IT training open magazine TruePDF 25 march 2019

A SALT-AND-PEPPER
PORTRAIT OF XI

IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS
OF ELECTION 2019

ABOUT A CHARIOT
IN PREHISTORY

w w w. o p e n t h e m a g a z i n e .c o m

2 5 m a r c h 2 0 19 / r S 5 0

Ranveer Singh
T H E
T H E

M A N

M A N N E R

T H E

M A G I C




contents
25 march 2019

7

48

open diary

second coming

By Swapan Dasgupta

Inspirations, adaptations or mutations?
Does it matter?

18

By Bhakti Shringarpure

12
LosT & FoUnd hisTories

52

The travels of a deity
By Ranjit Hoskote

Freedom oF impression

Indian web series and Hindi films
begin to defy sexual taboos

14

By Kaveree Bamzai

open essay

Dye another day

56

By Sunanda K Datta-Ray

sTamp oF hisTory

18

56

30

The Nizam’s postage tells the story of a
Hyderabad that was already modern

a hero oF oUr Time

By Avantika Bhuyan

The rise of Ranveer Singh is the triumph
of the outsider. The new sensation
of Hindi cinema on the thrills and

travails of his journey

63

By Divya Unny

a maTTer oF LiFe

26

Dr Ambrish Mithal

Women at risk

The hybrid sTar

In a world of ageing Khans who’ve had
a particularly terrible 2018, the whispers
about Ranveer Singh being the new
Khan on the block are becoming louder

40

52

a moveabLe FeasT

Table for one

By Kaveree Bamzai

By Shylashri Shankar

30

66

righT on Time

noT peopLe LiKe Us

Nationalism is back as a persuasive
theme in this general election

Ice-breaker
By Rajeev Masand

By PR Ramesh and Siddharth Singh

36
The gender card

40

The outrage at the Pollachi sex abuse
racket gives Opposition politicians a
foothold in the battle to win the trust
of women, a constituency methodically
cultivated by MGR and Jayalalithaa

The rediscovery oF india

Recent archaeological studies
shed some light on 1,500 years
after the collapse of the
Harappan civilisation

The Dhoni question

By V Shoba

By Madhavankutty Pillai

By Aditya Iyer

4

64

44
gUTs & baLLs

Cover photograph by
Errikos Andreou/DEU:
Creative Management
Cover by
Saurabh Singh

25 march 2019

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open mail

Editor S Prasannarajan
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Sharad tailang

C

letter of the week

C Christine Fair’s essay hit the nail on America’s tacit
condoning of Pakistan’s role in terrorism in India
(‘Pakistani Hubris and American Cupidity’, March
18th, 2019). As she rightly pointed out, the American
press is still stuck in its false equivalence between the
perpetrator and the victim. And by giving in to jingoism post-Pulwama, we are only confirming the image
that the Pakistan Army has constructed for itself of an
India unwelcoming to anyone except Hindus. Fair is
correct in saying that we are only helping the Pakistani
forces and making things difficult for those civilians
on both sides of the border who dream of their countries differently. Anyone who believes a ‘strong and
befitting’ response to Pakistan after a terror attack is
going to be enough to deter them is forgetting the long
history on our borders and our several futile attempts
at convincing the international community, especially
the US, to censure our neighbour in stronger terms
than mere statements and formal condemnation.
Unless Pakistan’s global backers realise how mistaken
their geopolitical thinking remains with respect to
that country, Indian military responses will not lead to
any long-term, substantive change in the situation.
Rupa Das

managEr-marKEting

Priya Singh
chiEf dESignEr-marKEting

champak Bhattacharjee
cfo anil Bisht

chiEf ExEcutivE & PuBliShEr

neeraja chawla

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volume 11 issue 12
for the week 19-25 march 2019
total no. of pages 68

6

lessons from pulwama

Pakistan keeps meddling in
India despite being overburdened with internal conflicts
between Punjabis and Sindhis, ‘natives’ and Muhajjirs,
Sunnis and Shias and Ahmadis, Pakhtuns and the rest,
the civilian government and
military, and so on (‘Seven
Minutes That Changed
India’, March 18th, 2019). It
has always turned a blind eye

to terror factories on its soil
for that sole purpose. Imran
Khan’s promise of ‘Naya Pakistan’ is hollow since it has led
to no improvement on this
front. The Pulwama attack
only reveals that Pakistan is
uninterested in mending its
ways. Therefore, India’s focus
should be on strengthening
the intelligence machinery
and improving defence

preparedness rather than
convincing an intransigent
world about Pakistan.
MY Shariff

Prime Minister Modi’s firm
and path-breaking response
to the Pulwama attack is
commendable. We should
have updated our strategic
thinking long ago. But better
late than never. Besides,
our response has not only
consolidated Modi’s position
but has also put the Congress
and the rest of the opposition
on the back foot. If it wishes
to not worsen its position,

the opposition would be well
advised to refrain from its
‘bleeding-heart’ criticism.
However, the BJP should also
stay away from overplaying
its hand and exploiting the
Government’s response to

Pulwama for the Lok Sabha
elections. Our forces are not
for politicking.
Jaideep Mittra
urban mess

Bibek Debroy’s column was
a timely reminder about the
urban explosion this country
is witnessing outside the
metros that hog not only the
media’s attention but also the
policymakers (‘Out of Town’,
March 18th, 2019). India’s
‘smaller’ towns are a ticking
bomb.
B Kappagantula
coalition or crowd?

The opposition remains a
divided house outside TV studios (‘The Illusion of Unity’,
March 18th, 2019). With nothing more than an anti-Modi

polemic to unite them, it does
not look likely the BJP needs
to worry much in the run-up
to the General Election next
month.
Radhika Ray
bottom-up innovation

Given that big capitalism
only leads us to crashes à la
2008 and excessive centralisatisation, it’s time we gave
small capitalism a chance to
prove itself (‘The Illusion of
Unity’, March 18th, 2019).
Varni Dhaka

25 march 2019


open diary
Swapan Dasgupta

A

crAzy trip thAt began
early in the morning with a car
journey from Delhi to Kurukshetra
in haryana culminated late at night
in Santiniketan, the rural bliss that
rabindranath tagore had sought for

his centre of alternative learning.
Alas, there is not too much of the
‘alternative’ that is in evidence at VisvaBharati these days. there is of course
the overpowering presence of Gurudev
and the tasteful campus he created.
But apart from the glass mandir, the
china Bhavan, the bark shawls and the
conscious cultivation of the fine arts,
Visva-Bharati has become yet another
central university—certainly better
maintained and better funded than
other universities in West Bengal, but
by no means a centre of the alternative
education tagore had envisaged.
i had travelled to Santiniketan
to deliver a lecture on trends in
contemporary indian politics that
the Ministry of human resource
Development in Delhi had sponsored.
the present Vice-chancellor Bidyut
chakrabarty had been a doctoral
student at the London School of
Economics during the time i was at
the SOAS. he quietly told me that it
would be advisable to make my lecture
bilingual—a mixture of English and
Bengali. “the students will grasp it
better,” he told me.
in the afternoon before the
lecture, i requested him to organise

an interaction with students and he
graciously set up a meeting with
the faculty and students of the
history department.
the students were mainly drawn
from Birbhum and the neighbouring
Bardhaman districts. Some even
spent more than two hours each
commuting. they had almost all
studied in Bengali-medium schools
25 march 2019

and a significant number of them were
first-generation literates. Nearly all of
them professed an interest in history
and had no complaints about the
curriculum. their anxieties centred on
two concerns.
First, most students and teachers
felt that the semester system imposed
too heavy a burden on the students and
prevented them from really coming to
grips with any of the papers. they felt
that the system encouraged superficiality and made studies almost entirely
examination-oriented. it also meant
that students lacked the necessary
space to get involved in other, extracurricular activities on the campus.
they were consequently denied the
opportunity to make the most of
student life outside the classroom.

tagore would have been horrified.
the second problem they faced
was even more serious. it centred on
linguistic incomprehension. VisvaBharati permitted undergraduate
students to write their examinations
in either Bengali or English. that
seemed fair. however, it so happened
that an overwhelming majority of the
prescribed books were in English. that
posed a serious problem because the
levels of English comprehension of
most students were inadequate.
history is not a technical subject
and good history writing is often
dependant on the historian’s prose.
Unfortunately, the subtleties and

nuances of English were often lost on
the students. A second-year undergraduate explained to me she had to
read one article thrice to get a sense of it.
Another lamented that in the paper on
Ancient rome, he was unable to fully
digest Gibbon’s classic work on the
decline of the roman Empire. All the
students expressed their gratitude to
the teachers for helping out, but
obviously there was a limit to how
much help they could provide given
the pressures of the semester system.
What i found particularly

distressing is that this problem of
language, which is central to the
quality of education, is largely left
unattended. ideally, the university
should be organising special classes—
at least in the first two years of the
undergraduate degree—to elevate the
levels of English comprehension. i
would even recommend that the first
year of the degree course should focus
principally on improving language
skills, using the most appropriate
pedagogic methods. there is little
point demanding that the standards
of English at the school level should be
improved, since that would instantly
become a political issue. in any case,
there are just not enough trained
English teachers to cater to such a
requirement. the alternative is for
the university to accomplish what,
ideally, should have been done at the
school level.
the problems the students
encountered at Visva-Bharati aren’t
unique. Similar problems are faced all
over india. they affect the quality of
the graduates the country is churning
out. they are also inextricably linked
to the skill deficit the government is

set on tackling. But can the problem
of skills be tackled separately from the
larger issue of higher education? n
www.openthemagazine.com 7


openings
NOTEBOOK

Face the Music

I

t starts with a thump, a big electronic drumbeat
that gets louder and quicker as the track progresses. the
music goes on, one ear-shattering beat after another, building into a frenetic crescendo. and then the relief as the first
words drop. it is a speech picked up from a political rally and
played over the track.
“i want to tell you something,” the line goes. “those who find
Pakistan dear. they should go to Pakistan. it won’t last for long. it
won’t last for long.” the music plays this way, beat after electronic
beat, interlaced with a communally-incendiary speech.
there are hundreds of such tracks, made by young DJs in
small indian towns, combining electronic music with political
speeches. these tracks will be released online, shared over
phones and played during political rallies and religious festivals. Very often these rallies will pass by mosques and Muslim
localities and occasionally, they lead to violence.
Various cities have attempted to ban this sort of music
from being played during festivals. Last year, for instance, the
Vadodara police installed their own music systems in certain

communally-sensitive parts to play police-approved devotional music during Ganpati Visarjan.
“we aren’t mixing these songs because we want to,” says
Jainendra Kumar. “there is a demand for it. People want to listen
to it.” Kumar, who goes by the moniker DJ JK Jhansi, is one of several DJs
in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. he is in his
20s and is a part of a group of around
four DJs who create these tracks.
“when you live in small towns and
cities, you have to understand, it is not
as if you get a lot of different types of
work (for DJs). You make tracks that
people will want to hear.”
Kumar is hazy in his explanation
of who exactly places the order for
these tracks. his only explanation is
that DJs like him are asked by various
local groups to create tracks.
“all i do is find the speeches and
film dialogues and play it over a
track,” he says. “i have no control
over where it is played.”
Music traditionally has rarely

featured in discussions around politics in india. this is perhaps
understandable. Mainstream music in india is really film music,
operating within the straitjacket of commercial considerations.
But as elections near and the country goes through its usual
politically polarised moment, musicians are beginning to get
involved. Music by young DJs like DJ JK Jhansi that feed into the
communal frenzy lies at one end of the spectrum. at the other

end are those taking place at concerts and tours. well-known
musicians from the classical music world such as tM Krishna,
Bollywood personalities like Vishal Dadlani, sonu Nigam and
abhijeet to a host of young indie musicians are all picking sides.
One such indie band, the Delhi-based six member group ska
Vengers, sing about a vast number of things, from the Naxalite
movement to alleged human rights abuses in Manipur. During
the 2014 General Election, they tweaked the popular ska tune,
A Message to You, Rudy by the British band the specials by
bringing out their own version, Modi, A Message to You.
“songs are often capable of saying things in ways that the
spoken word can’t,” says rahul ram. in his mid-50s now, ram
is a member of indian Ocean, the band widely recognised as
pioneers of fusion rock in india. Five years ago, around the last
General Election, ram became part of another, arguably far
more unique band. he teamed up with a lyricist and writer (Varun Grover) and a stand-up comedian
(sanjay rajoura) to form aisi taisi Democracy. in this act, the trio use music
and humour to hold forth on a range
of political issues. there are songs on
tV news coverage of the recent indiaPakistan skirmish, demonetisation
and ‘Babri’ dolls.
according to ram, the three can
get away with all this because they
play the role of the shakespearean
fool. “the fool says things that
nobody else dare(s),” he says, “but that
is difficult to take offence to.”
Over the last two years, although
the group is active online, the trio
have performed few shows. But they

will now be embarking on an
all-india ‘aazaadi tour’. have they
scheduled this to coincide with the

There are hundreds
of tracks made by
young DJs in small
towns that combine
electronic music with
political messaging.
These songs will
be released online,
shared over phones
and played at rallies

8

25 march 2019


Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch, a 15-member music and theatre group, performs songs on caste discrimination and politics

General Election? “[it] has more to do with the schedule of our
members than the schedule of the Election Commission,” says
ram. “the fact that it’s time for the General Election is a bonus.”
the inflection point in this trend of politically assertive
musicians was the 2014 elections. that was when several musicians began to speak their minds openly. a few even stood for
elections. among them, the rotund Bollywood musician, Bappi
Lahiri, did not let his inexperience as a politician and the jewellery around his neck weigh him down. he would break into a
song every few minutes in his rallies either from his then recent

hit Ooh la la from The Dirty Picture or his older hit number, I am
a Disco Dancer. Lahiri contested from the small west Bengal city
of serampore on a BJP ticket. when asked about his reason to
contest an election, he told the Indian Express, “My songs have
kept me alive and kicking in Bollywood for so many years... i
can do anything with my songs and this time i want the lotus
[BJP’s poll symbol] to bloom with my music.” the lotus did
bloom but elsewhere, and Lahiri lost that election.
Musicians were also employed for symbolic purposes. For
the 2014 elections, the senior classical vocalist Chhannulal
Mishra proposed Narendra Modi’s name for the Varanasi seat.
although in later interviews, he claimed he’d have been willing
to propose sonia Gandhi’s name too had he been requested.
During this period, Dhammaraxit randive, was still a young
man who had recently moved to Mumbai from his hometown
of satara. the son of a lok shahir (people’s poet), a type of lyrical
storytelling performance in Maharashtra, randive was already
interested in activism on caste and gender discrimination then.
25 march 2019

in the next few years, after the assassination of the rationalists Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar, people he had
interacted with as a college student, randive realised he wanted
to use culture as a form of activism.
in 2015, randive established the troupe Yalgaar sanskrutik Manch, a 15-member-group which performs across the
country, to combat right-wing fundamentalism, and caste and
gender discrimination.
a majority of the group are Dalits but there are also several
Muslim and upper-caste members. they perform wherever
they can, often on their own expenses, in large and small cities,
and even on train journeys between venues. there is a need,

ranadive says, for groups such as theirs with a more leftoriented ideology to reclaim cultural spaces.
they are trying to give lok-shahiri a contemporary spin to
address more people, using elements foreign to the form such as
qawwali and guitars. “You can’t preserve lok-shahiri by keeping
it in a museum,” he says. “You have to do things to it so you take
your message to a larger audience.” they have been threatened
sometimes although it has never escalated into physical violence.
During cultural workshops that they hold, police personnel
regularly show up in plain clothes as volunteers. “Every time a
new person joins [our group], the police will make it a point to
talk to them and jot down their phone number,” he says. But even
that they have gotten used to, ranadive says. “it is a small price to
pay for responding to what’s going on in the country currently.” n
By Lhendup g Bhutia
www.openthemagazine.com 9


openings

PORTRAIT

Boeing 737 max 8

Crash Course
With two back-to-back crashes, Boeing
has a disaster on its hands

E

very airline death is tragic but the recent ethiopian airlines

crash has quickly turned from a local accident to something with farreaching global ramifications.
this is the second time in five months that a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet has
crashed after the indonesian lion air crash last year. there are certain similarities between the two. Both involved jets less than four months old; both
occurred within minutes of take-off in generally clear weather conditions.
the entire aviation industry is now spooked.
Boeing’s stock prices have plummeted. Several countries soon grounded
the jets, from europe to China. india followed later. (SpiceJet has apparently
13 of these aircraft, Jet airways has five but they were grounded earlier for
non-payment of dues.) Boeing has now said it would recall all 371 of the fleet.
the 737 Max 8 was Boeing’s answer to airbus’ a320 neo. it was an
upgrade of its previous iteration, and was supposed to be more fuel efficient,
less expensive to maintain, and could fly further and cram in more passengers than its previous iterations. according to the science writer Jeff Wise in
Slate, Boeing swapped out the engines of the previous iteration of the 737 for
new models. ‘in order to accommodate the engine’s larger diameter, Boeing

sAuRAbh sIngh

engineers had to move the point where the plane
attaches to the wing. this, in turn, affected the way
the plane handled. Most alarmingly, it left the plane
with a tendency to pitch up... to prevent this, Boeing
added a new autopilot system that would pitch the
nose down if it looked like it was getting too high,’
he writes. according to a preliminary report, Wise
claims, it was this system that apparently led to the
lion air crash.
in the long run, Boeing may come out of this disaster. the company is too big to global aviation to
fail. More than 5,000 of the new Max planes (most
of them Max 8s) have already been ordered. it is not
as though airline companies have other options.

airbus has its own schedules to meet to be able to
take up such a large order.
But Boeing’s public image is in a shambles.
People have an irrational fear of dying in an aircraft
crash. the odds of dying in such a scenario—as
several statistics show—are minimal. last year
for instance, there were 500 estimated deaths in
passenger airline crashes (this includes the lion
air crash). that is still around one fatal crash for
every three million flights. even in the case of this
particular jet, only two aircraft among 350 of them
flying an average of 3.5 trips every day since 2017,
led to a crash. the percentage is still minuscule.
aircraft are boringly safe. there’s a much higher
probability from dying in a road or train accident.
But that’s not how people calculate risk. We will
worry if the aircraft we are travelling on could crash,
yet think little of driving a car without airbags.
Many americans are believed to have switched
from flying to driving, for instance, in the months
after the 9/11 strikes. airline passenger-miles reportedly fell between 12 per cent and 20 per cent while
road use surged. according to the German academic
Gerd Gigerenzer, who specialises in risk study, this
caused an additional road death toll of 1,595 deaths
in the US a year after 9/11. ‘People jump from the
frying pan into the fire,’ he told The Guardian. ‘We
have an evolutionary tendency to fear situations in
which many people die at one time. this is likely
a holdover from when we lived in small groups,
where the death of a small part of the group could

place the lives of everyone else in jeopardy.’
it will be an uphill task for Boeing to regain
trust. it will need to overcome the psychological
hurdle of passengers. even if the Max 8 jets are
cleared, if people begin to fear the aircraft and book
flights according to the model of the plane, Boeing
will have a massive problem to overcome. n
By Lhendup g Bhutia

10

25 march 2019


IdEAs

AngLE

OppOrtunity
Versus OutcOme

Why 33 per cent reservation for women in
government jobs is a problematic idea
By madhavankutty piLLai

A

ddreSSinG feMale students
in a college in Chennai, rahul Gandhi said that he thought, “in general,
women are smarter than men”, and

drew immediate applause. But there is
simply no evidence for such a claim, one
way or another. it can also get contradictory from the point of view of what
political feminism has been trying to do,
which is again to show that there is no
difference, exemplified by a movement
against neurosexism, or the discrimination of women on the basis of brains. Just
a couple of weeks ago, the journal Nature
published an article titled, ‘neurosexism: the myth that men and women
have different brains’ with the intro
reading: ‘the hunt for male and female
distinctions inside the skull is a lesson
in bad research practice’. it is difficult for
both to be true: that women are smarter
than men and the brains don’t differ.
it is however another area of Gandhi’s speech that has more practical
implications: the announcement that if
his party came to power women would
have 33 per cent reservation not just in
Parliament, but also in government jobs
for women. at least at the state level,
politicians of other hues have also paid
lip service to such a policy. two years ago,
the then BJP Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced
33 per cent reservation in all government
departments. Before the last UP elections,
Samajwadi Party leader dimple yadav
promised it. numerous other states have
similar provisions at different levels. the
leap from the idea of 33 per cent reserva25 march 2019

tion in representation, to reservation
in jobs has been almost seamless. in
this election it has reached the national
mainstream. it is inevitable that the BJP
and other parties will follow suit.
the complications of such a reservation are many. india is a country full of
marginalised discriminated groups, all
either being recipients of reservation or
demanding it. there is an upper limit
on reservations laid down by a Supreme
Court judgment. any further reservation
must be a permutation and combination
of all these groups, now add 33 per cent to
it. One of the reasons why women’s reservation in Parliament has not succeeded is
because OBC parties like rashtriya Janata
dal and Samajwadi Party are asking for
sub-reservations for caste groups within
that percentage. While these parties are
no paragons of gender equality, there is
really no good argument on why their
demand is unjust. Why shouldn’t, for
example, Scheduled Caste women, have a
fixed quota within that 33 per cent?
the main question when it comes to
reservations is whether there should be
equality of opportunity (reservations in
educational institutions) versus equality
of outcomes (reservations in jobs). india
has in fact done very well with the former.

in this election, Mamata Banerjee also
demonstrated how to bring equality of
opportunity by giving more than 33 per
cent nominations for women to contest
for the lok Sabha elections. that brings in
substantial change instead of ossifying a
system which is built on largesse, symbolism and electoral profit. n

AdvERTIsIng

ad makers now increasingly tap
larger social discussions, willing
even to wade into polarising topics,
to create commercials that become
talking points. Popular recent
examples are Gillette’s take on
‘toxic masculinity’ and nike’s US
campaign around Colin Kaepernick, the american-football player
who kneeled during their national
anthem to protest police brutality
and racism. in india, Surf excel’s
latest ad—a young hindu girl helps
her Muslim friend reach a mosque
during holi without him getting
stained—has earned a lot of opprobrium from some quarters. the
ad preaches religious harmony with
the tacit suggestion that such harmony is—or rather several Muslims
are—under threat. But it fails in not
pushing the envelope enough, carefully using children, not adults. and,
at the end, instead of the boy being

dropped at the mosque, implying he
needn’t play holi if he didn’t wish to,
the girl tells him he will have to once
he is done praying. n

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www.openthemagazine.com 11


Lost & Found Histories

By Ranjit Hoskote

The Travels of a Deity
How a Krishna sect in Rajasthan bridges multiple divides

A

friend with friends in the right
places had piloted us into the shrine well
before daybreak, before the massed crowds

of devotees waiting outside its great gateway
had been granted entry. Just before the sun rose, the heavy
wooden doors, studded with metal spikes, swung open, and
the faithful surged into the courtyard in their hundreds.
with uncanny smoothness, this onrush of devotees in a
state of exaltation subsided into disciplined rows. there
was, however, a grander marvel in store. within moments,
the air filled with a flourish of music, the wafting fragrance
of incense and the ringing of bells. the doors of the inner
sanctum opened and we were permitted a glimpse of the
deity who presided over the shrine. this was the mangala
darshan or ‘auspicious glimpse’, the first of eight darshans
that the deity grants his followers every day, from dawn to
nightfall, in the temple-town of nathdwara, near Udaipur
in southern rajasthan. nineteen winters ago, this was my
first audience with shrinathji.
nathdwara is the centre of the Vaishnava tradition of
spirituality and ecstatic devotion known as the Pushti Marg,
‘the way of Grace’, which is focused on the worship of
shrinathji, Krishna visualised as a seven-year-old child. to
describe shrinathji as an icon is misleading, for the devout
treat him as a svarupa, a living manifestation of the divine. in
nathdwara, the god is the king. his shrine is described, not as a
mandir or temple, but as a haveli or palace. the town’s calendar
turns on the axis of his daily, monthly and seasonal activities.
each darshan is a renewal of the senses. it draws the pilgrim into
an enchantment kaleidoscopically composed of song and the
sounds of bell, drum and shehnai, the scintillation of light and
reflection, clouds of incense, the colours of the deity’s robes, the
priests’ vestments and the delicate pichhvais or painted backcloths hung behind the deity. every darshan is defined by its

own special set of rituals, with the deity presented in different
costumes and accompanied by varying paraphernalia.
As we followed shrinathji’s progress from one darshan to
the next, we realised how silken turmeric could be and yet
how pungent; how camphor can prickle the skin and stir the
throat to melody. the burning orange of one pichhvai resonated
with fires in winter, while the lotuses floating on the crinkled
12

blue surface of another plunged us into a mythic Yamuna.
the tinkling of bells sparked off the honey-silvered flavour of
prasad on the palate. to trace the circumference of the haveli is
to celebrate synaesthesia, a heightened state of experience in
which a stimulus applied to one sense is registered as a feeling
by another.
the Pushti Marg, whose followers are known as the
Vallabha sampradaya—after their founder, the philosopher
Vallabhacharya (1479-1531 Ce)—rejects self-mortifying
austerity. it teaches that spiritual transcendence can be
achieved in the midst of the householder’s worldly life. it
regards every earthly pleasure, if refined, as a reflection of
shrinathji’s resplendence. As the artist and scholar Amit
Ambalal—the friend who invited me to my first mangala
darshan—writes in his authoritative study, Krishna as Shrinathji
(1995), ‘Painting is only one of the many facets of the Vallabha
cult as practised in the haveli of shrinathji. Poetry, music, cookery, flowers and floral arrangements, costumes and jewellery
are integral to this mode of worship.’

E

ACh dAY in nathdwara summoned forth a new
surprise. the doors of a balcony would be flung open,
and a burst of music would herald another darshan. we
came upon the deity’s presence at every street corner, as
we savoured the murals glowing on the walls of an
abandoned pleasure pavilion, or waited while traditional
pichhvai painters unwrapped their heirloom folios in the
neighbourhood known as Chitrakaaron ki Gali, ‘the lane of
the painters’. in nathdwara, the highest form of worship
is chitra-seva, the dedication of the devotee to shrinathji’s
painted image.
that image is distinctive. shrinathji is represented with
his left arm upraised, lifting Mount Govardhan to protect the
villagers of Vrindavan from the anger of the sky-god indra. his
right arm rests on his waist. his skin is rendered in the deep
nocturnal blue reserved for Vishnu, suggestive of his cosmic
nature. his extraordinary dagger-shaped eyes look upon his
worshippers in an attitude of pushti or grace. Meanwhile,
the icon in worship—which the laity cannot approach—is
reported by scholars to be reddish-black in colour, similar to
25 march 2019


the rocks near the summit of the Govardhan hill in Mathura,
where it was discovered by Vallabhacharya and his disciples
in 1493 Ce.
Long worshipped by villagers as a naga or serpent
guardian, the icon was consecrated and installed in a temple
at the site in the early 16th century, even as northern india slid
into a time of turbulence. within the space of three decades, the

embattled Lodi dynasty was overthrown by Babur, whose son
humayun was in turn driven into exile by sher shah sur, the
founder of the suri dynasty whose last representative, hemu,
was defeated by humayun’s son Akbar. during this period, the

alamy

the icon of shrinathji that was moved several times to remote
places of safety. the chaos ended with Akbar’s coronation in
1556. Under his aegis, Ambalal writes, the Vallabha sampradaya
received the patronage that allowed it to ‘grow and establish
itself as a popular sect. during the reigns of Akbar’s successors,
Jehangir and shah Jehan, and under Vitthalnathji
[Vallabhacharya’s son] and the Goswamis [spiritual leaders]
who followed him, the seva devised for honouring the deity
became more subtle, complex and lavish’.
Vitthalnathji, whose artistic preoccupations rivalled his
scholarly commitments, imparted to the Pushti Marg its
dazzling aesthetic character. he organised the rasa mandalis or
companies dedicated to the sacred choreographic theatre of
the rasa, shrinathji’s divine revels. Combining rasa with raga
(music and poetry), bhoga (feast) and shrungara (ornament),
25 march 2019

Vitthalnathji’s seva cast its enchantment over a wide variety of
followers. the teacher maintained strong connections at court.
the Baso-baavan Vaishnav ni Varta, the ‘stories of the 252
disciples’, an exemplary text of the Vallabha sampradaya,
records that Akbar was captivated by Vitthalnathji’s wit and
wisdom. the Bhaavasindhu ki Varta records how Akbar,

visiting a Pushti Marg shrine in Gokula on the occasion of
Janmashtami, had a visionary experience during the festivities.
Mughal patronage of the sampradaya continued through
the reigns of Jehangir and shah Jehan, as their firmans,
granting lands and titles, attest (those whose ideological
fixations prevent them
from acknowledging such
imperial proclamations
should consult the
Nathdwara is
national Archives of india,
the archives of the
the centre of
Vrindavan shodh
the VaishnaVa
sansthan, and the
tradition of
sampradaya’s extensive
varta sahitya or teaching
spirituality and
compilations). Jehangir’s
ecstatic deVotion
wife, the rajput princess
known as the
Jodh Bai, was known
as Jagat-Gosaini, ‘one to
pushti Marg,
whom the world is
‘the way of
imbued with the spirit of

grace’, which is
Vitthalnathji’. their son
focused on the
shah Jehan invested the
head of the sampradaya
worship of
with the title of ‘tilakayat’
ShriNath ji,
(‘the anointed one’),
krishna
which nathdwara’s chief
Goswami has borne ever
Visualised as a
since. this harmonious
seVen-year-old
relationship was ended by
Aurangzeb, who violently
reversed the inclusive
policies of his predecessors.
in 1669, he destroyed the Vishvanatha temple in Varanasi and
the Keshava deva temple in Mathura.
in 1670, the 15-year-old damodarji, the tilakayat of the time,
set out on a dangerous journey westward to rajasthan, in
disguise, with shrinathji concealed in his bullock cart. two
years later, deity and custodian began a new life under the
protection of Mewar’s sisodia rulers, in sinhad, a village that
grew into nathdwara. it was a long journey from Mathura,
but a longer one yet from the Andhra country where
Vallabhacharya’s telugu Brahmin parents had originated.
the circulations of the Vallabha sampradaya remind us, yet

again, of the fatuity of dividing india into the north and south
beloved of mindless caricature. the cultural realities of the
subcontinent have always been far more complex, and shaped
by multiple migrations. n
www.openthemagazine.com 13


open essay

By SunAnDA K DAttA-rAy

Dye Another DAy
Deconstructing the salt-and-pepper look of Xi

T

he election announcement has rescued narendra modi from a quandary. he need no longer cast
envious looks at the throng of admirers who copy the studiedly casual clothes and greying hair that china’s Xi
Jinping—Doordarshan’s famous ‘eleven Jinping’—has made as much his emblem as Jawaharlal nehru’s red
rose or Jomo Kenyatta’s fly whisk. the severe punishment meted out to an uttar Pradesh doctor who dared to
wash a sweeper’s feet confirms the Prime minister won’t allow any copycat to steal his thunder.
Yet, the contrast must secretly rankle. When Xi started going grey, at least seven of the most loyal of the
25 members of the Politburo promptly did so too. So did faithful luminaries like Zhou Xiaochuan, former
governor of the People’s Bank of china, Wang Yi, the foreign minister, and liu he, a vice-premier. no, they were
not like Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon whose hair was ‘gray but not with years / nor grew it white / in a single
night / as men’s have grown from sudden fears’. that dire fate was reserved for Zhou Yongkang, a former chief of domestic security,
whose jet-black hair turned into a shock of white while he was in detention for anti-party crimes. Black hair being the vogue then,
it was whispered that the hapless Zhou’s punishment included denial of the dye he had always used. the ‘magnificent Seven’ went
grey for exactly the same reason that congressmen in Rajiv Gandhi’s time boasted of being computer addicts. unlike the indian
intelligence agent whom the Sikkimese nicknamed ‘Go-kar’ Whitehead, not because of any pimple or pustule but because of his

white thatch, they knew that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. it’s the asian way.
the indian equivalents of Zhou, Wang and liu must, therefore, be a sad disappointment for the Prime minister. Proudly sitting on
reserves of Rs 9,68,710 crore, no governor of the Reserve Bank of india has paid modi the compliment of cultivating his shaggy look. Sushma Swaraj must be excused for failing this particular test of loyalty; less legitimately, she is willy-nilly excused from taking the policy
decisions that should be the external affairs minister’s responsibility. But it must be said to her credit that she does try to demonstrate
her allegiance by every so often sporting a waistcoat like the boss. Knowing her place, she is careful to ensure the garment isn’t monogrammed all over. nor, so far as anyone knows, has it ever been put to auction. the commonsensical Swaraj is aware it is most unlikely
to attract bids, leave alone astronomical ones. lacking her gender excuse, Raghuram Rajan’s smooth grooming was positively insolent
and should at once have aroused suspicion. no wonder two pesky governors had to be sent packing in a little over two years.
as for the imitative liu, india doesn’t go in for vice-premiers. We did have deputy prime ministers but nearly 70 years after
death, the very first incumbent has unwittingly become the posthumous prop, crutch and stick for attacking the first Prime
minister. later deputy prime ministers like morarji Desai or charan Singh, to say nothing of the last incumbent, lK advani, further justify modi’s canny decision not to risk a number two. in any case, it would be difficult to position a deputy in what arun
Shourie calls “a government and party of one-and-three-quarter people”. if it’s a “one-man show” as Shatrughan Sinha says, the
14

25 march 2019


Saurabh Singh

When Xi started going grey, at least seven of the most loyal of the 25 members of the
Politburo promptly did so too. The ‘Magnificent Seven’ went grey for exactly the same
reason that Congressmen in Rajiv Gandhi’s time boasted of being computer addicts
Prime minister must be his own deputy.
it’s not Xi alone who shows up modi to disadvantage.
comparison with indira Gandhi isn’t too flattering either. But
no matter how flamboyant the Prime minister’s waistcoats,
he remains grizzled and gravelly compared to the stylish quick
change artist that was indira Gandhi.
the morning the Shah commission opened, it found in
her a rumbustious protester in Patiala house, crumpled cotton
saree hitched above her ankles, one end tucked firmly into her

waist like a fisherwoman girded for battle, tousled hair like saltand-pepper jute and not a trace of make-up. She wasn’t at all the
woman i had glimpsed the evening before in the Willingdon
crescent bungalow that was her political Siberia. then, Gandhi
presented a rich gleam of swishing silk under an embroideryencrusted Kashmiri cape, exquisite make-up and, above all, a
jet-black sheen of hair that fitted closely like a cap from which
sprouted a single flame of dazzling white. india’s former and
future Prime minister was setting out for Rashtrapati Bhavan
to charm Britain’s visiting prime minister, Jim callaghan.
although dressed to kill, “there was that steel in her that would
match any Kremlin leader”, wrote Singapore’s lee Kuan Yew.
25 march 2019

Watching her in Patiala house it occurred to me that she had
spent considerable time and effort dressing down.
apples and oranges are not for comparison. like must be
juxtaposed with like. modi probably regards only Xi as his peer,
although someone who holds the three jobs of general secretary of the communist Party of china, president of the People’s
Republic of china, and chairman of the central military commission, and is hailed as ‘paramount leader’ by 18.41 per cent (at
the time of writing) of the world’s population, may not think
a mere prime minister his equal. Xi is a princeling, one of that
exalted chinese version of Delhi’s pampered brat pack, sons
and daughters of influential party veterans. like mao Zedong,
he sees himself as heir to the emperor Qianlong whose letter
to King George iii in 1793 asserting that his ‘dynasty’s majestic
virtue has penetrated unto every country under heaven, and
Kings of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and
sea’ is still held up as history’s ultimate expression of condescending arrogance. Such an august personage must look
down on a politician who begs starving villagers for their votes,
physically fights off those who try to foist a muslim skull cap
on his head, and suffers the jibes of aspiring females like mamawww.openthemagazine.com 15

open essay

ta Banerjee and mayawati. these problems of democracy can’t
seen to be a man of the masses. hence several carefully casual
really be wished away by PV narasimha Rao’s prescription of
tieless appearances after climbing the greasy pole. expensive
solving the problems of democracy with more democracy.
and immediately spotted gewgaws like Rolex watches and Fereverybody in china wants to dress and look like the pararari cars are out. So are the trendy ties and well-cut suits that the
mount leader not in a defiant i-am-as-good-as-you spirit but to
former ccP secretary, Bo Xilai, sported before he was kicked out
demonstrate loyalty. no indian does. every indian is his own
of the party. Xi is often pictured wearing a navy blue, zippered
paramount leader. the manchus may not have been overwindcheater as he leads campaigns against corruption.
thrown in 1912 if the Son of heaven hadn’t made it impossible
now that he is going grey, his courtiers will no doubt claim
for ordinary mortals to emulate his elaborate and expensive
it’s the result of having to cope with Donald trump’s trade war,
lifestyle. the ‘Zhongshan suits’, as the four-pocketed tunics
a slowing economy, and the aggressiveness of small countries
introduced by the sturdily democratic Sun Yat Sen were called,
around the South china Sea. But deep in their hearts, the chinese
were far easier to copy. mao’s order after the 1949 revolution that
are delighted because grey hair for them is the traditional sign of
men and women alike should follow the leader’s sartorial style
wisdom. they were not at all surprised, therefore, when trump
turned everyone into a flattering loyalist. Jiang Zemin, who laid
declared, “i have no white hair”. even mao and Deng Xiaoping,
the foundations of economic liberalisation, startled the world

the original paramount leader, embraced a silver-haired look in
by departing from that mould and appearing at a party congress
their later years. like much else in china, tradition, like confuin a lounge suit. it signified the
cianism, has often been at odds
aP
end of ideology, warned Westwith fashion. Gleaming black
ern leaders that communists
heads of hair were in vogue durweren’t so different when it
ing the communist heyday became to money, and advertised
cause they supposedly indicated
chinese stitching in an attempt
youth and vigour. it was like the
to undercut all those suit-whilerouge that england’s ailing King
u-wait Sindhi tailors in hong
George Vi slapped on to keep up
Kong. always an astute stratehis subjects’ spirits, especially
gist, the ageing Jiang put many
during the challenging years of
princelings into key positions.
World War ii. in a strategic return
as a result, their gratified fathers,
to tradition, ‘uncle Xi’—as he
uncles and even grandfathers,
likes to be called—is using less
senior chinese communist
colouring.
Modi may be three years older, but
Party leaders, backed him. Jiang’s
modi may be three years older,
since the average age of a Chinese

oversized, black-rimmed glasses
but since the average age of a
in 2020 is expected to be a hoary 37, chinese in 2020 is expected to be a
which were all the rage in the
1990s were ousted from fashion
hoary 37, compared to a sprightly
compared to a sprightly 29 for
by hu Jintao’s gold-framed
29 for an indian, china’s leader
an Indian, China’s leader must
lenses, but his lounge suits
must look avuncular. now that
remained.
he is supremo for life, he might
look avuncular
however, Xi still takes his mao
even feel obliged as the years roll
jacket out of mothballs on special
on to bleach those of his tresses
occasions like formal military
that haven’t fallen off. From the
events because it sends two important political messages. First,
powerful Politburo Standing committee to provincial and local
it reassures a billion-and-a-half chinese that the country will
officials, everyone is keeping careful watch. the chinese being
forever honour the People’s liberation army’s role in the revoluinveterate gamblers, books may have been opened at home and
tion that established the People’s Republic of china. Second, the
among the Huáqiáo, as an estimated 50 million overseas chinese
civilian apparel is a reminder that the military might spread its
are called, to lay bets on the greying of Xi. meanwhile, dye sales

tentacles in a string of pearls from the cocos island to hambanhave plummeted.
tota to the maldives to Gwadar, but it remains subject to the ccP’s
if only the may elections could be held in this demonstrably
political will and discipline.
more deferential setting. there would be no reason then for
otherwise, Xi is far more innovative than modi. the new
modi to ignore questions about promises to enrich every citilook he is promoting—crisp, white, button-up shirts open at the
zen by Rs 15 lakh, create two crore jobs a year or double farmers’
neck worn with a smart blazer or a short jacket, and discarding
incomes. the questions wouldn’t be asked. n
glasses—is said to be aimed at cutting down the elitism of fellow
Sunanda K Datta-Ray is a journalist and author of
princelings. a real man of the people would have accumulated
several books. He is an open contributor
an extravagant wardrobe like modi. But a princeling must be
16

25 march 2019



C o v e r

S t o r y

a

hero of
THE RISE OF RANVEER SINGH IS THE TRIUMPH OF THE OUTSIDER.
THE NEW SENSATION OF HINDI CINEMA SHARES THE THRILLS

AND TRAVAILS OF HIS JOURNEY WITH DIVYA UNNY

J

ust before
he turned 20,
Ranveer Singh found
himself performing to a classroom
packed with college
students in the US. It
was an acting class he had signed up for
at Indiana University, and the professor
had put them on the spot by asking everyone to present a piece. Ranveer, unprepared, walked up to the front of the
class. It was the first time in years he was
addressing a crowd. With sweaty palms
but a steady breath, he rattled off the famous Amitabh Bachchan monologue
from Deewaar (1975). Nobody understood a word, but the language barrier
didn’t stop a hearty applause that still
echoes in Ranveer’s mind. “I sat there
stumped, and the claps continued. I
remember it so vividly, almost as if it
was in slow motion,” he says. That day
changed everything.
Cut to a warm afternoon at a sub18

urban five-star hotel in Mumbai
14 years later. Ranveer is yet to arrive
but the energy in the room has already
begun to shift. Two ice-cold espressos
have been ordered, the room has been

checked for the right temperature, an
outdoor space has been assigned for
the interview, and the path has been
cleared. His spot boy informs his manager that he’s walking towards us.
The drama, I’ve to admit, is amusing.
Ranveer is famous for making epic
public entries with his boom box blaring his hit songs, but that’s certainly
not what was expected this afternoon.
The 2018 Forbes India magazine that
includes him among the top 10 Indian
celebrities (in the company of Amitabh
Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar) lies
casually on the coffee table in the room,
and just as I flip its pages, I see him.
In black track pants, black jacket
with his signature hoodie, sunglasses
masking most of his face, and a slight
smile, he says, “Hi ma’am, shall we

start?” He’s mellower than usual today, not keen to draw attention. He still
embodies his character Murad from
Gully Boy. He takes a while to take off
his sunglasses, and make eye contact. “I
feel like it’s some kind of a weird security
blanket,” he confesses.
Ranveer as Murad, the quiet introvert, the hip-hop music lover from
Dharavi, who fights all odds, will be
counted amongst the most exemplary
and finessed characterisations in modern Indian cinema. There’s a Murad in
every Indian home, who has hopes and

aspirations that seem too audacious.
And Ranveer’s embodiment of that
persona, had us from frame one. He
seethes slowly, there’s pain in his eyes,
rebellion in his soul, and poetry in his
words. “People think I’m this Bandra
brat, but I am really among those kids as
well. I grew up on the border of Bandra
East and West, and literally shared a wall
with them. On one hand, for me, were
the affluent beings of this cosmopolitan
25 MARCH 2019


our time
I was just a kid
with a dream
and it came true.
I understand
that I am
fortunate to
be in this
position- So
when somebody
expresses
love or
excitementI take it in and
I try and give
back threefold.
that's just

how I am
ERRIKOS ANDREOU / DEU: Creative Management


A s cene fr om Gully Boy ; (below)
dir ec tor Zoya Ak h tar and
Ranveer on the film’s se t

“Ranveer’s okay to not take the spotlight in a
scene and aims to serve the story in the end.
That’s a precious quality for an actor”
zOyA AKhtAR

20

suburb, but on the other was my time
spent playing cricket and football with
the boys from the waadi (neighbourhood).” Ranveer isn’t outwardly political, but he insists he isn’t far removed
from Gully Boy’s social realities “I’d run
back from school, throw my bag and
rush to play a game with them. Their
language, their conflicts, their fights
with their own selves is something I
witnessed very often. I’m not saying I
related to their struggles entirely, but
I wasn’t alien to them. My view for 25
years was fancy skyscrapers at one end,
and the slums at the other. I was very
aware of the duality of Mumbai, and
that gave me a very interesting vantage

point to the film,” he says calling himself
a ‘true-blue Mumbai boy’.
Without a doubt his most understated performance, Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy
establishes a new reality. Thirty-threeyear-old Ranveer, who debuted just nine
years ago and was almost written-off as
too brash to be in Bollywood, is the superstar of his generation. With no hits
to their name in the last year, the era of
the Khans might finally be coming to
an end. And their successor has both
the appeal and charm of a hero, and the
skill and submission of a great actor. He
is not trying to imitate anyone, but is
stitched from his own cloth. Someone
who is standing on a pedestal, and still
has his feet on the ground. “He’s an actorstar and since Aamir Khan I don’t think
we’ve had someone who can do both,
carry the might of a star and still maintain the honesty of being a fine actor,”
says director Maneesh Verma who introduced him to the world with Band Baaja
Baaraat (2010). “I don’t know about taglines, but what I do know is that this,
what is happening to me, is beyond my
wildest imagination,” Ranveer says.
In less than a decade, through his
roles, coupled with a flamboyant yet
magnanimous personality, Ranveer
is ruling hearts and minds alike. With
nearly 20 films, and 28 brand endorsements, at an estimated net worth of
almost Rs 90 crore, he has leaped over
his contemporaries, including Ranbir Kapoor. “When Ranbir came in he
25 MARCH 2019

C o v e r

was looked at as a Bandra brat and he
changed that perception by playing
some incredible roles. But Ranveer has
now taken that and made it so much
larger by identifying with a section of
society who have not been considered
worthy of the gaze of Bollywood. His
mellow, inward-thinking portrayal in
Gully Boy makes him that much more
identifiable with a mass who were looking for a hero from amongst them,” says
senior film writer Indu Mirani.
In the same note, his directors and coactors see him as someone who’s fearless
and doesn’t strive for perfection. His coactor Vijay Varma, who plays his friend
the carjacker Moeen, says, “Ranveer
exudes a certain kind of self-worth and
confidence that can’t be shaken by external factors. I truly believe that being a secure actor is something everyone should
strive for and it shouldn’t be glorified. But
Ranveer, in his system has a thing of giving, a lot. I remember during a workshop
I was having trouble with my character
and he just ran his palm on my back.
Asked me to breathe. It was where I
connected with him. That makes the
experience so real, and so memorable.”
Zoya Akhar, who is a friend and has also
directed him in Dil Dhadakne Do (2015),
adds, “He’s fine being vulnerable. He’s
very mindful and knows when to step

back. You don’t see Ranveer, but Murad
the minute he’s on screen, and that’s
because he’s so invested in his part. He’s
okay to not take the spotlight in a scene,
and aims to serve the story in the end,
and that’s a precious quality for an actor.”
It’s a space Ranveer has been leading
up to for years now. Being the quintessential ‘Hindi picture ka hero’ was his
dream. Like it was and is for countless
young boys in Mumbai. We were introduced to him as the boisterous Bittoo
Sharma in Band Baaja Baaraat (2010).
But Ranveer’s introduction to cinema
was always the larger-than-life parts
played by Amitabh Bachchan, Anil
Kapoor, Govinda and others. He was
so influenced by their magnetism and
mannerisms, that even today, he can
masterfully mimic Kapoor. “Once in
between takes during Dil Dhadakne Do,
25 MARCH 2019

S t o r y

I asked Anil Sir if he understands lens
magnifications, like when they say, ‘50
lekar aao, 75 lekar aao,’ on set, does he
get it?” Ranveer then scratches his chin,
brings base to his voice, squints his eyes
in classic AK style and says, “Aaj tak nahi
seekha hun mein kya…aaj tak nahin seekha

(I haven’t learned it yet…)”
One can’t say if he’s just a natural,
or just so taken by his idols, that their
mannerisms are like muscle memory
to him. In all probability it’s a combi-

the quality
of being
unaware is
priceless. It
goes away the
more work you
do-which is
when you know
that there can
only be one
performance in
your life that
will be all
heart and
no craft
nation of both. “I think I was eight or
nine when my teachers used to tell me,
‘Tu bada hoke actor banega.’ I had that
gregarious, vivacious personality. My
report card remarks would always say:
‘He is keen to entertain the other kids
in the class.’ So the signs were all there.
And god knows I wanted to,” he adds.
When he was 15 his dream became

very real for him. “I was looking from
the outside at this Hindi film industry,
and I didn’t have a way in. This is around
the year 2000 when all your heroes were

producers, directors, actors’ sons—
Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan,
Tusshar Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi. I mean,
it genuinely seemed like too far-fetched
a dream. I was an outsider. My chances
were a million to one. Which is when
you re-calibrate your dreams to match
your reality. I signed up for an advertising degree in America,” he says.
By chance he took an acting class in
his second year of university, and the
rest is history. He is emotional when he
recounts the most significant conversation he had with his father that evening
after class. “I said to him, ‘I really want to
finish my degree, come back to Bombay
and try.’ Without a thought in his head
he said, ‘Do it. I know this is what your
heart wants. When your heart is going to
be in it, you will be good at it.’ Randomly
getting a call like that from your son who
you have invested so much in, it took a lot
of fortitude from his end to accept it. All
he said was, ‘I have one condition. Finish
what you started and then come back.’ I
couldn’t accept not trying, I knew that I’ll
regret it if I don’t,” says Ranveer.

B y now word had spread through the
hotel that Ranveer Singh is in the house.
Just 20 minutes ago it was just me, Ranveer and his managers in the garden, and
now there is a woman with her six-yearold son, a newly married couple, and
a few others who (we could tell) were
hoping for a selfie with him. Slowly the
crowd was trickling in. One man even
randomly threw a thumbs up in his direction, but Ranveer was too immersed
in his story to notice. “I did theatre, joined
an advertising film and basically groped
in the dark for three years before I got a
call back for the Band Baaja Baaraat audition. Even today Adi [Aditya Chopra,
the film’s producer] says it’s the best audition he has seen in his entire career,”
he says. Maneesh Sharma, the director
of the film, remembers how other than
him, everybody thought casting Ranveer
would be suicidal. “People came and told
me ‘he can never be a star’. I didn’t have
validation for my excitement, but filmmaking is primarily based on instinct
and my instinct said he was the one, and
he was going to make it big.”
www.openthemagazine.com 21


Dil Dhadak ne Do (20 15)

L ootera (20 13)

Be fik r e
(20 16)

Band Baaja Baaraat (20 10)

Goliyon K i Raasleela
Ram-L eela (20 13)

Even today, Ranveer believes that he
can never top what he did with Bittoo.
“After I got selected I was messing it all up.
I was too nervous. Adi called me one day
and said they were going to do a screen
test and I could treat it like the World Cup
final. If I won I could take the cup home,
if not I could leave for good. Thankfully,
I stayed. I don’t think in my whole life I
will be able to match what I did in Band
Baaja Baaraat. It’s too raw, it’s too unadulterated. I can see now that I didn’t
know anything, and I am just doing
everything instinctively.” Sharma who
was also directing his debut film found
in Ranveer a partner who was willing to
give it his all. “His emotional quotient is
really very high and he’s extremely sensitive. He really knows which buttons
to press in terms of his own sensitivity
to the character. I remember during the
climax of the film I went to Ranveer and
I saw ‘CLIMAX’ written in big bold letters on a white board. He was so nervous,
and had made the scene so big in his head
that we couldn’t shoot that day. I had to
ask him to relax and treat it as just part

of the story, and that’s when we nailed
it,” he says. “I was so kuccha (raw)… as an
actor the quality of not knowing, and being unaware is priceless. It’s invaluable. It
goes away the more and more work you
do, which is when you know that there
can only be one performance in your life
that’ll be all heart and no craft. Only one,”
Ranveer adds.
Band Baaja Baaraat brought him recognition and acclaim. It was a time when
Ranbir Kapoor was still the blue-eyed boy
22

Bajirao Mas tani (20 15)

of Bollywood, Salman Khan had just
landed with Dabangg (2010) and Akshay
Kumar had four films that year. Still, a
messy-haired, dusky boy with no godfather in the industry, made his mark. On
a talk show with NDTV Ranveer reveals
how he would constantly get asked how
much money his father had pumped in
to make him a star. It was success well
earned, but he knew he had to do more
to prove himself.
He soon broke out of the niche of the
loud, snarky, street-smart Dilli boy he
was expected to follow. Many new actors stick to parts that they’re comfortable and popular for; Ranveer did the

I want to
write- composedirect. I want

to explore
other avenues
of filmmaking.
But it takes
courage and
personal
evolution to
do that. I don't
feel like I am
there yet

opposite. With Lootera (2013), where he
played an archaeologist-cum- painter, he
expertly internalised the performance.
“Lootera was way out of my realm as an
actor at that point, but Vikram [director
Vikramaditya Motwane] held me down
and made me see what it feels like to play
it down. I remember on the fourth day
of the Lootera workshops, I wasn’t getting it. I tried and tried until I had a huge
breakthrough and realised what it takes
to pitch oneself at that scale,” he says.
During the shoot of this film, he broke
his back and was bedridden for two
months. He remembers this as a time
when he discovered himself. “I was yet
to understand my comfort zone as an actor, but I never wanted to submit to it. I
realised slowly that parts like in Simmba
come to me easily. It’s the quieter parts
that were more challenging because

there’s nothing to say or to do. It keeps
me stimulated, and I’m not stuck doing
the same thing,” he says.
This need to experiment came as
an epiphany. After Lootera he went on
to act in Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela
(2013); Finding Fanny (2014); Dil Dhadakne Do (2015) and Bajirao Mastani (2015).
In each film we only saw the character,
and not Ranveer. His multi-coloured
pencil box and notepad he’d carry on set
and take notes in while pacing around
has become iconic. He often used music
to stimulate his mind, and also fell back
on smaller things like one perfume per
role. His co-actor and wife Deepika Padukone reveals, “He’d get so consumed by
the roles he plays that his walk, his way
25 MARCH 2019


Padmaavat (20 18)

Ranveer will soon begin
shooting for ’83 where he
plays the role of former
Indian captain kapil dev

of dressing, the way he speaks, how he
responds, everything changed. It’s a joke
in our relationship that every six months
I’m dating a new person. And at that

point, we’d just met and I really wanted
to get to know him better. It was very
exciting to see him imbibe this new self
now and then, but I really needed some
consistency too,” she says.
His process is not defined he says
and can never be. Ram from Ram Leela
is nothing like Peshwa Bajirao Ballal
from Bajirao Mastani (2016) and Kabir
from Dil Dhadakne Do is a far cry from
Sultan Alauddin Khilji in Padmaavat
(2018). These are roles that grew beyond the film itself and remained with
his viewers. “I stick with my part of the
deal: kalakaari (acting). The endeavor is
to stick with the feeling. I have worked
with actors who are all craft, no feeling.
I am standing one inch away from them
in the flesh, and I know for a fact that it’s
all craft. It’s got everyone fooled except
me because I am trying to connect with
this person and there is no connect. I
don’t want to get there ever, and for that
I have to submit fully,” he says. Sanjay
Leela Bhansali, who has directed him in
several blockbusters, said in a television
interview, “I have never seen obsession
for the world of cinema in the way I’ve
seen it with Ranveer.”
The obsession could be all consuming, especially for a part like Khilji where
Ranveer felt like he was losing his mind.

It took him eight years to learn how to
separate his self from his roles. Khilji,
with his mad locks, kohl-rimmed eyes,
25 MARCH 2019

and untamed sexual appetites, was a new
kind of villain in Bollywood. He certainly
was the best thing about Padmaavat, but
it came at a price. “I remember during
Khilji, in the middle of the 40-day grueling schedule, one day I woke up at 4 am
suddenly in my apartment. I walked past
the mirror and I couldn’t recognise myself and it scared the shit out of me. The
character was seeping into me. I was becoming angry and cynical. I was becoming a person I was not. I called my mother
immediately and asked her to come on
set. I realised that you have to go back to
things that truly ground you, truly bring
you back to who you are,” he says.
As Ranveer grew as an actor on
screen, so did his personality off screen.
“I spent two months with him on set
as Murad and he was so calm, so quiet.
And on the last day I saw him explode
on the dance floor. That’s when I realised
who the real Ranveer was,” Vijay Varma
says. Time and again, he gave his fans
high-octane drama, be it with his sense
of fashion, or his over-the-top demeanour. He was exuding life and energy
that seemed abnormally high to most.
He could be anything, he could be everything; he was a superhero on the streets
of Mumbai, one moment, and another

he’d be prancing around in a ghaaghra
at his own wedding reception. His acts
flooded social media, he was often even
trolled. Be it on a TV show or the stage,
he was vocal, and unabashedly so about
how his feelings for the woman he loved,
and all of it made him come into his own.
He wasn’t afraid to express himself and

frankly it was refreshing. He was okay
being the object of desire, and he was
okay breaking into tears.

H

e was the hero, but
defied the stereotyped machismo a Hindi film hero
came with. After years, we
are seeing a leading man who is so comfortable in his skin that he cares little
about feedback, except when it comes
to his films. He’ll fall into the arms of his
fans, without a thought, and you can
see that he is happy. “That’s just my way
of expressing gratitude. My way of saying thank you. I have wanted this ever
since I’ve known who I really am, and
now when I’m getting it, all I want to do
is give back. I made my own luck, but
it still didn’t have to come to me… I was
just a kid with a dream and it came true.
I understand that I am very fortunate to

be in this position. So when somebody
expresses love or excitement I take it in,
and I try and give back threefold, that’s
just how I’m built, it is just who I am. So
it’s coming from a very genuine place or
gratitude,” he says.
A big shift in his life is his relationship with Deepika that he says has
changed him for the better. Their wedding was the most talked about affair at
the end of last year. While it flooded the
media, the couple also managed to keep
it personal. “When we started dating six
years ago, I was more successful than
him, busier than him, making more
money. I’ve never come across a man
www.openthemagazine.com 23


C o v e r

S t o r y

Ap

"When we started dating six years ago,
I was more successful than him, busier
than him, making more money. I’ve never
come across a man who is so comfortable
with the attention I was getting"
DEEpIKA pADUKONE actor and wife

who is so comfortable with my success
and the attention I was getting. He was
supportive and encouraging of my career and it wasn’t superficial support.
That doesn’t happen with many men.
He really cared, and I don’t think our relationship would have lasted if not for
how he inherently felt about my world
and how much he respected it. I did not
have to make compromises to keep my
man happy and that was the best thing
about him,” says Deepika.
Just as we come to the end of our
hour-long walk, Deepika appears on
Facetime. She’s on a shoot, and surprised
to hear from him. “I pocket dialled you
by mistake, Rani. I’m in an interview
now, will call back. You look really hot
by the way!” he says, spontaneously. It’s
endearing. He speaks about her with
affection and respect. “She’s taught me
a way of being. She has opened up my
eyes to a whole new dimension of hard
24

work. I had never in my life before seen a
person work that hard at something and
it made me understand what it takes to
achieve something. If she is the number
one actress today, it is because nobody
else deserves it more than her,” he says.
Recently Will Smith, the original

hip-hop icon, congratulated Ranveer.
On an Instagram story, he said, “Yo Ranveer, congrats man, I am loving what
you’re doing with Gully Boy for me oldschool hip hop here seeing hip hop all
over the world like that I am loving it
man. Congrats.” Now that kind of praise
naturally thrilled Ranveer. He says, “I
kept re-winding it and watching how
he says, ‘Yo Ranveer!’ it was too cool. The
Pursuit of Happyness is among the greatest cinematic performances of all time
and when your idol says something so
encouraging, what more can I ask for?”
With his aspirations, talent and energy, Ranveer is sure that acting is just

one of his many hats. “I want to write,
compose and direct. I want to explore
my creativity in various other avenues of
filmmaking. But it takes a lot of courage
and personal evolution to do that. I don’t
feel like I am there yet. I am getting a lot of
very stimulating acting work and I want
to concentrate on that,” he says. He will
soon shoot ’83 where he plays the role of
former Indian cricket captain Kapil Dev.
Before he leaves he happily obliges
the 25-odd people who have been waiting patiently for photos with him. He
looks in my direction and says, “You
have a choice in life always. You can
take two paths. One is seemingly easier,
within your reach and more accessible.
Another is bold where you go down a

path which seems very dangerous. You
don’t know what will come out of it. You
don’t know what this path holds. But do
it, you never know. You’ll never know
until you do.” n
25 MARCH 2019