Parenthood is a challenging process, no matter who you are. Ask actress Kalki Koechlin! In her graphic narrative The Elephant in the Womb, Kalki records the physical, mental, and emotional reckonings that she and her partner had to face, before and after childbirth. While archiving these raw feelings, she manages to bust a lot of myths surrounding pregnancy. Below are some of the many myths that the author dismantles while experiencing childbirth for the first time.
The Elephant in the Womb||Kalki Koechlin
Myth 1: Miscarriages should not be talked about
Kalki starts her memoir right off the bat with a crucial point: miscarriage is not a matter of shame. It can feel tragic, can trigger grief and depression, but the guilt and shame are aggravated by treating miscarriage itself like a myth. 1 in 4 pregnancies experience a miscarriage, and most women experience this in the first trimester itself. Because most people hush it up and bring up other superstitions like the evil eye, the psychological effects of miscarriage are often felt by the mother, all by herself.
Myth 2: Pregnant women should restrict their movements
It doesn’t take long for people to change their behaviour around pregnant women, and The Elephant in the Womb describes this in fun, illustrative anecdotes. Once Kalki got pregnant, people around her began treating her like a porcelain doll, ready to break. When in fact, she wanted nothing more than to still hang out with friends and socialize! This myth is harmful especially because pregnant women need exercise in preparation for childbirth.
Myth 3: ‘Standard Procedure’ should be followed
The medical routines and processes which most expecting mothers are told are ‘standard procedure’, are sometimes myth. With the help of other mothers’ anecdotes, Kalki quickly realizes that she gets to decide how her body should be treated during her pregnancy. From discovering that anomaly scans are not mandatory to choosing both a doula as well as a gynaecologist for advice, Kalki establishes boundaries early on in her pregnancy. Most pregnant women let go of the authority of this process, often falling victim to unnecessary invasive procedures, not knowing that they are most likely to know what is best for their body.
Myth 4: Maternal instinct
Haven’t we all grown up hearing ‘mommy knows best’? Every mother has experienced being a mother for the first time, which means that making mistakes, looking out for support, having more people involved with the care of the baby is not an option but crucial for the mother’s physical and mental wellness. With postpartum depression being a real issue, it is unfair that women are expected to magically know and take care of all the affairs of the home after such a life-changing event.
The Elephant in the Womb is a unique graphic memoir that creatively expresses the hopes and anxieties of a modern mother in an ever-changing world.
Every corporate employee, or prospective employee has at some point had a traditional text resume. However, video resumes may be the little sprinkles on the cake that you need in order to spruce up your job application and get an edge over the competition. It’s not only a visually interesting, unique and innovative way of presenting your personal information and professional aspirations to recruiters, but is also a great method of showing off your personality and soft skills by using technology in the shortest possible time.
Sagarika Verma and Subir Verma explain in their book,Job Search Secrets, how video resumes are serious game changers in today’s competitive world, and they also share useful tips for making a video resume. Here’s an excerpt from the book that will help all the active job seekers.
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Job Search Secrets || Sagarika Verma, Subir Verma
A video resume (commonly known as visumé or video CV) is a new way to present your abilities. You can also use this to force-apply, by sharing your short video resume with some recruiters and people in your networks.
Most companies are adapting to the virtual way of working. Employees’ physical presence at work is reducing day by day. Interviewing candidates over the virtual medium is a low-cost hiring method for employers. As employers are becoming more comfortable with video technologies, job seekers should use them to impress prospective employers even before any actual interview. One of the best ways to do this is by making a video resume, and we recommend early adoption of technology by you to make one for yourself.
A video resume is a 60- to 120-second long video in which you, as a job seeker, can highlight your qualifications, skills, accomplishments, experience, soft skills and other relevant key points about yourself, which will encourage companies to call you for an interview.
Today, the competition for jobs being fierce, it is very difficult for your resume to get noticed during the screening process from among thousands of applications that any company receives. Just crafting a professional three-page resume will not make you stand out from the crowd.
You have to use multiple channels to reach out and get noticed by companies so that you get an interview call.
Many recruiters today prefer these resumes to the traditional paper resume, as they are able to see and hear you. Their task of initial shortlisting becomes easier. Many job sites are adopting this trend and have incorporated changes to accept video resumes.
While video resumes can be used by every job seeker, it is particularly recommended for direct customer-facing job profiles in industries like hotel and hospitality, retail, call centres, media, public relations, event management and other customer-facing roles. A video resume is a better way to showcase your charming personality and your communication and presentation skills. This can be the easiest way for you to get an interview call from a company.
A video resume should be unique, creative and professionally made. It is easy to make and can also be created at home. You also can hire a professional to make it. If you are making a video resume for the first time, then the most important thing is to prepare and practise for it. Here are some tips:
Write a short, simple and straightforward script
Your script should be like an interesting story that anyone would like to hear. Write down your educational details, key achievements, work experience, projects and competencies that are relevant for the job in question. Keep your focus on the requirements of the job and pay more attention to the company requirements than yourself, and talk about why the company should hire you. Use simple and easy-to-understand language without any jargon. Your video must end with why you want to join the company and why the company should select you.
Ideally, the duration of your video resume should be one minute, but it can go up to two minutes.
Look natural and do not read the resume while recording
Memorize the script, look natural, and record. If you are targeting multiple roles, then record more videos, mentioning the skills and experience relevant to the different positions you are considering. Do not be afraid to talk about your passions. Be creative and different, within professional boundaries.
Watch out for light, background, voice speed and volume
Your background, and the light in the room, should be good so that the video is clear and looks professional. Speak slowly and clearly, and be audible. Speak just as you do in formal conversations. Look into the camera of the phone, and avoid excessive hand and eye movement. This will produce an impression that you are quite confident. The best camera angle for this would cover your face and chest while you are sitting in a chair. This position will also make you look calmer.
Look presentable and wear formal attire
You must be presentable and well groomed. Do not wear loud clothes for the video. Muted blue is a good colour and always turns out looking good.
How to edit your final video resume
If your video does not meet your expectation, then editing is an option. You can check the quality of your video as well as the content. If your recorded video has some fillers like ‘ok’, ‘right’, ‘ummm . . . ’, ‘ahhh . . . ’, ‘like’, you can edit them out and properly adjust the volume.
Get feedback from your friends
Share your final video resume with a few of your friends and seniors and ask for their feedback. You might have overlooked some silly errors while making the video. Getting feedback from other people is a very important step. You can make edits and changes based on their suggestions.
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Read Job Search Secrets to gain more insights on finding the right job and how to prepare for it.
Absolute clarity of perception places Sadhguru in a unique space, not only in matters spiritual but in business, environmental and international affairs, and opens a new door on all that he touches. At the dawn of the book launch of Sadhguru’s latest release, Eternal Echoes, we bring to you some other books penned by him that will help you walk on the path lit by this ‘spiritual master with a difference’.
Inner Engineering || Sadhguru
INNER ENGINEERING: A YOGI’S GUIDE TO JOY
According to Sadhguru, the term guru means ‘the dispeller of darkness, someone who opens the door for you…’ As a guru, he says he has no doctrine to teach, no philosophy to impart, no belief to propagate. And that is because he believes the only solution for all the ills that plague humanity is self-transformation. Hence, by talking about yoga through his book, he helps one create inner situations exactly the way you want them, turning you into the architect of your own joy. A yogi lives in this expanisve state and he narrates the story of his own awakening, from a boy with an unusual affinity for nature to a young daredevil who crossed the Indian continent on his motorcycle.
Flowers on the Path || Sadhguru
FLOWERS ON THE PATH
As a flower can confound you with its brilliance and beauty, so too does each article in this book hold the possibility to confuse you out of your conclusions, and pave the way towards true knowing. Whether the subject covers social issues and worldly affairs, individual challenges, or dimensions of the beyond, Sadhguru’s ability to delve to the root and look at life in all its totality is evident. These essays will render you in profound stillness within and might even delight you with humour.
Death, An Inside Story || Sadhguru
DEATH: AN INSIDE STORY
Death is a taboo in most societies in the world. But what if we have got this completely wrong? What if death was not the catastrophe it is made out to be but an essential aspect of life, rife with spiritual possibilities for transcendence? In this unique treatise-like exposition, Sadhguru dwells extensively upon his inner experience as he expounds on the more profound aspects of death that are rarely spoken about. From a practical standpoint, he elaborates on what preparations one can make for one’s death, how best we can assist someone who is dying and how we can continue to support their journey even after death.
Karma || Sadhguru
KARMA
Recommended by the likes of Tom Brady and Deepak Chopra, this book deals with the often-used but loosely understood word, Karma. It elaborates on how the grossly over-simplified understanding of it as a system which ensures that one gets what one deserves, has created many complexities in our lives and taken away from us the very fundamentals of the joy of living. Through this book, not only does Sadhguru explain what Karma is and how we can use its concepts to enhance our lives, he also tells us about the Sutras, a step-by-step guide to navigating our way in this challenging world. In the process, we get a deeper, richer understanding of life and the power to craft our destinies.
Eternal Echoes || Sadhguru
While all these books are written in prose and serve as guides to connect, live and be one with ourselves, his new book, Eternal Echoes is a book of verse full of poems Sadhguru wrote between 1994 and 2021. It has hundreds of poems, one for every day, spread out amidst themes such as life, death, time, yoga, love and devotion, nature, Shiva and more.
India is one of the youngest countries in the world, thanks to its population of over 400 million millennials. Being in such great numbers shows how this demographic makes their country a huge well of untapped potential. What is it that makes millennials the true influencers, and what is their greatest obstacle?
In this interview, author (and millennial) Vivaan Marwaha answers some key questions about how he worked on this book and the method of writing and researching about such a massive data set.
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What Millennials Want||Vivan Marwaha
Born between 1981 and 1996, roughly numbering more than 440 million, Indian millennials are without any doubt the largest millennial cohort on the planet.
But how much do we know about this generation? India’s youth is India’s future, but in order to build a prosperous future, we need to comprehensively understand the economic aspirations, social views, and political attitudes of the young Indians who will take the country forward.
Like every other generation in India, millennials are incredibly diverse: with not just significant economic division, but also important linguistic, regional, caste, gender and religious differences, which make the generation difficult to understand as a cohesive group.
Yet millennials have the potential to be India’s most significant generation. If you’re not convinced about why they could become the country’s most important—and potentially most disruptive—generation, consider some of these numbers.
India’s median age, according to a 2021 estimate by the CIA World Factbook, is twenty-eight years. This means that half of its population is under the age of twenty-eight. By contrast, the median age in the world’s top three economies— namely, the United States, China, and Japan—is thirty-eight, thirty-seven and forty-seven years respectively. Among the top ten economies in the world, India has the youngest population followed distantly by Brazil, which has a median age of thirty-two years. By 2021, two-thirds of India’s population will be within the working age of twenty to thirty-five years.
These young Indians will be the world’s largest labour force and market for goods and services. This is what is referred to as India’s ‘demographic dividend’. This term was popularized by academics, journalists, and businesspersons keen on investing in India in the early 2000s, who saw the country’s youth as an asset in the longer-run, particularly when compared to China, a country whose one-child policy was viewed as a demographic crisis in the making. It was believed that with the right education and investment in human capital, a growing middle class and an increase in foreign investment in the economy, India would not only enjoy high single-digit and even double-digit GDP growth, but its millennials and working-age population would power the country to transform itself like many east Asian success stories.
India’s millennials can only become a global power if they have cash in their wallets and stable jobs.
But there’s scant attention paid to millennials as a unique generation. Instead of viewing them as independent islands of young Indians based on their caste, class, or religion, in my book, I shine light on what brings them together—their common aspirations, anxieties, and experiences. When new policies and cultural issues are debated in India, lawmakers, news reporters and commentators all too often neglect to consider the impact these developments have on the millions of young Indians currently getting their education or joining the economy. The quality of their education; their opinions on hot-button cultural issues; their political beliefs; and whether they find employment will be crucial to India’s future in the economic and political order of the 21st Century. As the country seeks to become a global leader, members of its most populous generation will soon become its most powerful, and it is hard to overstate the importance of understanding the attitudes, behaviours, and views of India’s millennials. What Millennials Want is a book which combines data and anecdotes to narrate an intimate biography of this dynamic and important generation.
In Stuti Changle’s On the Open Road, you’ll find Myra, Kabir and Sandy standing on the cusp of making life-changing decisions. The road to their dreams may not be easy, but their spirits remain high.
Here’s an extract to give you a glimpse of Kabir’s life and his desire to make a name for himself and achieve his dreams.
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On the Open Road || Stuti Changle
The moment my flight lands, I think of Sandy and how I want to meet him. I pick up my Steve Jobs book and a black leather handbag in haste. I comfortably make my way through the aisle. That’s the advantage of travelling business class. Unlike the economy passengers, you don’t have to wait for the queue to move before you can deboard the plane. I am back in India, exhausted and burnt out from another business trip.
‘Nice shoes, sir,’ the stewardess compliments me as I reach the exit. Her name card reads Susan. She has been acting strange throughout the flight.
‘Thanks.’
She hands me a folded recycled tissue paper. I don’t know what to do with that.
‘Is something sticking to my face?’ I quip like a fifth grader.
She laughs out loud.
A little embarrassed, I walk off. I unfold the tissue paper and read it closely. A mobile number is written on it in pink ink. I flip through the pages of the book and place it randomly between them. I am not part of the mile high club yet. But I can’t keep Sandy waiting any longer! God has been merciful to me in some ways. My body is the biggest gift to me. I can turn heads and make things happen with a meek smile.
Just like in a flight, there are three types of people in the world.
The aisle-seat passengers are too content to try anything new. The middle-seat passengers are in a constant struggle with the self as they want to break free, but something holds them back. The window-seat passengers take risks and follow their hearts as all that keeps them moving is the view of the infinite.
I certainly belong to the middle-seat category.
My life is seemingly perfect but I want to know what imperfections feel like. What it feels like to give your everything to something and appreciate its outcome one day. I am proud of my lineage, but I always think about what life would be like if I built something on my own.
Life goes on in an endless loop. If it is a weekend, you’ve got to booze. If it is a weekday, you’ve got to watch downloaded TV shows from Pirate Bay. Even if there are thousands on your checklist, there are still a hundred more on the wish list. The hangover of the TV shows stays longer than that of the booze though. For a week you’re Harvey, the next Walter, then Tyrion. When you’re stressed out, you try to act cool like Chandler.
But I wish to be like Sandy. He is the one in the window seat. He dropped out of engineering college and developed a series of unconventional apps. He works on his dream, day and night, like a ninja with coding superpowers.
He tells me you might not have a penny in your pocket, you might sleep on a hungry stomach, your uncle might not support you, the world surely won’t, but don’t let the spark in you die. When you look into the mirror, you should know that you’re born to reach for the stars.
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Read On the Open Road to find out if Myra, Kabir and Sandy succumb to the obstacles or achiev their dreams.
Tendöl Namling turned 60 in March 2019. She was born at the time when the Dalai Lama fled from Lhasa and the uprising of his people by the Chinese People’s Army was brutally suppressed. She has lived for 22 years under Chinese rule. As the daughter of a high government official, she underwent the ordeal of ‘re-education’ with full force. All she has kept from these years are painful memories and some crumpled photographs. Thanks to the efforts of her family in exile, Tendöl was able to leave Tibet in 1982. After twenty years of hardship, she landed in prosperous Switzerland. It felt as if she had to start her life all over again.
Here’s an excerpt from A Childhood in Tibet that depicts the oppressive ways of the Chinese regime and how it wreaked havoc in common people’s lives.
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Tendöl takes her mother’s arrest warrant out of an envelope and bursts into tears. Fifty years later, the traumatic event stirs her up as if it had happened the previous day. ‘My brother Tenor was already in prison then. My mother and I were back from the camp in the east, and the road was finished. We lived in my aunt’s house in Lhasa. It was already dark that December evening when my amala came home. There was a red note on the door. She had no idea why. A little later she looked out of the window and saw a car turning into our narrow alley. She wondered what that might mean. I was sitting on the balcony listening to a Tibetan propaganda broadcast on Chinese radio. We had to listen to such broadcasts every day. Older people often found this so unbearable that they usually put blankets over the radios.‘Suddenly I saw many flashlights illuminating our front door. Chinese military police had come to pick up my mother. One of them read the warrant in a loud voice. It said that my mother was an “active counter-revolutionary” guilty of sabotage. They handcuffed her and searched the entire apartment. But the Chinese had already looted it before. All objects of any value had long since disappeared. My aunt and her daughter, Lochoe, who lived in the lower apartment, were locked up in the kitchen. I begged my amala: “Take me with you! Don’t leave me behind!” Children are not allowed to accompany their arrested parents, shouted a Chinese. I cried, squeezed my way under the barrier to my mother and pulled the chain she was tethered to. My mother called out to me: “Please stop. The prongs are cutting into my skin.” The Chinese policemen, accompanied by a Tibetan collaborator, pushed me aside. They locked the apartment, took my amala with them and drove away.’The next day, Tendöl and her cousin Lochoe went in search of her mother. They took some tea, boiled vegetables and a blanket with them. The girls knew more or less where the prisons were, even if they weren’t marked. First, they went to Drapchi prison and asked the guards at the entrance if new prisoners had been admitted but there was no trace of Tendöl’s mother. The girls continued their search but could not find her.
On their way home, they passed Gutsa prison. There the guards confirmed that Choekyi had indeed been admitted the day before. They asked the guards to at least give the prisoner the food and blanket they had brought with them.A few days later, Tendöl happened to see her mother being dragged into an office in Lhasa by uniformed officials. She had no way of following her or finding out what had happened to her. It took her several months to be able to visit her amala in prison for the first time. But she was not allowed to talk to her because her mother had not yet been convicted. Once a month, relatives were allowed to take food to the prisoners. Her aunt gave Tendöl a bowl of barley soup for her mother. The little girl was so hungry that she drank some soup on her way to the prison. But on that day she was refused entry. She should come back in a month, they told her. Disappointed and sad, Tendöl made her way home and was afraid that her aunt would notice that she had furtively eaten a few spoons of soup because she was so hungry.
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In Tendöl’s words, ‘this little book is dedicated to all the Tibetans who continue to rebel against the Chinese occupation’.
On 18 November 1962, the Charlie Company of the 13 Kumaon Battalion, Kumaon Regiment, fought a Chinese attack at Rezang La Pass in Ladakh, India. The company comprised 120 soldiers and was led by Maj. Shaitan Singh. Of these soldiers, 110 were martyred in the attack.
The Indian search party, which visited the battlefield on 10 February 1963, made a startling discovery-the frozen bodies of the men who had died were still holding guns in their hands, having taken bullets on their chests. The valour of the Charlie Company not only successfully stopped China’s advance, but it also resulted in the Chushul airport being saved, thereby preventing a possible Chinese occupation of the entire Ladakh region in 1962.
The battle, although rarely mentioned or recounted in books, has many lessons to offer to the willing listener. After all, those who do not learn from history, continue to repeat their mistakes.
The Battle of Rezang La || Kulpreet Yadav
1. A nation’s internal issues can quickly make it vulnerable to outside attack.
China attacked India on 20 October 1962. Six office bearers, who were holding the top positions of decision-making in New Delhi, were not present at their offices in the final few months before the attack. Who are these and where were they? Let’s start from the top. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru left New Delhi on 8 September 1962 to attend the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference and returned on 2 October 1962, but once again departed on 12 October 1962 for Colombo from where he returned only on 16 October 1962, i.e., just four days before the war. The defence minister, Krishna Menon, was in New York from 17 September 1962 to 30 September 1962 to attend the UN General Assembly meeting. Lt Gen. B.M. Kaul, the Chief of General Staff, was on holiday in Kashmir till 2 October 1962, and the Director of Military Operations (DMO), Brig. D.K. Palit, was away on a cruise on the naval aircraft carrier Vikrant. This underlines the government’s apathy towards nation’s security resulting from a complete intelligence failure.
Jawaharlal Nehru didn’t trust Krishna Menon when it came to China due to the latter’s leftist leanings and therefore, the prime minister had ordered certain matters to be brought up directly to him. Lt Gen. B.M. Kaul and Krishna Menon were not on talking terms as explained by Brig. D.K. Palit in his memoirs. Gen. P.N. Thapar was in awe of Lt Gen. B.M. Kaul due to the latter’s proximity to Jawaharlal Nehru, who was also related to Gen. Kaul. These interpersonal issues further compounded the organizational structure at the top.
2. A nation should proactively strengthen its security forces to prepare for any untoward strike on its sovereignty, while simultaneously aiming to resolve conflicts peacefully first.
It’s a well-known fact that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru abhorred violence. But the fact that he allowed his personal choice to eclipse the security needs of the nation by downsizing the army after 1947 was the real reason why India had to face humiliation at the hands of the Chinese in 1962. Nehru was indeed one of the finest global leaders of the time and the principal architect of the nation that Indians even today owe a lot to, but his complete dislike for the army can be deduced from this anecdote from the biography of Maj. Gen. A.A. Rudra written by Maj. Gen. D.K. Palit: ‘Shortly after Independence, General (Robert) Lockhart as the army chief took a strategic plan to the prime minister, asking for a government directive on the defence policy. He came back to Jick’s (Rudra’s) office shell- shocked. When asked what happened, he replied, the PM took one look at my paper and blew his top. “Rubbish! Total rubbish!” he shouted. “We don’t need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army! The police are good enough to meet our security needs.”
3. It’s critical for a nation to rightly gauge the enemy’s intention and the scope of their preparation in order to win the war.
The intensity of the shelling and the diversity of the weapons used by the Chinese were an indication of the determination to take the position at any cost. To destroy bunkers, they wheelbarrowed anti-tank guns to the flanks of our (Indian) positions and fired them massively. The four-feet-deep craters found in solid rock around company headquarters were a clear indication that they even used a certain number of big rockets. The shelling was indeed a spectacular display of the Chinese at night. An officer watched it from 4 miles away. ‘I saw missiles,’ he later said, ‘with flaming red tails falling on Rezang La. The spectacle was so weird, we thought the entire Rezang La was on fire.’ Another soldier at a post 4 miles south reported, ‘The explosions were so great that the walls of our cookhouse collapsed.’
4. A strong and dynamic intelligence unit is key to ensuring a nation-state’s welfare and safety.
On 21 October 1962, when an Indian transport aircraft flying over Ladakh reported a 2-mile-long column of Chinese military vehicles heading towards Chushul along the road from Rudok in Tibet, alarm bells started to ring in the army headquarters and the defence ministry. Until then, the Indian intelligence didn’t have any idea about the military build-up on the Chinese side of the Ladakh border. This was going to cost India heavily. The Indians were ignorant of the aggressive road-building activity of the Chinese that had connected all their border posts to their support bases in the deep. Due to this, the PLA’s mobility of troops, artillery and stores was swift. Compared to this, the Indians in Ladakh had just completed the road that connected Srinagar to Leh. A jeepable road that connected Leh with Chushul was also made weeks before the Chinese attacked India as we have seen before. All other thirty-six forward Indian posts were still connected by mule tracks, which took days to reach and had obvious load-carrying restrictions.
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In The Battle of Rezang La, Kulpreet Yadav evocatively narrates the untold story of the soldiers of the Charlie Company who valiantly fought the Chinese till their last breath.
As the Chairman of SBI, Rajnish Kumar recounts in his memoir, The Custodian of Trust, his term was rather momentous as the period-from 2017 to 2020-during which he shouldered this responsibility, was rather unique under any circumstances. The Indian banking sector was going through one of its most tumultuous phases. The problem of non-performing loans (NPLs) had severely impacted the balance sheet and profitability of banks, especially those in the public sector.
Here is an excerpt from the book that talks about the YES Bank fiasco!
Custodian of Trust||Rajnish Kumar
The Saga of YES Bank
The successful rescue of YES Bank in a short period of time is a unique example of perfectly coordinated action by the government, the RBI, and Public–Private partnerships. Of all the names, I have picked YES Bank to write about because of this uniqueness.
The saga of YES Bank started unfolding in June 2018 for me, when I received a request for an appointment from GVK Reddy of the GVK Group, a company in the construction business. My brief for the meeting with Reddy was to discuss the financing of the Navi Mumbai International Airport. GVK Group had built international airports at Mumbai and Bengaluru under the Public– Private Partnership model (PPP) and now had been awarded the contract to build another International Airport at Navi Mumbai. Although the SBI had re-financed Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) a few years ago, it was not otherwise involved in financing any other project for the GVK Group. However, that was no reflection on the credibility or stature of the Group that had created world-class international airports at Bengaluru and Mumbai, especially the latter, which is undoubtedly one of the finest airports in the world. The infrastructure at airports in other countries may be better than at the Mumbai airport but the unique artworks at Amchi Mumbai never fail to fuel a deep sense of pride in Indian traditions and culture among travellers like me. I was actually looking forward to the meeting, mainly because of the deep impact created by MIAL in India’s infrastructural space.
It was fascinating to learn from Reddy how he had entered the infrastructure business exactly after his return from the USA, and how the GVK Group had subsequently become one of the leading infrastructure companies in India, at par with other large south-based infrastructure companies like the Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao (GMR) Group, Iragavarapu Venkata Reddy Construction Limited (IVRCL), Lagadapati Amarappa Naidu and Company (LANCO), and Ramky Infras. In addition, many other smaller companies have mushroomed in the South, especially in Hyderabad, arousing my curiosity about the business environment in southern India that nurtures their growth and what distinguishes them from their counterparts in the North. While each of these companies deserves admiration for creating a unique niche for itself, I later learnt from one of the promoters that political patronage had also played a critical role in their success.
The Mumbai airport is also a reminder of the rapid economic progress made by India over the last 25 years, especially when compared to the pathetic conditions witnessed at the Delhi and Mumbai airports in the mid-1990s with stinking carpets and toilets. The modernization of many of the airports in the country has been carried out successfully under Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the Airports Authority of India and a private developer. The PPP model has been relatively successful because of the capability to generate higher revenue by levying higher user fee and development of real estate around the airport.
YES Bank, the Lender of Last Resort
During discussions with the GVK Group, it became clear that the proposed project of the new international airport in Mumbai would be a highly complex one. Construction of the airport entailed flattening of an entire hill and re-routing of a rivulet that flowed right through the land designated for the project. It also necessitated a huge amount of earth work. Of course, the future of the project was never in any doubt as Mumbai badly needed a second airport. The existing airport was running to its maximum capacity and flying in and out of Mumbai had become a nightmare for passengers. The departure and landing of most flights were inevitably delayed and it was very rare for any flight to take off or land on time at Mumbai. Since the existing airport was surrounded by slums, there was no scope for its expansion. Both the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), the local authority, which was responsible for the development of New Mumbai, were keen for work on the project to commence at the earliest.
The mandate for appraisal and arranging of financial closure for the project was accepted by SBI without much persuasion. The project finance team started working earnestly on the project. The MoCA, CIDCO, and the Maharashtra Government were keen to ensure an early financial closure, and ‘in principle’ approval had already been given by SBI. However, there was a lot of apprehension and unease within SBI on one issue, that of defaults on loans by group companies in the power and road sectors, as a result of which the bank had been insisting that the promoters should settle the default payments of the group companies. In the midst of this, suddenly one day, I learnt that YES Bank had sanctioned the entire loan amount enabling achievement of the financial closure. Simultaneously, reports were doing the round that YES Bank had charged a very hefty fee for the transaction.
These developments took the entire team at SBI by surprise. Reddy called to explain the urgency for achieving the financial closure and the difficulty the Group was facing in complying with the terms stipulated by SBI. Deciding to end the matter then and there, I wished him good luck and did not discuss the issue again with him. The lending model of YES Bank was apparently to be a lender of the last resort for borrowers who were under stress or were unable to raise borrowings from other banks, and to charge a high fee for this service. These dealings were shrouded in a degree of ambiguity, and only ongoing investigations by the Enforcement Directorate would reveal whether a part of the fee was being diverted to group companies owned by the family members of the management of the bank.
He was silently managing the crisis in India’s banking sector then. Now he shares these stories in his memoir. Get your copy here!
Gulzar Saab’s poetry has carried us through many difficult days, his lyrics a balm to the weary soul. His songs have filled our days with light and love, given us strength to go on when all seemed lost and reminded us of the myriad gifts that life has to offer.
In his latest memoir Actually… I Met Them, Gulzaar Saab goes down memory lane to bring to light his relationship with the doyens of cinema, music and literature, who he had known and worked with over a long period of time.
We bring to you five of the evergreen songs that he talks about in the book, sharing nostalgic stories of how they came to be.
Mora gora ang lei le… (Take away my fairness and…)
This was the first song that Gulzar wrote for Bollywood. Penned for Bimal Roy’s Bandini, the song gave us a glimpse of his genius early on. Created with undertones of Vaishnav bhajans, this soft melody had a depth that few can manage to conjure.
This song led to what was to be Gulzar’s first encounter with legendary Bimalda. Gulzar was in awe of the simplicity that the film directed exuded, despite his stature in the film industry.
Talking about the song sequences Bimalda’s movies had, Gulzar had the following to say:
‘Bimalda believed he was not very good when it came to directing song sequences. Consequently, he worked on every such sequence with so much attention to detail that they became exemplary. If in the middle of a song a musical arrangement was changed or a new one introduced, he would immediately say, ‘Change the shot. How can the rhythm or the instrument remain the same in the shot?’’
Humne dekhi hai in aankhon ki mahekti khushboo (I have seen the fragrance in these eyes…)
Perhaps one of his most iconic songs, Humne dekhi hai in aakhon ki mahekti khushboo beautifully puts to use synesthesia to play with sight, smell and touch that are characteristic of the literary device.
A lesser-known fact about the song that Gulzar reveals in his memoir, Actually… I Met Them is that the song was written from the point of view of a man. However, Hemantada, who had composed the song, felt that the song would suit Lata Mangeshkar’s voice. Though Gulzar was aghast at the decision at first, he later realised that Hemantada’s music and power of observation were magical.
Mera kuch saamaan… (I left some of my things with you . . .)
Quintessentially ‘Gulzarish,’ Mera kuch saamaan’s poetic imagery is why Gulzar’s lyrics are deeply cherished by his fans. Seemingly mundane in its theme, the song is a deceptively beautiful ode to heartbreak and lost love.
Musafir hoon yaaron… (I am a wanderer . . .)
A short, sweet melody, Musafir hun yaaron… evokes the journey of life and how it asks of us to keep moving forward, no matter the circumstances.
This was the first song of Gulzar that Pancham set to music and the rest, as we know, is history.
Ek hi khwaab… (Just this one dream…)
In his memoir Actually… I Met Them, Gulzar reveals the hilarious reaction that the song’s lyrics elicited from Pancham, the song’s composer.
‘What are these lines? You call this poetry? How can song lines be so trite? Gullu, can’t you write stuff properly? And you’re asking me to put these lines to music?’
He went on to tell Gulzar to put the lyrics into a scene, asking him to write a different song.
To this, Gulzar calmly responded with,
‘Pancham, I can always do that. But the thing is, when I work with you, we do it because we want to do something unconventional, isn’t it? So…’
Isn’t it wonderful that this splendid duo stuck to the original lyrics?
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Actually…I Met Them by Gulzar
Chatty, anecdotal and deeply personal, this book of memories chronicles Gulzar Saab’s life and career through different eras of Indian cinema as he successfully transcended commercial and critical arts.
Studded with rare photographs, Actually .. I Met Them will be a treat for his huge and devoted fan base.
India’s mathematicians have made significant contributions over the last 5000 years. From the ever-popular Aryabhata, widely recognized for revolutionizing the number system and Shakuntala Devi, universally admired for her fast mental calculations to pioneers forgotten by time, like Baudhayana, who explained the Pythagoras’ theorem nearly 3000 years ago, India has produced many trailblazers in the field of mathematics.
Here are the stories of three such inspirational figures whose passion for knowledge and love for maths not only earned them worldwide acclaim but also brought prestige to the country.
Madhava – He is considered the greatest mathematician-astronomer to emerge from medieval India whose works laid the foundation for the Kerala School of Mathematics, which flourished between the late 14th century and the 18th century.
Madhava was a genius. He went a step ahead and linked the idea of an infinite series with geometry and trigonometry. He even obtained a way to calculate the value of pi correct to 13 decimal places, and this was two centuries before Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a polymath from Germany.
It is perceived that Newton and Leibniz independently found the methods of calculus by building on and borrowing from the works of mathematicians like Fermat, Taylor, Gregory, Pascal and Bernoulli. But what is not known is that the elements of calculus were already known in Kerala, India, for over 250 years. The West has now recognized this and accordingly renamed some results regarding the trigonometric series, previously known as the Newton, Gregory and Leibniz series, as the Madhava-Newton, Madhava- Gregory and the Madhava-Leibniz series, respectively.
Srinivasa Ramanujan – During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled over 3900 identities and equations, which have all been proved by later mathematicians. This contributed to breakthrough research in mathematics and remarkable discoveries in crystallography and string theory.
It was in January 1913 that Ramanujan wrote the famous letter to an English mathematician Prof. G.H. Hardy of Cambridge University with numerous theorems he had researched and worked upon himself. Hardy was initially skeptical of Ramanujan’s work assuming that he was a fraud but soon had to change his mind as he went through the theorems given in the letter. He finally concluded that Ramanujan was ‘a mathematician of the highest quality, a man of altogether exceptional originality and power’. Hardy then immediately made arrangements to invite Ramanujan to Cambridge University from India.
Ramanujan was elected as a member of the London Mathematical Society in 1917 and the next year, in 1918, Ramanujan was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society—the youngest ever at thirty-one years of age.
Shakuntala Devi – was India’s iconic ambassador in the field of mathematics and travelled the world enthralling audiences with her number-crunching prowess.
She was found displaying exceptional memorization skills by her father while he was showing her card tricks. She was only three at the time. At six, the young wonder, Shakuntala Devi started travelling with her father, doing roadshows, where she displayed her unique calculation abilities of large multiplications, cube roots of huge numbers and even questions related to dates! In 1980, at the Imperial College of London, she rose to meteoric success and global fame by multiplying two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds flat.
In her book In the Wonderland of Numbers, she wrote ‘As for numbers, they hate nobody, and nobody can afford to hate them!’ She continues to give us hope that mathematics can also be fun and exciting and that it is essential to approach it with a spirit of curiosity!
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The Great Indian Mathematicians by Gaurav Tekriwal
To know more about India’s finest mathematicians, read The Greatest Indian Mathematicians. It is an ideal introduction for the next generation of tenacious and curious maths wizards.
