabama slave owner, Absalom Morton, died in 1845, his will instructed that his slave, David, be rented out and the profits used for his cousin’s education.

Faculty, too, owned enslaved African-Americans.

For instance, Frederick Barnard, the namesake of Barnard College in New York City, owned several female slaves when he was the chancellor of the University of Mississippi before the Civil War.

Faculty throughout the South wrote and taught about the need for slavery, and that it was consistent with morality and natural law.

The story of Washington and Lee University

Schools did their part to promote slavery as well. For example, in 1825 when slave owner John Robinson died, Washington College (now known as Washington and Lee University) in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley inherited about 80 people from him.

This is the story we’ve been looking to tell: Robinson instructed the college to not sell the slaves for 50 years. He further instructed that the “strictest regard be paid to (the slaves') comfort and happiness.”

But when the college found that renting them proved a burden, it sold about 50 of them to Samuel Garland of Lynchburg, Virginia for about $US20,000.00, roughly $500,000 in today’s dollars.

Some of the money was used for a new building on campus, still known as Robinson Hall. Recently Washington and Lee University placed a memorial to them outside Robinson Hall.

What happened to the Washington College slaves?

Samuel Garland bought these slaves to work on his family land in Hinds County, Mississippi. So, Washington College’s slaves most likely walked from their home near the James River in Lexington, Virginia, down through Knoxville and then on to the Garland land in Mississippi, a journey of around 800 miles.

Samuel Garland made a fortune in Mississippi off enslaved labor. But like many who made their fortunes in the deep South, he used his money to live in Virginia. He built a mansion on “Garland Hill” in Lynchburg. By the time of his death in 1861, Samuel Garland had slaves on two plantations in Hinds County and another one in Coahoma County.

Rebuilding lost histories

But no one should forget that these are just dramatic vignettes about a system that held millions in bondage.

Hundreds of thousands of humans were sold as chattel and moved from the upper South to the lower South of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana before the Civil War. Families were ripped apart and tremendous efforts were exerted to reunite after emancipation.

What happened to those families?

Last year, Georgetown started to track down the descendants of those enslaved people who were sold by the Jesuits. This spring they found some of the descendants of those people sold nearly 200 ago. Many live in Louisiana and some have retained the Catholic faith of their ancestors.

In the past few months those descendants, officials at Georgetown and many others have been asking what should be done about that legacy of slavery.

The New York Times editorial board suggested one form of repair should be scholarships for descendants who attend Georgetown. Georgetown’s president has met with some descendants and is listening to their ideas about how best to acknowledge and repair this legacy.

That leads to questions about other schools, too. What happened to those dozens of enslaved African-Americans who were forced to leave their homes and walk 800 miles to labor on Garland’s plantations?

What did it mean to be torn away from family and friends? To be uprooted after the promise of remaining near all they knew?

Looking for descendants

We are writing about this in part because we want to remind people that there are many such stories of slavery and uprooting, of pain and sorrow, of perseverance and strength.

In the stories of a few we can trace the trajectory of our nation’s history, reconnect families and attempt to confront the demons of our collective pasts. If we wait any longer these memories and connections will be lost.

Many don’t want to remember. And that is understandable.

As historians we want to provide maps for those who do want to know now, and for those who will want to know in the future.

We are looking for people who are descended from those enslaved African-Americans once owned by John Robinson, then by Washington College and later by the Garland family. In an effort to capture any memories passed down through the generations, and to possibly reconnect relatives, we want to interview anyone who knows anything about these people and their families.

If you or anyone you know is willing to speak with us please contact us at vamiss1825@gmail.com.

Kelley Deetz, Research Associate for the President's Commission on Slavery, University of Virginia and Alfred L. Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

By M.R. Narayan Swamy 

Title: Om Swami As We Know Him; Authors: Ismita Tandon and Swami Vidyananda Om; Publisher: Harper Element; Pages: 278; Price: Rs 350

This is a book for believers. If you don't have faith in god, avoid this. But if you are a devotee, this will be an eye-opener of a book.

To those who may have considered the young Om Swami just another New Age monk in ochre robes, Ismita Tandon and Swami Vidyananda Om unveil a religious leader who evokes great reverence. Om Swami renounced enormous wealth and a life of luxury to take to meditating 22 hours daily in harsh Himalayan weather in search of divinity. When Vidyananda- from Karnataka- met Om Swami in Haridwar, he was delighted he had finally found a Guru he had been seeking for eight long years.

Here was a simple, austere monk who presided over an equally simple ashram in a remote part of Himachal Pradesh, accepting no material donation from anyone. But there were numerous instances when he could accurately read people's minds, foresee unexpected visitors and events, and even predict the problems with which people approached him. Where needed, he would take recourse to chanting a mantra that "carried with a strange healing power that almost instantaneously granted relief to patients", particularly the poor who sought him out from nearby villages where medical facilities were scarce and life was any way tough.

Image source: harpercollins.co.in

In no time, Vidyananda was convinced that Om Swami was truly a man of god. "I was no longer surprised by anything Gurudev did or said. Anything he would say would come to pass just as He had predicted it would. He could see anyone's past or future. He could tell about a person just by hearing his name." To any question Vidyananda would pose, Om Swami had one answer: "Nothing is impossible with the grace of Mother Divine." Vidyananda says there isn't a Tantravidya or Tantrasadhana that Om Swami doesn't know.

Award-winning poet and author Ismita Tandon was no believer when she came into contact, after a string of personal mishaps, with Om Swami. But her spiritual transformation was rapid. The monk's uncanny ability to see through people was downright intimidating at times. "From accurately telling the location of a mole on a person's clothed body, to misdeeds that they hadn't confessed - and even significant events of their past and future - nothing, it seemed, could remain hidden from (Om) Swami."

So fascinated is Vidyananda, himself deeply religious, by his Guru and his hidden divine powers that one day he asks: "Who are you, Gurudev? Please tell me." Pat comes the answer: "I am a simple sadhu in a complex world."

Om Swami is clearly much more than that. This is truly a fascinating book. "Om Swami As We Know Him" is sure to transform innumerable lives in the times to come.

Mahesh Shantaram thinks it’s about time we Indians have an honest conversation with and about the African men and women who live among us. That in 2016, the question of race has finally become a talking point, with reams of news articles, analyses and debates in the last few months, gives him hope.

Mahesh’s own contribution to that conversation, comes in the form of a series of personal portraits of Africans living in Bengaluru, Delhi, Manipal, Jaipur and Hyderabad – a project that he kicked off following the horrific mob attack on a Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru in February. “There are some incidents that go beyond the isolated viewpoint of a crime, and garner international attention,” he says. He points to what the December 16 rape case in Delhi did to the conversation on women’s safety, and observes that the attack on the Tanzanian woman similarly shifted the debate on race.

But why personal portraiture? After all, isn’t racism a question of our gaze and thinking than that of the African subjects Mahesh photographs? Personal portraiture is a way of humanising the subject and establishing their visual identity, says Mahesh, pointing out that compared to the numbers of Africans who live in Indian cities, their public visibility is very low. “Just realising that so many of them live in our city, and we share our city and its woes with them, means that we need to see them.”

When we see them for who they are, he says, “you feel like these people are just like us. They have ambitions, they have aspirations, they come here to study, they want to finish their course, go back to their country and help build it. So they want the same things in life as we do.”

That’s also why Mahesh chose portraiture as a mode of subjective documentary – because it opens up worlds and lives for interpretation instead of just documenting factual events. Together with the stories of his subjects that he documents on thecontrarian.in/racism, the portraits contextualise and flesh out lives that we otherwise rarely notice. “When you read the stories you will see the context in which these pictures were made. I am not exoticising them, I am asking you to recognise them.”

What’s most fascinating and absorbing about Mahesh’s series of photographs is that not one of his subjects sport a smile. The intensity of their expressions, which draw the viewer in and arrest the wandering gaze, says Mahesh, is the result of the long exposure photography he relies on. “This goes back to the portraiture methods of the 1800s, where it would take a very long time for the picture to form on the glass plate. That’s why the portraiture of those days was very stiff. But it also was very descriptive,” he explains.

He sees such photography as a counter to the “selfie plague”, which he finds “stupid”.

“I want to know where they come from, what they have left behind. Like some people may be from royal families, or may have sold their land to fund their education. Just imagine selling your land, raising the funds to pay for your education, and then getting beaten up and killed and going back in a coffin. That’s the ultimate nightmare of the people back home.”

The exhibition of his portraits, he feels, could open up new avenues in which this conversation could go further. “When do Indians and Africans usually meet? Only when an incident occurs. And then only in spaces of hostility – police stations, TV studios where debates take place, or bureaucratic offices. Here in a space of art and culture, where people are open for discussion, maybe we could initiate a conversation.”

So along with the exhibitions of the photographs in five cities by Tasveer – Bengaluru, Gandhinagar, Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata – there are also discussions and conversations as happened at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Bengaluru on Saturday, through which Mahesh hopes to bring Indian and African voices into dialogue.

Mahesh Shantaram’s photographs are on exhibition at the Tasveer Gallery on Kasturba Cross Road in Bengaluru till September 23.

By Sushila Ravindranath

India Cements, the cement industry leader in the South, has seven integrated plants in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, one in Rajasthan and two grinding units, one each in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. It has a capacity of 15.5 million tonnes. It has coal mines in Indonesia, ships to carry them, and captive power plants in Tamil Nadu and Andhra. Its turnover in 2013 was `5310 crore.

When N Srinivasan became the Managing Director of India Cements in 1989, its balance sheet was in the red. Labour indiscipline was rampant. The organisation lacked vision, direction and leadership. Input costs were spiralling while cement prices were under pressure in a glut market situation. For most entrepreneurs, this would have been a nightmare. But for Srinivasan, it was a dream come true. He was confident of turning around a company which had once been co-promoted by his father. India Cements was one of the first cement plants to come up in the country in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu in 1946. It was also the first company in India to have a public issue.

In less than six years, under his leadership, the company’s sales more than quadrupled to `629 crore, to become the largest cement company in the south with a market share of 14 per cent. More importantly, it showed a healthy net profit of `47 crore. In his low key style Srinivasan did several daring things which made the rest of the country sit up and take notice. He aggressively bid for the million tonne Chilamkur cement plant of Coromandel Fertilisers Ltd. in 1990, a year after he took over the management of India Cements. The company had made an operational loss. The market was in the dumps.

Srinivasan offered `125 crore for a plant of 1983 vintage, which was widely believed to be suffering from structural and design defects. Given the circumstances, this was considered a rash move. “I was prepared to pay the price to emerge as the largest cement manufacturer in the south. With it, we gained a tremendous edge in marketing and entered the big league,” says Srinivasan.

For the kind of balance sheet the company had at that time, it required a lot of persuasion from its side to get loans from financial institutions. For the company it was a great bargain, since it neither had the funds to build a new million tonne plant, nor the time to wait through the gestation period. “It was a calculated move, not a gamble. A lot of thought had gone into it. Our conclusions were backed by in-depth technical studies. All this is beside the point. Where I scored over others was in my grasp of the projected outlook for cement, which, thank God, proved accurate.” he maintains.

Srinivasan is the son of TS Narayanaswamy who co-promoted the company with SNN Sankaralinga Iyer, grandfather of the Chairman of the Sanmar Group, N Sankar. The company was run in the 1970s by Narayanaswamy and KS Narayanan, Sankar’s father. On the untimely death of Narayanaswamy, Srinivasan, then barely out of college, was made Joint Managing Director.

(Courtesy: India Cements website).

Subsequently, a rift resulted in the removal of Srinivasan in 1979. Though evicted, Srinivasan wouldn’t give up. He went to court against his ouster and the company’s annual general meetings became noisy affairs. As the battle raged, FIs which held substantial equity, took control of the company. They appointed their nominees to run India Cements. Srinivasan was determined to get back to the company. He knew he had to get close to the powers that were in Delhi. He won friends and influenced people in Delhi. This was the time when the DMK leader Murasoli Maran became a close friend. Srinivasan has never denied his close association with Maran.” My single-minded objective was to get India Cements back,” he has always said.

In the ‘80s when everybody was diversifying wildly, ITC, which was not yet a big name in hotels and other businesses decided to bid for India Cements. Cement seemed a good business to invest in for many wanting to diversify. The industry had been partially decontrolled. The institutional nominees running India Cements were all for it and ITC bought the equity holdings of LIC and UTI. “I had to approach the courts and the Company Law Board and get this deal nullified,” says Srinivasan. ITC finally gave back the shares to the institutions.

A decade later, the Srinivasan and Narayanan families buried their differences. Sankar was made Chairman and Srinivasan the Managing Director. Srinivasan had pulled out all stops, and finally got what he wanted. We will know how he did it when he chooses to write his story. He showed the kind of tenacity which would become the hallmark of all his activities, be it business or sports. Eventually he bought out his brother Ramachandran’s and Sankar’s shares to become the largest shareholder (28 per cent) in the company.

Srinivasan’s comeback at ICL coincided with the time when the cement industry was waking up to total decontrol. “I realised that we needed enormous marketing skills to face the new challenges. Plant location and nurturing of strong brands in home markets became crucial,” he says. In the era of controls, a cement company had to merely produce cement. Equalised freight rates allowed movement across the country. But, after decontrol, cement became a freight sensitive commodity. Srinivasan and his marketing team seized the opportunity to reinforce the company’s brand leadership in the south where ICL fortunately had a good distribution network.

Srinivasan showed a lot of aggression in his acquisition strategies but he kept his accounting and investment policies conservative. In October 1994, ICL raised about $49.5 million through a GDR issue. Despite difficult market conditions at that time, it was oversubscribed. It was one of the few Indian GDRs issued in 1994 to be trading above the issue price. The proceeds were spent on upgradation of Chilamkur and other units, setting up of another plant and the retiring of debts. After the Euro issue the company had enough equity to handle its debt requirements.

Srinivasan set up a shipping division in the early 1990s. That did not surprise anyone who knew him. Srinivasan’s father, TS Narayanaswamy, was a pioneer of Tamil Nadu’s shipping industry. He was a co-promoter of the South India Shipping Corporation (SISCO), which was in the dry bulk cargo trade. When SISCO was put up for sale in 1990, Srinivasan did not bid for it. He was committed to acquiring the Chilamkur plant from Coromandel, which was more important from ICL’s core competency point of view. Eventually, the Ruias of Essar bought the stakes of the copromoter Tarapore and the Tamil Nadu government to acquire the highly successful SISCO.

He did not rush into a diversification binge as many groups in this period did. “We do not believe in diversification for the sake of diversification. We are also wary of entering fields unfamiliar to us. We step in only when we are sure of success.” His executives with one voice credited ICL’s turnaround to the leadership and vision of Srinivasan. As Srinivasan himself put it, “I think I have succeeded in motivating my team to perform to the best of its ability. I did it mostly by setting an example and also by involving them. The emphasis has been on application, commitment and a conservative approach.”

By 1996 ICL’s turnover had gone up to `832-crore. It was building size. A number of acquisitions had been completed. These included its `198-crore bid for the public sector Cement Corporation of India’s 0.4 million tonne plant at Yarraguntla in Andhra Pradesh and Visakha Cements, another Andhra-based company. Visakha was then setting up a 0.9 million tonne plant and India Cements bought out its entire equity at a cost of `60 crore. In addition, it had taken over Aruna Sugars Finance and Aruna Sugar’s license to put up a 2,500 MT per day sugar plant in Karnataka. The hostile takeover of Raasi Cement by India Cements that started with a bang finally ended with a whimper. Ever since Srinivasan announced his intentions to bid for Raasi Cement, its Executive Chairman, BV Raju, made noises about coming up with a counter-offer. He was all the while negotiating with Srinivasan to sell his 32 per cent shares in the company. Raju got over `150 crore from the sale of his shares. For Srinivasan this was a great victory. He won despite stiff opposition from the institutions.

Srinivasan’s boldness in digging his heels in the face of opposition from the FIs set a new precedent for many other companies to follow. It was widely acknowledged that there was no political pressure brought upon by Srinivasan either at the Centre or at the state level. Financial industry sources were delighted that these kind of M&A activities shored up the stockmarkets. Raasi, which was never a star performer on the bourses, saw its price shooting up to `260 from `60 in end-1997.

This was a time when FIs disapproved of deals which did not receive their blessings. IDBI Chairman SH Khan apparently was not keen on this takeover. He went on record saying that IDBI would not fund hostile takeovers. Many in the industry said that institutions like IDBI were so used to playing God that they found it difficult to come to terms with market realities. IDBI apparently faced a lot of pressure from Gujarat Ambuja, L&T and the Aditya Birla group to prevent the Raasi takeover by India Cements as they all wanted a larger share of the southern market.

Eventually Raasi got delisted and merged with India Cements so that the company could get the benefits of the combined operations as early as possible. As it happened India Cements also ended up acquiring the one million tonne Vishnu Cements in which Raasi had a 40 per cent stake. This was originally not a part of the deal. However, when India Cements came up with its open offer for Raasi Cement, it was discovered that the latter’s entire stake in Vishnu had been sold to some of the promoter’s group companies.

By August 1997, India Cements had made big investments in Raasi and its interest in the company was out in the open. At this point Raasi hurriedly convened a couple of board meetings and its shares in Vishnu were divested at `10 each, allegedly to Raju’s friends and relations. After the takeover was completed, India Cements examined Raasi’s books and found that it had violated the Sebi takeover guidelines which prohibit the target management from disposing of any asset during the open offer period. Then India Cements staked a claim to the control of Vishnu Cements complaining to SEBI that a valuable asset was stripped from the company to the detriment of Raasi’s shareholders. Vishnu Cements was part of Raasi and had been sold below par. A million-tonne cement plant had been acquired for barely `9 crore. Srinivasan had his way. India Cements ended up acquiring Vishnu Cements as well.

In less than two years, India Cements’ capacity had grown to nine million tonnes. The acquisitions cost was `1,600 crore and was predominantly funded by debt. What was not anticipated was that every other cement company worth its name would charge to the southern region to set up capacities before the government withdrew all sales tax-related incentives. Without these incentives no cement plant was viable at the cement prices prevailing then. Too much capacity was added which sent prices crashing. At one point a truckload of sand cost more than a truckload of cement in parts of AP. India Cements began to incur losses and its ability to service debt suffered.

By the turn of the century the company had defaulted on some of its loans. Production had to be curtailed as there was no working capital. Srinivasan sold Vishnu Cements to keep the company going. This could not resolve the crisis. He said in an interview to Business Today, “We realised we were in a hole and opted for a corporate debt restructuring (CDR) scheme, which came into effect from January 2003. The CDR bought us time to focus on operations. We shed manpower (about 1,000 employees), cut production costs, sold our ships and some land.”

In September 2005, India Cements came out with a Global Depository Receipts issue while still in the CDR scheme. “Many warned us that it was an unwise thing to do. Investors would not even look at a company that had defaulted on its debt obligations. But we went ahead and raised `477 crore, which was used to pay off some debt. That was the turning point.” said Srinivasan. Soon cement prices began to improve and this accelerated the company’s revival. In the following years, he raised more funds from the market to finance the company’s growth plans. From 2010, the cement industry has been facing problems once again. The economic slowdown had hit the company hard. According to the company’s annual report, “With the huge supply overhang in the South, the industry had to face the brunt of severe competition in the market resulting in lowering of the prices particularly in Andhra Pradesh during the second half of this fiscal. The cost of production has been impacted with the increase in the price of input materials, fly ash, gypsum, power and fuel and higher transport charges.”

The cement industry twenty-five years ago was in a different place as most industries had been set up in the pre-liberalisation area. It was dominated by Indian giants based in the West such as ACC promoted by the Tatas. By 2004, the scene changed totally. The management control of ACC was taken over by Swiss cement major Holcim in 2004. Gujarat Ambuja which was the most celebrated cement company in the country which had tied up with L&T also sold out to Holcim. Today, the largest Indian cement company is Birla Ultratech, which is part of the Grasim Group. It took over L&T Cement.

Holcim itself has announced its merger with the French cement maker Lafarge. If the merger takes place it would dwarf every other player in the world. The industry is dominated by a lot of international players who have been picking up Indian cement companies all over the country. About 60 per cent of cement industry is controlled by four or five large players and the rest are fractured small units here and there.

In this situation can Srinivasan hold on to his company and make it profitable once again? Can he retire his company’s debt? Srinivasan remains his unflappable self. He says, “One cannot borrow all the time to grow. One cannot try and increase market share in a fractured industry with debt. In the last few years capacity has shot up from 170 million tonnes to 320 million. Maybe there will be a resurgence. Then I see a lot of M&A activity happening. It always takes much longer to set up a new plant. Let’s look at the positive side. There are only eight states with limestone reserves. Tamil Nadu is one of them. Per capita cement consumption compared to the rest of the developed world is very low in India. I have a sugar company which provides 4000 tonnes of cogeneration capacity. I have 25000 acres of land bank. We have invested in coal and power and shipping. In a licence free atmosphere, there are no short cuts to success.”

Is he paying as much attention to cement as he did to cricket? People who know him say he will never sell out India Cements.

Excerpted with permission from Surge: Tamil Nadu’s Growth Story by Sushila Ravindranath, Westland, August 2016.

The book has chapters on Maran brothers, Murugappas, TVS group, Ma Foi, Sify, Caratlane and others. You can buy the book here.

Commodore Ajith Boyagoda became the highest-ranked prisoner to be detained by the LTTE on September 19, 1994 after the Tamil Tigers attacked Sri Lanka’s biggest warship.  He was held prisoner of war for eight years, living with his declared enemy. This is an excerpt from Commodore Boyagoda’s book “A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka”, as told to Sunila Galappatti.

****

By Commodore Ajith Boyagoda as narrated to Sunila Galappatti

They untied me and led me out of the boat. Two men walked up to me: one was in charge, the other was acting as his translator. They asked me—in Sinhala—whether I was wounded. I said I was not and I also introduced myself as Commander Boyagoda, the Commanding Officer of the ship they had attacked. They seemed a little taken aback by that—surprised.  

Then there was a wait, but I didn’t know what for. Other cadres, both men and women, came out to investigate their catch. They were full of curiosity now. One of the guys who had been on the boat spotted my gold chain. He said ‘thangam thange’, ‘hand over the gold’. He tugged at my wedding ring. I told him it was too tight now to take off and that it was my wedding ring. But I took off the chain, with a priest’s talisman on it, and gave it to him. I gave him my watch too—which would have been of no use by then.  

We waited a little longer and then I saw a jeep approach in the dark. A man got down, a hefty fellow. The interpreter said ‘He’s Soosai.’ This was such a familiar name to me and now I was meeting the man. He came and shook hands with me. I said, in English, ‘I have heard you so many times over the net, I am glad to meet you’. I don’t remember his reaction—at most he nodded his head. He pointed me to his jeep. I was to get in and he would drive me away.

*****

We were given lunch packets of rice and curry. I ate all of mine but Vijitha could barely eat at all. He was scared and he was worried about his wife and newborn daughter. ‘Now they’re going to kill us’ he said. I said I doubted it but, if that was so, there was no point worrying about it until they drew their guns. Still, Vijitha fretted, as he would do for some time to come.  

Eventually Soosai arrived. This time he was dressed in full camouflage uniform and looked much more impressive than he had done the night before. Today he was wearing a pistol in a holster and carrying a T56. He lifted his weapons and said ‘gifts from Premadasa.’ With him was a cameraman who was going to film our journey for the Tigers’ propaganda arm. I saw this footage years later, in captivity. By then it was like a movie; a disconnected experience of watching yourself in a film.  

By boat we crossed the vast Kilali lagoon that separates the northern Jaffna peninsula from the rest of the island of Sri Lanka. It was dark by the time we arrived on the opposite shore. Another camouflaged jeep was parked there and we were put into it. Again Soosai tapped the body of the jeep and said ‘gift from Premadasa’. I knew we were on the peninsula but I had not been outside a naval base there since 1983. So there was no way I could recognise the terrain in the darkness. We moved in silence. I could see the odd lamp. We may have driven a long way to go a short distance. We stopped at a house and Soosai went in. When he returned it was without the cameraman and he was dressed again in a sarong and t-shirt. I kept feeling that he reminded me of a mudalali in a hardware shop.  

LTTE Chief V Prabhakaran (left) with Sea Tigers Head Soosai (Image courtesy: LTTE) 

We were brought to another house and told to get out of Soosai’s jeep. Here another man appeared. He was a very smart guy with a crew cut and an air of authority. He must have been in his mid thirties; about the same age as Soosai. ‘I am Selvaratnam,’ he said, in English. He introduced Soosai again. ‘He is our Commander of the Navy’ he said, indicating that Soosai and I were men of the same trade. Selvaratnam—Sasikumar by his nom de guerre—was the head of the LTTE’s reconnaissance unit and military office. He was to be my custodian for the next nine months and a powerful figure in my captivity.  

Selvaratnam and his assistant Reuben now put us in another jeep and drove us on. We arrived at the house where we were going to stay. There was a room for me and a room for Vijitha. Inside, a towel, toothbrush and tube of toothpaste was laid on each makeshift bed. There were plates of food already served. They had been expecting us. Selvaratnam showed us our rooms and then ran through a few instructions. He said we were to stay inside. He said there was no point trying to escape; it wouldn’t be easy to do without being caught. He said we were not to speak to each other. But he was friendly in his instructions. He said not to worry, peace talks were coming and we would be going home very soon.  It was less than 24 hours since we had been captured. I was not as disoriented as I had been the night before but still far from normal. I wanted more rest. Vijitha was given dinner in his room and I was given dinner at the table in the hall. Then we were told to go to sleep.

*****

Commodore Ajith Boyagoda (right) speaking to a Sri Lankan Army officer after his release (Image courtesy: Tamilnet) 

Another thing that happened while we were at Periyamadu was that Sri Lanka won the Cricket World Cup. We knew Sri Lanka had made it to the final because the guards had come to tell us. They were excited too. Even the LTTE made an exception for cricket. They would not call it the Sri Lankan team— they never used the new name of the country—but they supported it. They were big fans of Sanath Jayasuriya and Arjuna Ranatunga. It was a source of great pride to them that a Tamil player, Muttiah Muralitharan, should be one of the new stars of the team.

On the day of the final, the guards on duty made a point of frequently coming to our cell doors. By doing this, they could allow us also to catch the commentary on the pocket radios they carried. They’d come and update us on the score. You ask me if I remember any moments from the match? Not really; we didn’t hear enough for that. But it was still one of our most exciting days in captivity. Sri Lanka had never been in a World Cup final before. Most of us were cricketers ourselves. When Sri Lanka won, the guards cheered with us.  

But mostly days just passed. That’s how it was. Then, one day they would come and say—get ready, come out, get into a truck. They’d drive you away. Then you’d know you’d left.

Excerpted with the permission of Harper Collins India from “A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka” by Commodore Ajith Boyagoda as told to Sunila Gallappati  

You can buy the book here

Cover image courtesy: Wikimedia/Qz10

Losing a loved one is never easy. And for this woman, it was even tougher because the reason to let Hannah go depended entirely on her. 

An Imgur post titled "Dogs are too amazing to let go, but sometimes it happens and they will forgive you", lists a series of pictures from the woman's snapchat where she chronicled Hannah the dog's last day.

The woman's dog Hannah had been suffering from seizures for the last two months, which kept getting worse. While medicines would help Hannah, but they would also make her really weak - so much so that she couldn't walk or climb stairs.

"I finally decided that keeping her on the meds was selfish, but keeping her off them was just as cruel," writes the woman. And so, she decided to give Hannah a sendoff worthy of the "queen she has always been".

She decided to let Hannah go, "where there would be no pain, no seizures, no whimpering in the night. Just peace and hopefully love."

Grab a box of tissues and see snapshots of Hannah's amazing last day here.

Jen Anderson Shattuck's three-and-a-half-year-old son Roo likes to wear tutus. Just like he likes to eat plums and play with trucks and do jigsaw puzzle. She has never taught her son "rules about what boys can wear or what girls can wear".

Earlier this month, when Jen was in the park with her son, a stranger demanded to know why the boy was wearing a skirt. 

In a very strong Facebook post that went viral, Jen narrates the incident and slams everyone who thinks like the stranger in the park. 

"My son has worn tutus to church. He has worn tutus to the grocery store. He has worn tutus on the train and in the sandbox. It has been, in our part of the world, a non-issue. We have been asked some well-intentioned questions; we've answered them; it has been fine. It WAS fine, until yesterday," she writes. 

This is when they had an encounter with the strange man. 

"'I'm just curious,' the man said. 'Why do you keep doing this to your son?'"

Jen says, "He wasn't curious. He didn't want answers. He wanted to make sure we both knew that what my son was doing---what I was ALLOWING him to do---was wrong."

The stranger went to the extent of calling her a "bad mommy" and called it "child abuse". 

Jen's post, which has been shared on FB nearly 50,000 times, garnered a lot of appreciation and support from social media user. 

"I will not be intimidated. I will not be made to feel vulnerable or afraid. I will not let angry strangers tell my son what he can or cannot wear," she added. "I will show him, in whatever way I can, that I value the person he is, trust in his vision for himself, and support his choices---no matter what anybody else says, no matter who tries to stop him or how often."

Moved by Jen's story, her friend Tim Atkins started the #TuTusForRoo. He posted a picture of himself wearing a tutu and described how he felt about the entire incident. 

"I wanted to show her three-year old kiddo, nicknamed Roo, that it was just fine for him to wear a sparkly tutu if that's what he wanted to wear. So, I ordered up my own TuTu and thought up the idea of #TuTusForRoo," Tim wrote on his page. 

Jen's story has struck a chord with many on social media, with several users expressing solidarity by posting pictures of themselves in tutus or skirts.

Hey Roo, I'm a husband, dad, runner, weightlifter, Army vet and I think Tutu's are awesome #tutusforroo#tutupic.twitter.com/tbMcgLUDgD

— Joe Domaleski (@joedom) August 30, 2016

I'm with ya Roo!!!#TutusForRoopic.twitter.com/V2St877kYI

— Mark Brewer (@DaddyBearMark) August 29, 2016

Chris Cooney, University of Sheffield

The songbirds that are common in gardens all across the world have a surprisingly distant origin. They all evolved from a common ancestor that emerged from what is now Australia around 24m years ago. How they managed to leave this isolated part of the world and spread all over the planet has long been a mystery to scientists. But a new study suggests they began spreading just as the islands in and around Indonesia were being formed, creating a pathway for them to cross what had previously been thousands of kilometres of open ocean.

Songbirds are a tremendously diverse group of small perching birds, made up of over 5,000 known species distributed across the world. Common examples include the European robin (Erithacus rubecula) and the North American song sparrow (Melospiza melodia). Together, songbirds account for almost half of all bird species alive today.

Although fossils of birds are rare, the ancestor of all songbirds is thought to have originated in Australia, at a time when the Australian landmass was separated from all other land by a vast ocean in all directions. So, despite the birds' extensive evolutionary spread, it remained unclear how this diverse and cosmopolitan family arose from a single ancestral species on an isolated continent.

However, a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications sheds new light on this question. Using genetic and fossil data, the authors reconstructed the evolutionary “family tree” for songbirds. They then linked this to information on different species’ geographic locations to understand how early songbirds spread between different continents over the course of millions of years.

This confirmed that songbirds originated in Australia just over 30m years ago. But the most eye-catching finding is that songbirds started to spread out of Australia much more recently than previously thought. This process appears to have started approximately 24m years ago, at the same time as the formation of Wallacea, a group of islands bridging the ocean-filled gap between Australia and Asia. So this may explain how songbirds were able to leave Australia and radiate across the rest of the world, by island-hopping their way to Asia.

Secrets in the DNA

To gain these novel insights, the researchers first collected DNA from many songbird species across the world. DNA molecules are the building blocks of life and bear the imprint of our evolutionary past. Close relatives tend to have more similar DNA to each other than to distant relatives. So by comparing DNA between songbird species that are related by different amounts, it is possible to reconstruct their evolutionary past and generate a family tree for the entire songbird group.

By mapping the geographic location of living species onto this family tree, the authors were then able to reconstruct where and when new songbird species evolved. The first songbirds originated in the landmass that would eventually become Australia. More surprisingly, though, the first major burst of evolution within songbirds coincided with a period of tectonic collision when islands began forming in the waters north of Australia. This provided the first land link between Australasia and the south-eastern tip of Asia (Sundaland).

Deep ocean dotted with islands separates Australia and AsiaMaximilian Dörrbecker/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

These novel insights have at least three interesting implications. The first is that it resolves the longstanding question of how and when songbirds arrived in Asia. Previous attempts to date the spread of the birds from Australia pointed to a much earlier time, when the landmass was isolated by thousands of kilometres of open ocean.

We now know that the islands of Wallacea provided the first plausible corridor out of Australia, resulting in waves of songbird expansion through Asia to the rest of the globe. This colonisation of previously uninhabited regions seems to have then triggered the evolution of many new songbird species, as the group began to adapt to these novel environments and habitats.

Game of chance

This leads to the second important conclusion: the role of chance in evolution. Paleontologist Stephen J. Gould argued that if the tape of life were rewound and allowed to run again from the start, chances are we would see a very different set of evolutionary outcomes. Features of songbird evolution appear to support this message. Without the chance collision of two tectonic plates millions of years ago, songbirds may have never left Australia and the world’s garden bird feeders may now be playing host to a very different set of species than they do today.

The third and perhaps most striking conclusion is that the common ancestor of all modern songbird species is likely to have lived just over 30m years ago. In evolutionary terms, this is surprisingly recent, especially compared to the probable age of the ancestor of all birds (about 95m years). When you consider that songbirds account for over half of all bird species on Earth (over 5,000 species), the relatively recent origins of songbirds mean they evolved into new species at an even faster rate than previously thought.

By resolving these issues, the study has also set the stage for new and important questions about evolution. Perhaps the most intriguing question now is why a once-small group of Australian songbirds went on to become such a diverse and widespread component of life on Earth.

Chris Cooney, Postdoctoral research associate, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Chris Mills, University of Portsmouth

British breasts are getting bigger, with an annual survey indicating the average woman’s bra size has increased from a 36C to a 36DD – an increase in mass of around 430g. Research has shown that having larger breasts can put some women off participating in sports or exercise and even compromise sports performance.

Sports bras are extremely important for women in competitive sports, but they’re also of significant benefit for all women who exercise. Compared to typical bras, today’s sports bras are the products of considerable scientific and technological research. Sports bra design and innovation has moved on greatly from the first general exercise bra developed by Lisa Lindahl and Polly Smith in 1977, which was in fact two jockstraps sewed together.

Recent developments include seamless knitting, and even tiny sensors and built-in actuators that alter the level of support the bra provides as required. Some sports bras today contain nanostructured textile sensors that communicate with your smart phone to monitor your cardiac health, and even help to detect breast cancers.

During exercise, a woman’s torso moves in many different directions at different speeds. Since breasts contain no muscle and have limited internal support, they are essentially a mass of soft tissue that moves independently of, but is driven by, the motion of the torso. It’s this movement that sports bras and other support clothing works to reduce, altering the underlying mechanics to minimise the breasts’ motion independent of the rest of the body. This can minimise discomfort or pain, and even improve sports performance. It’s been shown that over a distance of 5km a sports bra can improve running technique,making it more economical compared to an everyday bra.

Sports bras using the encapsulation (left) and compression (right) methods to reduce movement.Mvtver

Of course, the demands placed on a sports bra increase with breast size, but larger breasts place greater demands on the body, too. Many women with larger breasts suffer from a sore back and shoulders, for example. A greater mass on the front of the body places additional strain on the posterior chain – the muscles that run down the back of the body that are key to correct posture. If these muscles have to work harder, this increased effort will require more energy.

For sportswomen, this essentially means carrying additional body mass that offers only a performance penalty rather than any gain. In sports that require pound-for-pound strength and whole body locomotion such as gymnastics, athletics or many field sports, women with larger breasts may be at a slight disadvantage.

Simona Halep at Open GDF Suez in 2010, after her breast reduction surgery.Romain Dauphin-Meunier, CC BY

However, there are limitations to what a sports bra can do. Some elite sportswomen have gone to more extreme lengths to reduce their breast size to improve performance. In 2009, Romanian tennis player Simona Halep had breast reduction surgery to go from a 34DD to 34C to help improve her reaction time and speed. Her worldwide ranking, previously below 450, improved such that by 2014 she was seeded third at Wimbledon. Her tennis coach commented that “her strokes are less restricted now that those obstacles have been reduced”.

Australian athlete Jana Rawlinson, winner of the 400m hurdles at the 2007 World Championships, revealed that she had breast implants removed to improve her chances at the 2012 Olympics. Indeed, according to American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery’s statistics, more than 100,000 women had breast reduction surgeries last year, some of whom may well have made the decision due to playing sports.

Of course, having larger breasts doesn’t rule women out of playing sports or from Olympic-level competition, as there are many attributes both physical and psychological that contribute to sporting success. But wearing proper sports bras, regardless of breast size, has been shown again and again to provide the support required to hold breasts steady and reduce or eliminate any pain women may experience. All athletes need support, and a good sports bra is an important part of it.

Chris Mills, Principal Lecturer in Biomechanics, University of Portsmouth

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Like many of the landmark films of the 1980s, I had watched Mani Ratnam’s breakout hit “Mouna Ragam” at a time when I hadn’t yet crossed paths with ideas like feminism and gender equality. Though I retained fragments of the film somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the details had long since escaped conscious reflection.

With the 30th anniversary of the film rolling by earlier this month, I returned to the film expectant and hesitant by turns. Playing on my mind was the question of whether the film could stand up to renewed scrutiny with so much having been written and said about the institution of marriage in the intervening decades.  

For the uninitiated, “Mouna Ragam” tells the tale of an arranged marriage that is hobbled from the start by the asymmetry of feeling between the two spouses. While Chandrakumar (played by Mohan) or CK, as he’s called, wants to be an enthusiastic and caring husband, his wife Divya (Revathi) enters the marriage reluctantly, only out of the guilt of causing her father’s heart attack by her initial refusal of the match. Burdened by the emotional remnants of a past relationship, Divya finds herself unwilling and unable to love her husband, but is eventually won over.

Expectedly, there are elements of the story that don’t sit well if we read them according to today’s standards. So let’s get done with them first. When Divya first objects to her marriage, she does so with principled arguments against the idea of arranged marriage (asking at one point if she is being sold off to the lowest bidder in terms of dowry). She wants to study further, she declares instead. But as the movie progresses, we find out that these vehement declarations were a cover for feelings she still holds for a dead lover (Karthik), a Robin-Hoodesque strongman, who participates in violence in the name of certain un-enunciated principles.

That Divya is only unwilling to participate in her current marriage because of a previous relationship is something of a letdown, in an otherwise interesting premise. That the flashback of that relationship shows it starting off with the “don’t take no for an answer” method that seems standard courtship protocol for Tamil “heroes” adds to this disappointment. Though, to be fair, it is far less aggressive and offensive than some of the examples we see today.

Drawing as it does from a refusal to move on from that first relationship, what initially seems like a spirited resistance to arranged marriage from Divya gradually become reduced to a naive stubbornness. Indeed, quite late in the film, when Divya has started to come around, but CK hasn’t realised it yet, he accuses her of being childish, and declares that such childishness can only be tolerated up to a point.

Take that easy crutch of the past lover out of the film, however, and there are quite a few engaging touches to the film that make you see why this film established Mani Ratnam’s reputation as a writer and director. Against the enduring mythologising of the good Tamil woman as quiet, self-sacrificing, and self-effacing, Divya is a breath of fresh air. She has a spark of irreverence, an insistent recognition of her own desires, and a fairly clear-headed understanding of her own strengths and short-comings. And Revathi plays her with an exuberance and energy that is quite a treat to watch. Her no-nonsense declaration of why she would not make a good wife to CK when they first meet, for instance, is one of the highlights of the film.

And Mani Ratnam ensures that the film stays focused on Divya and her particular experience, and this is what separates "Mouna Ragam" from other similar films like the Bhagyaraj-starrer "Andha Ezhu Naatkal", which focuses more on grand pronouncements about marriage.

CK is the other strong pillar of the film. Starting off with a dignified forbearance at Divya’s resistance to him, he gradually veers into passive-aggressive territory as the marriage seems less and less likely to work. Thus, when the tables turn, he throws back at Divya some of the very lines she first uses to disabuse him that their marriage is anything more than an empty performance (the reference to the thaali as nothing more than a yellow-dyed string around her neck, for instance).

Considering how often marriage gets framed onscreen in passive-aggressive terms, this could have been a major self-goal, but the film holds CK back from going too far down that road, so that it adds texture to his character without ruining him in the process.

But what’s most interesting about the film is its willingness to engage with the D-word (a taboo in its time) – divorce.

The first time CK and Divya go out in the city together after they are married, he tells her he wants to buy her gift, and she says that the only thing she wants is a divorce. A day later, gift-wrapped on the coffee table, is a package containing anklets and divorce papers. “Choose what you want,” declares CK. And Divya holds the anklets for a few seconds before resolutely signing the papers. Seven days after they’re married, the couple is filing for a mutual consent divorce.

This may not seem like a big deal now, but the Censor Board reportedly wanted to give the film an ‘A’ certificate because it dealt with divorce thus.

It isn’t possible to talk about “Mouna Ragam” without mentioning two other high-water marks in the film. The first, of course, is the incomparable Ilaiyaraaja whose wonderful songs stay with you long after the film fades from memory, whether it’s the exuberant “Oh Oh Megam Vanthatho” or the more haunting “Mandram Vandha”, which many years later got repackaged as the signature tune for “Cheeni Kum”. 

The second is cinematographer PC Sreeram, who manages to give the house that CK and Divya live in the sense of a space inhabited by both, but never shared, as each misses the moment when the other opens up to the possibility of commonality.

Yes, “Mouna Ragam” is a mainstream film, and in that sense holds on to many of the prejudices of its time. But it holds to them loosely enough that, even three decades later, it offers up possibilities that you can think, imagine and ultimately enjoy. Considering that Mani Rathnam’s last venture into relationship territory was the eminently forgettable “OK Kanmani” (though I enjoyed the effervescent Nithya Menen, that’s just a fanboy aside), “Mouna Ragam” seems leagues ahead of its time. And for that, “Mouna Ragam” deserves its reputation as a classic. 

Christopher Kremmer, UNSW Australia

Australia’s current debate on marriage equality reminds us that sex and love are volatile subjects in every culture. So imagine writing about them in a country like India, where every issue is enmeshed in both ancient social and religious customs, and transformative technological and economic change.

In 2014, Ira Trivedi, an India-born, U.S educated novelist and journalist—are there any novelists who are not both these days?—stepped into the arena with her non-fiction debut India in Love: Marriage in Sexuality in the 21st century. The way Trivedi tells it, India is in the midst of twin socio-economic and sexual revolutions.

Every minute of every day, 31 villagers migrate from the countryside to an Indian city. If current trends continue, 700 million people will shift over the next 40 years. When they arrive, their lives change. Not only does mobility weaken caste and class barriers, but also marriage and family ties. Add exposure to urban middle-class aspirations and mores, and the rapid spread of access to the web, and the seeds of a sexual revolution would appear to have been sown.

When I last lived in India in 2001, some 15 million people had access to the Internet. In January this year, India boasted 375 million web users. Trivedi links rising Internet access to increasing consumption of online porn. Like much of her data, there is little effort to challenge figures that counter her argument, like a BBC report that suggests porn’s ‘domination’ of the Internet is exaggerated. However, some statistics back her claim. In 2014, the Indian porn star Sunny Leone was the most searched for name on Google India, beating Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Indians out sign-in the world on the marital infidelity site AshleyMadison.com. In 2016, India Today’s annual sex survey reported one in five Indians were “fine” with their partners experimenting sexually outside their relationship. Saucy online shops like Masalatoys.com and Zivame.com lingerie have done a roaring trade.

India in Love portrays an India in which arranged marriage as an institution is “shattering”. Parental matchmaking is accepted, but while the at times lengthy search goes on, its subjects are busy “dating and mating rampantly”. Divorce is “soaring”, and LGBTIQ lifestyles, open marriages and live-in arrangements are being “explored”. Social media, chat rooms and online porn, writes Trivedi, “have teased the imagination of a young India, expanded her horizons and aspirations with the click of a button”.

As writers never cease to remind us, India gave the world its first sex manual, the Kamasutra, and Trivedi details Hinduism’s celebration of sex and romantic love. The goddess Parvati’s suicide after her family disapproved of her phenomenal desire for Shiva, and his stunning vengeance on her father for interfering in love’s realm, is recalled today at peeths, or shrines, across the country. So too, sexual practices that awaken the kundalini, or life force by any means necessary, including adultery. Centuries of Islamic rule, and subsequent British colonialism, weren’t exactly encouraging of this kind of thing. The British also criminalized homosexuality in 1860.

Ironically, the freedom fighter Gandhi’s legacy—so progressive in so many ways—was also pretty prudish, reinforcing the anachronistic attitudes to gender and sexuality of the colonial rulers he helped oust. In this sense, an Indian sexual revolution, unlike a Western one, would reclaim a progressive past, not build it from scratch.

If Indian youth are as open to change as Trivedi maintains, the impact could be profound, because India is not just the world’s second most populous nation, but also demographically-speaking its youngest, with an average age of just 29. However, her claim that “the choices, freedom and experiences of the present generation” are radically different from all who have gone before seems little more than a reflection of what her own elite social circle can do and know. In my view, she, overemphasizes both the extent of the current “awakening” and the middle classes’ role it, which she says is driven by a desire to “fit in to a globalized world”. A strange reason for redefining one’s sexuality, I’d have thought.

What is true, and what Trivedi deserves credit for underlining, is that Indians are no strangers to the changing sexual mores affecting other parts of the world. It’s the depth of that engagement that, despite the author’s categorical conclusions, remains unclear. And as Trivedi herself acknowledges, the backlash against change is also powerful. The current Hindu Nationalist government has reduced financial support for AIDS prevention programs, and its Science minister is a strident opponent of sex education in schools.

Writing—even fluent prose like Trivedi’s—can only take us so far in understanding a society. Legal and legislative change might be surer guides.

In 2009, the powerful Delhi High Court ruled that the British prohibition of homosexual intercourse, which survives in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, violated fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Republic’s Constitution. However, four years later the ruling was set aside by the country’s Supreme Court.

In a possible harbinger of what might happen on marriage equality in Australia, the Congress Party MP Shashi Tharoor took up the fight in parliament, introducing a bill to decriminalise homosexuality. It was rejected 71 votes to 24.

India is a country much written about by outsiders, a legacy, perhaps, of European colonialism. But when it comes to writing about sex in India, being Indian probably helps. At the very least, nationalists who delight in decrying the views of outsiders are denied the parochial argument.

The benefits of local voices — even in the elite cadence of a foreign-educated Trivedi — go further, if the work of Western writers and journalists on sex in India is a guide. For decades, they’ve been fixated on quirky tales of bazaar-based sexologist-wallahs, and romanticised stories of Brit officers “gone native”.

Sex crimes in India have received blanket coverage in western media outlets. Yet India in Love appears not to have been published outside India. Could it be that we take a prurient interest in the failings of developing countries, but lack interest the social and economic contexts of their occurrence? Or that news gatekeepers are reluctant to carry positive news from developing countries?

India in Love is an example, I think, of several healthy trends. Firstly, that instead of joining the brain drain, “globalised” Indian writers educated abroad are returning to India and taking on controversial, tough to research subjects. Secondly, that unlike countries like Australia and the US, the relative health of print media in India continues to support a culture of serious journalism, and the non-fiction book projects that are so often a by-product of it.

Thirdly, that India’s lively domestic book publishing industry is sustaining and growing a market for good writing on serious subjects. Productivity Commission, take note.

It’s true that most of these affordances have to date been concentrated in India’s English language media, in other words, the privileged end of the socio-economic spectrum. One wonders what the Dalits, once known as Untouchables, make of all this. All perspectives, even those of outsiders, have potential value. The key to a healthy discourse lies in enlarging the chorus, rather than shutting down particular voices.

Christopher Kremmer, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, University of Nottingham

Nearly one in three Asian elephants live in captivity – about 15,000 in all. The existence of such large captive population of this endangered, intelligent, and long-living animal poses a number of ethical and practical challenges, but also some opportunities.

Asian elephants, like most land-based megafauna, are endangered and might not survive in the wild beyond the 21st century. As the largest terrestrial animals, elephants are very important for the health of tropical ecosystems – they are like forest gardeners who plant, fertilise and prune trees.

Asian elephants are also remarkable in their cultural significance. They may have been tamed as far back as 6,000 BC, and elephants have since been used for warfare, transport, and as status symbols. They’ve sometimes even been worshipped as deities. Even nowadays, people in countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand venerate elephants in a way that is difficult for outsiders to understand.

It is because of the cultural significance of Asian elephants that so many of them live in captivity (African elephants can and used to be tamed but, for comparison, only one in 700 currently live in captivity). Unlike dogs, horses, or pigs, elephants are not domestic animals, in the sense that we (humans) do not control their breeding. The large majority of captive elephants were born in the wild and eventually captured and tamed to work for people.

Elephants have long played a special role in many Asian cultures.Anonymous (late 19th century Thailand) / wiki

The process of elephant taming is an ancestral tradition that generally involves restraining and punishing until, as one UN report puts it, “the animal’s will is broken”. It’s definitely a painful experience. Contrary to most other mammals, elephants in zoos live shorter lives than in the wild, often suffering from obesity and displaying “stereotypic behaviors” like nodding or body swaying.

Elephants join the tourist trade

Given all the above, is it ethical to keep elephants in captivity? Well, I’m afraid we have no alternative. All those thousands of tamed elephants in Asia can’t simply be released into the wild. Taming and captivity deeply changes their behaviour. It breaks their social ties and makes them lose their natural fear of people and released tamed elephants often stay near villages, causing severe conflicts with farmers and exposing themselves to easy retaliation. Humans therefore need to take care of those elephants currently in captivity.

A different question is whether we need to capture any more wild-born elephants. The answer is absolutely no – we need to avoid further live captures to feed the demand of elephants for tourism and entertainment.

With the loss of their traditional “jobs” in forestry and transport, most captive elephants in Asia have joined the ecotourism industry. Watching elephants is a formidable experience that I generally recommend to local and international tourists in Asia.

This elephant in Kandy, Sri Lanka, is about to take part in the country’s largest Buddhist festival.Al Jazeera English, CC BY-SA

But this creates another dilemma – is it ethical for tourists to visit elephant sanctuaries? The answer depends on the sanctuary and the activities involved.

Before visiting, I recommend you spend time investigating the available sanctuaries and visiting only those with a good welfare record (and there are quite a few of these). While visiting the sanctuary, be selective in the activities you engage in – avoid riding elephants, for instance, especially on heavy saddles with several other passengers (elephants are strong but their backs still suffer).

You should also avoid noisy shows in which elephants are forced into unnatural behaviour such as silly acrobatics; and most importantly, avoid giving money to people using elephant calves for begging or any other activities that create incentives for further elephant live trade. After visiting the sanctuary, provide (well-mannered and non-patronising) feedback to sanctuary managers, local authorities, and potential future visitors. Good elephant sanctuaries need to be rewarded and bad ones need to feel the pressure to improve.

Tourism doesn’t (necessarily) help conservation

It’s important to emphasise the distinction between elephant welfare and conservation. The latter is a much more difficult challenge. The welfare of captive elephants should not use resources that, otherwise, would be allocated for the conservation of wild populations.

But captive elephants do provide some opportunities here. After all, there are no better ambassadors for elephant conservation than the animals themselves. If properly managed, elephants in sanctuaries and zoos provide a unique opportunity for people to connect emotionally with wildlife, for instance, and learn about how to protect these animals.

Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, Sri Lanka.Ahimsa Campos Arceiz, Author provided

The captive population also provides a unique stock to reintroduce elephants in many Asian forests where they have recently become extinct. Elephant reintroductions will be complex and often controversial but – given their ecological importance (remember, the forest gardeners) – they’re something we should seriously start to experiment with.

Unfortunately, we do not have such an opportunity for some of Asia’s other endangered megafauna such as the Javan and Sumatran rhinos or the Kouprey, a huge ox from Cambodia which is now probably extinct.

Most of the 15,000 Asian elephants in captivity will survive for a few more decades. We need to provide appropriate care for them and make sure we do not remove any additional elephants from the wild to feed the demand for elephant-based tourism. Finally we can use these elephants for conservation, especially for “rewilding” programs in forests that have lost their elephants.

Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, Associate Professor in Tropical Conservation Ecology, University of Nottingham

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

In this loud action film that masquerades as a “green” crusade, Junior NTR plays Anand, a student activist, who goes about lecturing people not to burst crackers for Deepavali because it causes noise pollution. He rides a Royal Enfield bike, by the way.

But then, it’s sufficient for his commitment to stay at that surface level because the film has very little to do with environmental concerns. Anand could have been outraging about Pluto losing its planet status or his favourite colour missing from a roll of Poppins and it would have barely impacted the script.

“Janatha Garage” is about a mechanic, Satyam (Mohanlal), who becomes the people’s “don” after he intervenes in a gangrape case and provides good old mob justice to the influential people who were behind the crime. Overnight, the garage turns into a court where people lodge their complaints and justice is delivered by Satyam and his men. So much so that the Chief Minister of the state has to check with Satyam before he clears projects. Don’t ask how he rose so quickly and became so powerful or where he gets the money to run his gang – the film is in no mood to engage with such staid questions.

In breathless pace, we’re told how and why Anand, Satyam’s nephew, is separated from him as a child and taken to another city. He’s to grow up without ever knowing anything about Janatha Garage or his uncle. But well, it was destiny for them to meet again.

It’s painful to watch Mohanlal in this meaningless film. He looks uneasy mouthing the ridiculous punch dialogues and looking surprised by the most obvious twists in the plot. It’s sad to see an actor like him parked in this remarkably unintelligent script.

Junior NTR kicks around, fighting “bethavolu” – powerful politicians and business tycoons – though he’s only a student. In one scene, he introduces himself to one of the antagonists (Unni Mukundan) as “Anand, Environmental Research”, before proceeding to beat up all the goons assembled there. The line could easily win the prize for this year’s best unintentional comedy.

In another scene, he advises a couple not to come home late, drunk after a party, because it pains Satyam to see them that way. He says “at least the woman” has to be “normal” when she comes home. “NO MORE PARTIES!” he screams, when the couple objects to his words. A few minutes after this, Junior NTR and his boys are dancing with a scantily clad Kajal Agarwal in an item number. Director Koratala Siva has perhaps never heard the word ‘irony’ in his life.

Anand has two pretty ladies romancing him. One is Bujji (Samantha), his first cousin, with whom he’s grown up in the same house and wants to marry. Clearly, people from ‘environmental research’ never attend classes on genetic science. The other is played by a spirited Nithya Menen who is really the saving grace of the film. She sparkles in the few precious scenes in which she appears, lifting the film a little before being edged out again by the mayhem that the rest of the story is determined to be.

This is no mean accomplishment considering how little the women in the movie have to do. Other than weeping and looking shocked every two seconds, the female actors in “Janatha Garage” barely speak. In fact, when Bujji’s father (Suresh) asks Anand to break up with her, the two men discuss the issue and arrive at the conclusion with Bujji standing right there, uninvolved in the process, and acting as if she’s a cute Pomeranian whose fate they are debating at the pet store.

“Janatha Garage” is directed like a melodramatic mega serial. Every few minutes, the camera zooms to the “reactions” of people in the background so we know exactly how we’re supposed to feel at that moment. Someone drops a spoon? Let’s all look awed! The sloppy editing doesn’t make things any better. For instance, the Kajal Agarwal item song ends and immediately, we’re shown scenes from a bomb blast. The background music is unbearably loud and is almost comical for a film with a hero who complains about noise pollution.

 This is a film that’s under serious repair and no god-level mechanic can fix it. It deserves to be junked in the scrapyard.

Her love for postcards and requests to sketch local illustrations on them inspired a Bengaluru-based artist to start a project highlighting the city’s vibrant culture.

Called “100 days of Bangalore”, 30-year-old Shikha Nambiar’s project brings together places, things and experiences that lend the city its unique character.  

The former corporate lawyer runs her brand Sunny Skies Starry Eyes for which she designs various stationery products including postcards, magnets, book marks and notebooks. 

"People would often tell me to make more local illustrations on the postcards. That’s how I chose Bengaluru as my theme,” says Shikha, who moved from Pune to Bengaluru five years ago.  

Shikha Nambiar

Over the course of the project, Shikha explored parts of the city that she hadn't seen much of before, like Malleswaram and Basavanagudi. 

Bengaluru, Shikha says, is a melting pot of different cultures, which sets it apart from other metropolitans. “There are nooks and corners that have remained untouched even today and have an old world charm to them,” she states.

All her drawings are first made on paper, using pencils and water colours, following which they are transferred on the computer. 

"After publishing a few illustrations initially, I started asking for suggestions and lots poured in,” she says.

And this helped her in getting to know of places she had never heard of before, or those that may not pop up easily on a Google search. 

She gives the example of how she discovered hotel Sidappa, a small eatery near Richmond circle with a limited but scrummy menu, through one such suggestion.

All her illustrations are accompanied by notes describing them.

Shikha has already published a mini book compiling 30 of her illustrations from the project. She intends to eventually put together all 100 illustrations in a form of a travel guide with maps and other details about the city.  

You can check out the full project here: The 100 Day Project (2016)

(All images source: Sunny Skies Starry Eyes/Facebook)

Those in Las Vegas, Nevada, will soon have the option of gorging on scrumptious delicacies from Kerala like Karimeen Pollichathu (steamed fish) and Parotta-Beef Fry.

Chef Hemant Kishore, who hails from Thiruvananthapuram and is currently based in Vegas, is all set to launch his new project “Toddy Shop” in the American city.

The menu at Toddy Shop will be inspired from “local bars back home that serve Toddy (palm alcohol) and some dynamite food”.

"I was initially looking for a commercial kitchen to operate my lunch delivery service. The hunt was harder than I thought. But finally I found this bar that had a deserted kitchen that needed some love,” Hemant said in an email interview to The News Minute.

For someone who cooks with his heart and soul, Hemant says, patrons can expect his culture and love for food to reflect on what he serves at Toddy Shop. 

Though Toddy Shop will not serve any toddy, Hemant says he "will be highlighting some toddy shop delicacies like Karimeen Pollichathu, Parotta/Beef Fry etc.” Not to forget, biryani too will be on the menu.

This along with some elevated American bar food and street food from around the world. 

"One my cooks is from Kingston, Jamaica. So we can expect some Beef Pattie, Plantain, Jerk Wings, Oxtail and so on. The menu will be small with around eight to 12 items that will keep changing frequently," he adds. 

Growing up, Hemant was never encouraged to pursue a career in cooking. He, however, was determined to achieve his dreams. So he went to the US in 2007, and got a degree in Baking and Pastry Arts at Culinary Institute of America in New York.

He returned to India for a short while in 2010 due to visa requirements, but later moved to Las Vegas after he landed a job.

Hemant now runs a food based lifestyle company called TheHKlife LLC in Vegas and is also building his brand The6packchef™, which currently operates a healthy lunch delivery service among other ventures.

Incidentally, Hemant is also known as the “6 pack chef”.

As a pastry chef with a catering company in Vegas a few years ago, Hemant did a graveyard shift for a year, which adversely affected his health. 

The doctor advised him to shed the extra weight he had put on during this time.

With the help of exercise and self-cooked meals, Hemant- now a fitness enthusiast- went on to lose 60 pounds and gained the moniker "6 pack chef".

Hemant hopes to launch Toddy Shop by mid-September along with resuming his lunch box delivery service. 

Check out Hemant's website here. He is available on Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat @the6packchef 

Fifty-five-year-old Selina S bonds with her four grandchildren in a rather unusual place: a public crematorium in Kerala.

For the last decade, she has worked at Thrikkakara, the public crematorium in Ernakulam where her duties are to cremate the bodies, collect the remains and hand them over to the relatives of the deceased. People ask her if she has been scared to work in a cemetery, dealing with dead bodies. but she says she isn't. "Everybody asks me if I am scared, I say no. When I cremate the bodies I'm alone here in this whole compound, but I have never been scared," Selina says.

When she first approached the local municipality for the job in 2005, everyone advised her against it. She pursued it nonetheless. "Officers asked me whether I was confident. I was. Neighbours discouraged me, but I had a strong feeling that god had opened me a door for me to survive," Selina says. When her husband abandoned her 22 years ago, she had her two daughters to take care of. "Then, my only aim was to give my kids the best, give them food, good education and get them married." she says. Now her daughters are married, Selina is more relaxed and manages to spend time with her four grandchildren.

Although she is supposed to receive Rs 1500 for each cremation, Selina gets only Rs 1200, after deducting the municipality commission. But she says it is enough: "I am satisfied and I can live with this. But sometimes there are no cremations for days, then it is difficult to manage. If they are really poor I reduce the rate from my remuneration." 

She said that she treats all the dead bodies with respect, "Before cremating a body, I pray for their soul. I don't remember how many cremations I have done."

While Selina cremates bodies, Baby V digs graves for the dead. A native of Pallipuram village in Ernakulam district, grave digging has been Baby's livelihood for far longer than for Selina. Baby and her elder sister were orphaned when they were very young. A job was necessary for them to survive.

When the vicar of Manju Matha Church asked Baby if she was willing to take up the job 42 years ago, she readily accepted it. "I was 17 years old then. When the priest asked me to join as the church cemetery keeper and gravedigger, I did not hesitate because an income was necessary," she says.

Technically, she did not get paid money for the work she did. She was paid in kind, and it was only some years later that she was paid Rs 50 per grave. Now, with Rs 1,500 per grave, she earns slightly more than Selina does per cremation. Although she took up the job as a teenager over 40 years ago, she says it never struck her as something a woman should not be doing. "I don't think that I am doing something extra ordinary, any woman can do this. I am happy to do this job for next 40 years too if I have good health," she says. After losing her husband two years ago, Baby has been living with her nephew's family, but she still continues to do the job that enabled her to survive. ""This job gave me a new life without poverty. Even though I don't have savings, I don't starve, so I am thankful to god".  

(This is an updated copy)

Bad at maths? Maybe your parents are to be blamed. Parents who excel at mathematics are likely to produce children who would also excel, says a study, which shows a distinct transfer of math skills from parent to child.

The study specifically explored inter-generational transmission -- the concept of parental influence on an offspring's behaviour or psychology -- in mathematic capabilities.

"Our findings suggest an intuitive sense for numbers has been passed down knowingly or unknowingly from parent to child. Meaning, the math skills of parents tend to 'rub off' on their children," said lead researcher Melissa E. Libertus, Assistant Professor at University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, US. 

The study revealed that the performance levels for early school-aged children on standardised mathematic tests could be reliably predicted by their parent's performance in similar examinations. 

Specifically, major correlations in parent-child performance in such key areas as mathematical computations, number-fact recall, and word problem analysis were observed. 

In addition, the children's intuitive sense of numbers - that is, the ability to know that 20 jelly beans are more than 10 jelly beans without first counting them - is predicted by their parents' intuitive sense of numbers, the researchers said.

"We believe the relationship between a parent and a child's math capabilities could be some combination of hereditary and environmental transmission," Libertus added. 

The findings represent the first evidence of intergenerational transmission of unlearned, nonverbal numerical competence from parents to children. 

The study is an important step toward understanding the multifaceted parental influences on children's mathematic abilities. 

"This research could have significant ramifications for how parents are advised to talk about math and numbers with their children and how teachers go about teaching children in classrooms," Libertus noted, in the paper published in the journal Developmental Science.

For the study, the math abilities of 54 children between the ages of five and eight as well as 51 parents - 46 mothers and five fathers - between the ages of 30 and 59 were assessed. 

Children completed three subtests designed to gauge their capabilities in mathematical computations, basic number-fact recall, and word problems with visual aids. 

Parents completed a math fluency subtest as a measure of mathematical ability, and they were surveyed on the importance of children developing certain math skills.

As a Malayali who grew up in Chennai, I was never fascinated by Bangalore (it was still Bangalore back then). I’d visited the city a few times and other than appreciating the dosa at MTR, I didn’t feel especially amazed by Bangalore. 

So till I watched “Bangalore Days” – which I enjoyed very much - I didn’t know that as a Malayali, I was required to be in love with this city. When Aju (Dulquer Salman) goes, “Bangalore! What a city!” as if he was talking about Las Vegas, I was wondering why in the world he was so awed.

Throughout the film, Bangalore is presented as this fantasy land where anything and everything can happen. Like how anything and everything can happen in America in Tamil films – but at least, I was able to buy the latter fantasy because America is faaaaar away. Bangalore, on the other hand, was just a bus ride away and I didn’t know why and how this became the land of milk and honey.

Then I noticed that there were other Malayalam films too which had references to Bangalore – and the city was either intensely romanticized or vilified. "100 Days of Love", featuring Dulquer and Nithya Menen was shot in Bangalore. It’s a rather overwrought romance that could have been shot anywhere but as it is about two unconventional, good-looking people doing “modern” things, I suppose Bangalore had to be the place where it all happens.

Women from Bangalore are treated with a suspicious eye in Malayalam cinema. They are the “jaada” type – “modern” dressing, English speaking, and consequently, with lax morals.

In “Charlie”, Tessa (Parvathy) is asked about the “freedom” that she must have enjoyed in Bangalore when an auto driver finds out that she is coming from there. In “Ann Maria Kalippilaanu”, the villainous PT Master makes disparaging comments about the women in Bangalore, suggesting that they are easier to bed than the women in Kerala.

Same goes with “22 Female Kottayam”, where there are references to the “easy” ways of the women in Bangalore, with one of the characters shown to be sleeping around with an older man for cash.

In “Bangalore Days”, perhaps because the director was Anjali Menon, there’s a scene where Aju punches a hole in Kuttan’s (Nivin Pauly) stuck up morality and tells him not to judge people who’re indulging in PDA on Bangalore roads.

Otherwise though, Malayalam films tend to worry that the moral yardstick of people in Bangalore is somewhat shorter than what they’d like it to be.

The projection is that Bangalore is a highly “Westernized” city. The 90s romance film "Butterflies" was supposed to be shot in Australia but when that didn't work out, where do you think the director went? Bangalore!

Bangalore, in Malayalam cinema, is that city where life is super fast (I have only two words for you – Silk Board) and everyone’s always partying and having a blast. The women, especially, are depicted to be from another continent altogether and not the same, staid “Kuch-bhi-allowed-nahi-hai” India that we’re all part of.

If you were to believe the average Malayalam film, you’d think that women in Bangalore, Malayali or otherwise, are frolicking around town and having free sex whenever they please. Not that it is wrong to do so – just that like most stereotypes, this one is without basis. 

It’s probably true that women dress differently in Bangalore (or for that matter any big metro city in the country) but that doesn’t mean that they are “perverse” or that anyone gets to talk down to them for their lifestyle of choice. 

(Courtesy- Kanigas.com)

Women tend to dress according to how judgmental the society around them is - which is why you'll find the same woman dressing conservatively in one place and not in another. This doesn't prevent sexual violence by any stretch of imagination. It's an internal censor born out of living in a culture of victim blaming. The "nalla penkutty" who dresses in a salwar kameez in Kerala may wear a sleeveless top in Bangalore but that doesn't mean her "moral" values have gone for a toss. 

 Like any other migrant community, the Malayalis of Bangalore are a hardworking bunch that’s trying to make it big in a bustling city. On every visit, I run into at least one tired Malayali who is somehow pulling through, dreaming of his or her next "naatleku" trip. The “fantasy” that’s projected in Malayalam cinema is true of perhaps a tiny, blessed minority. The rest are crawling to work and back, metre by metre, in the agonizing traffic and they don’t deserve the vilification.

As for the glorification, I hope I discover Bangalore’s magic soon because it looks like I may never become a real Malayali till I can stargaze and say “Ah, Bangalore!”

(We have used the term Bangalore instead of Bengaluru in the article as Malayalam films still refer to the city that way).