Starting with the white coins, Ghufran quickly settled into a rhythm
Mohd. Ghufran and Kajal Kumari winners of men’s & women’s singles.
Kajal Kumari and Mohd. Ghufran, both representing Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB), registered contrasting wins to bag the women’s singles and men’s singles crowns respectively in the LIC of India sponsored 24th Federation Cup All India Carrom Championship, organized by the All India Carrom Federation and hosted by the Maharashtra Carrom Association, at the Halari Visa Oswal Samaj Hall, Dadar (East).
In the women’s final Kajal played fluently and was in complete control and went on to score an authoritative 25-13, 25-12 victory against Aisha Mohd of Jain Irrigation. On the other hand, Ghufran started with a flourish, but later faced quite a strong challenge from World Champion Prashant More of Reserve Bank of India before scraping through by a close 25-13, 12-25, 22-19 scoreline in a tense and thrilling men’s final showdown.
Starting with the white coins, Ghufran quickly settled into a rhythm. Showing calm and steady nerves, he exhibited good control with his shots to grab the upper hand by pocketing the first game against the current world champion More.
The Mumbai-based More, backed by a large gathering of local vociferous supporters, did not disappointment them as he bounced back into contention with some steady and clever play, taking the second game to force the third game.
In the decider, the scores ran close, before More raced to a 19-11 lead at the end of the sixth board. But the local player made a couple of mistakes and missed opportunities in the next which his rival cashed in to narrow the gap to 18-19 going into the final board. In the last board, both players were nervous and started to miss simple shots before Ghufran managed to steadily pocket the queen and his coins to win four points which helped him win the contest 22-19 and emerge champion.
In the men’s doubles competition, which was a fight between PSPB pairs, K.Srinivas and Sandeep Deorukhkar rallied from the loss of the first game to overcome Yogesh Pardeshi and K. Ramesh Babu 22-25, 25-16, 25-15 to emerge champions.
The women’s doubles final also contested between PSPB pairs, witnessed a similar trend as Nagajyoti and I. Ilavazhki, after tamely losing the opening game, gave a strong fighting reply to brush aside the challenge from Rashmi Kumari and Kajal Kumari (PSPB) 4-25, 25-11, 25-7.
Wockhardt’s Habil Khorakiwala has looked crisis in the eye, and come out of it stronger
Image: Joshua Navalkar / Habil Khorakiwala, founder chairman, Wockhardt. His tenacity and calm helped the pharmaceutical company tide over recent crises
“In your darkest hour you have two options: One, you get overwhelmed by the massive extent of the problem and it paralyses you from any action; the other, you anticipate the worst case scenario and deal with it the best way you can. I choose the latter.” This choice—to fight back and swim against all odds—has brought Dr Habil Khorakiwala, 73, back from the brink. Twice.
The first time was in 2008. Wockhardt was incorporated in 1967 and had done well for itself, growing steadily into one of India’s leading pharmaceutical companies. But, during the heady days of the stock market boom of the mid-noughties, it had bet heavily on foreign exchange and derivatives. The global financial meltdown caught many—including Khorakiwala—unawares: Cross-country derivative deals unravelled and Wockhardt declared a loss of Rs 1,000 crore in FY10. The company experienced near bankruptcy and speculation was rife that it will be sold out.
Enough to rattle the toughest businessman, perhaps. But not Khorakiwala: “I anticipate the worst possible outcome and see if I can live with it. This frees me up to take action.” When he realised that it was indeed a worst-case scenario, he “moved to the next step in figuring out how to reduce the impact, and steps needed for it,” he tells Forbes India.
He had to deal with more than 20 different banks and master the complex world of derivatives. He began by acquiring the knowledge he needed, legal and financial, to deal with the ailment; he read books and consulted experts across the globe, then armed with better understanding, he worked assiduously to resuscitate the company.
He went in for a CDR (Corporate Debt Restructuring) exercise, and made two major divestments: The profitable nutrition business (brands such as Farex and Protinex) to dairy giant Danone for about Rs 1,280 crore, almost 25 times Ebitda; and the veterinary pharmaceuticals business to a French company, Vetoquinol (the price was not disclosed). These funds helped him reduce debt substantially.
Also, at this time, the Wockhardt Hospitals venture that he had built with his own money (it is not connected to the listed pharmaceutical entity) had begun unravelling. Debt had piled up due to borrowings-led scaling up and expansion across India. Khorakiwala decided to swallow another bitter pill: In August 2009, he sold 10 of the most profitable hospitals—from the 17 in the chain at that time—in cities like Delhi and Bengaluru, to Fortis Healthcare. Khorakiwala is phlegmatic about this phase: “It is not a mental or emotional barrier for me to hold on to [companies].”
What worked in his favour was that their pharmaceuticals were doing well. This helped him convince his creditors and Wockhardt’s dealers and distributors to not give up on the company. The family also communicated with employees during the crisis. All of which helped stem attrition at the top as well as keep the core business largely unaffected.
Habil’s son, Dr Murtaza Khorakiwala, 43, who is managing director of the pharmaceutical business sums it up: “What the company was facing was a financial issue, not a business issue, and financial issues are transient.”
There wasn’t much time to enjoy the fruits of these labours, however. In 2013, two of Wockhardt’s drug manufacturing facilities in Aurangabad, Maharashtra were the subject of import alerts from both the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (UKMHRA). Naturally exports, 80 percent of Wockhardt’s Rs 5,721 crore revenue in FY13 (half of which came from exports to US), took a large hit, falling to Rs 4,830 crore in FY14.
Wockhardt took corrective steps immediately, improving technology and raising quality standards across all its manufacturing facilities in India and abroad (Ireland, UK, USA). The UKMHRA has now eased restrictions on one of the plants, while the US FDA has re-inspected the facilities.
A side-effect of the export crisis was that the Khorakiwalas and the management team paid more attention to building the India business, which has, over the last two years, grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 30 percent.
The cumulative effect of both crises and the way the company reacted to them has made it a leaner, healthier enterprise. Murtaza Khorakiwala says that they have focussed more on operational efficiencies to do “more and more with less and less”. Optimisation drives in all plants and offices helped reduce operating costs: Every line item was carefully looked into, staff across all departments rallied to cut any wasteful expenditure they came across. People cost, as a percentage of sales, came down from 15 percent to about 11 percent over the last three years.
Image: Joshua Navalkar / Wockhardt Foundation head Huzaifa Khorakiwala (left), Zahabiya Khorakiwala (centre) who runs Wockhardt Hospitals and Murtaza Khorakiwala who handles the pharmaceutical business at Wockhardt
One spend hasn’t been cut, however: R&D. Khorakiwala launched Wockhardt’s drug discovery programmes 15 years ago, and budgets have never been cut even during the company’s toughest financial years, because, he says, “I always believe it’s a long-term gain. Never sacrifice any part of the future to save the present.”
No action, he says, is trouble-free; even inaction has a cost. “Running a business will lead to problems. Don’t run away from it. Have discipline and work at it.”
The tenacity and calm in times of crisis are traits that define him. This is also what his colleagues and friends often single out about him. And these qualities have inspired, and rubbed off on, the next generation.
Daughter Zahabiya Khorakiwala (33), who is managing director of Wockhardt Hospitals, says her father remained as cool as a cucumber throughout the troubled years: “He is a fighter and will never resign [himself] to any situation because he firmly believes that every problem has a solution.”
Mentored by her father, Zahabiya has opened two new hospitals (to add to the seven left after the sale to Fortis), and taken revenues from Rs 180 crore in FY10 to Rs 350 crore in FY15. With the most recent launch, a hospital in South Mumbai, she personally looked into every detail, from the dozens of permissions required to run a 300-bed hospital to recruiting the surgeons, doctors and specialists. She follows the principles that her father espouses; with hospitals, he says, financial success is secondary, “Establishing a benchmark in clinical care is more important.”
For the Khorakiwalas, a business family, social responsibility is deeply ingrained. They owned Akbarallys, which was originally India’s first true department store. Habil’s father, Fakhruddin Khorakiwala, had bought Worli Chemical Works (which was later renamed Wockhardt)as part of a backward integration plan for the pharmacy in Akbarallys. A busy man, Fakhruddin Khorakiwala made time to serve as Sheriff of what was then Bombay. Habil Khorakiwala made CSR activities a regular part of his agenda, and in 2008, he merged all those activities into a formal entity, the Wockhardt Foundation. This was partly prompted by his eldest son, Dr Huzaifa Khorakiwala (44).
An MBA from Yale, Huzaifa had worked with Wockhardt’s international operations in the US and later the UK, before returning to India to work alongside his father in India, handling the veterinary pharmaceuticals business which was sold in 2008. Always spiritual, he had read many religious books and developed a desire for care-giving. “My son walked up to me in 2008 and said, ‘I want to focus on the Foundation work, and don’t mind spending more time on it.’ I said, ‘go ahead and do it.’” Huzaifa became CEO and trustee of Wockhardt Foundation.
The foundation raises its funds not just from Wockhardt, but also from other organisations seeking to conduct professionally-run CSR activities. It employs 300 people and runs a number of activities. Its 60 mobile medical vans—fitted with the latest equipment, stocked with necessary medicines and staffed by experienced doctors—provide healthcare in remote villages and areas in ten Indian states; corporations can sponsor these vans in return for branding, and they get regular reports on the operations and number of people it has helped. It has also built 1,000 clean toilets in villages, started 25 toy libraries to encourage children to read and absorb good values (an initiative spearheaded by Huzaifa’s wife Samina), and has started an e-learning project to cover 200 schools in Thane, Aurangabad and Rajasthan. From a Rs 1.8 crore corpus in 2008, the foundation has raised Rs 70 crore as of FY15. Huzaifa plans to ramp up activities over the next three years; he wants to expand to 300 mobile medical vans and build 3,000 toilets.
The senior Khorakiwala has good reason to look back on the last few years with a wry smile. In 2012, he was the biggest gainer in the Forbes India Rich List, adding $1.17 billion to his net worth and moving up 47 places in the rankings. The problems with the US and UK pharma regulators later that year saw Wockhardt’s share prices plummet, as did his position on the Rich List: He lost $1.09 billion and dropped 56 places.
Today, he has triumphed against adversity, and come back stronger. His children have come into their own and are growing the family business, in their own ways. He has created value for both his shareholders and the community.
And there’s the little matter of his personal wealth. Wockhardt share prices have surged, and the 74.39 percent promoter and promoter group stake has resulted in a considerably heavier bank balance: His personal wealth went up by $580 million, placing him at 59 in the 2015 Forbes India Rich List. As he likes to say, “If you do the right thing, it will lead to good business.”
(This story appears in the 29 October, 2015 issue of Forbes India. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com . To visit our Archives, click here.)
source: http://www.forbesindia.com / Forbes India / Home> Lists> India Rich List 2015 / by Deepak Ajwani / November 27th, 2015
Tanvi Sultana speaks at a gathering organised by Sanghati Abhijan at Jadavpur. Photo: Special Arrangement
Two voluntary groups enable Hindus and Muslims to interact and look beyond communal misconceptions.
After being turned away by several landlords for months, Aftab Alam and his three friends, all of them doctors, finally found a place to rent in south Kolkata. Their elation, however, was short-lived. Soon after moving in, a neighbour told their landlord that they ought to be evicted, arguing, “Four Muslim men staying in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood is problematic.”
Dr. Alam recalls, “It was disheartening. I rented the flat to the rest after strenuous night shifts. Suddenly, the peace was disrupted…[we had] huge expectations from Kolkata.”
His predicament was unexpectedly addressed. When he spoke of it on social media, Dr. Alam was contacted by Sanghati Abhijan (SA), a voluntary group that recently initiated its ‘Open-a-Door’ campaign to stop discrimination against potential Muslim tenants. SA’s volunteers resolved the situation by engaging peacefully with the neighbours, the landlord and the tenants themselves.
“We thank them for their support at a critical time,” says Dr. Alam. The intervention helped him and his friends stay on instead of relocating, as they had first planned.
‘Communal remarks’
In another instance, Tanvi Sultana, an undergraduate student, was allegedly targeted with “communal remarks” while looking for a flat in south Kolkata, at times being instructed not to bring beef to her residence. As with Dr. Alam and his friends, SA helped her live in the same apartment. “I thank them and wish for the initiative to grow,” Ms. Sultana says.
Since February, SA has helped about 30 such home-seekers in dire need via its social media group, ‘People’s Unity’. The platform provides a database of houses, apartments and guest houses, with information such on the location of the property, contact details of owners, and rent. The group’s meetings are eye-openers on the communal tensions between property owners and tenants.
“We only enlist property owners who are keen on letting out accommodation without discriminating against a particular faith or on the basis of marital status,” said Dwaipayan Banerjee, one of SA’s co-founders. However, Mr. Banerjee admits that while “hundreds” of tenants approach them, the property owners are “far fewer” in numbers.
SA’s members say they want to “break the culture of silence” which, in turn, could “curb rising Islamophobia.” Anindya Ray Ahmed, a student, was told openly by brokers, “Muslims are dirty and potential terrorists.”
He was ‘rejected’ by 16 landlords before he could find a place to live, but after accepting a deposit, the landlady telephoned him to say, “My husband has a problem with Muslims, so you cannot stay.” Mr. Ahmed alleges that she lowered his deposit down in a bag from her floor above, declining to “stand near a Muslim.”
SA’s members favour direct mediation, but their Facebook page has witnessed about 150 such disagreements and their resolution through virtual owner-tenant interaction on the social media platform.
In another incident, SA informed the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association and authorities when two students faced misbehaviour from the superintendent and boarders at their hostel “for being Muslim.” An enquiry committee is looking into this case.
SA member Deborshi Chakraborty calls this “exponential ghettoisation” because, often, Muslim tenants seek proximity to their religious peers so that they will not be judged.
Alongside, SA has been prey to moral policing and expressions of paranoia by potential lessors.
The campaign has apparently irked Tripura’s former Governor Tathagata Roy, now Governor of Meghalaya. On August 11, he re-posted a newspaper article on SA and remarked on social media that the paper was trying to “teach Hindu house-owners of Kolkata that they must rent out their premises to Muslims. Otherwise, they are not sufficiently ‘secular’.”
Along similar lines, the Know Your Neighbour (KYN) campaign aimed at reducing communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims is gaining momentum in Kolkata and several districts, too. On a shoestring budget, KYN has organised meetings, sponsored heritage walks, staged plays, and focussed on food to find common ground.
Participants of the Know Your Neighbour campaign visit to Metiabruz in Kolkata. Photo: Anirban Kar | Photo Credit: Anirban Kar
Food walks
“We arrange food walks as the city has a massive culinary culture developed over centuries,” said Sabir Ahamed, a KYN organiser. “Cultural ignorance brews fear. Financial constraints coupled with little-known practices like the Dastarkhān, a traditional space for meals kept on a yellow cloth featuring Urdu couplets, became the basis for speculation over why Muslims ‘eat in bed’. Such ‘myths’ must be broken, which is why we translate the Muslim ‘jargon’ that often dictates daily routine,” says Mr. Ahamed. His intends to delve deeper into this in his forthcoming Masjidi Kolkata project.
KYN’s walks journey into quintessential ‘Muslim pockets’ of Kolkata — Metiabruz, Khidderpore and parts of central Kolkata around the mosques set up by Muslims from Kutch — are followed by interactions with locals.
“Although I am a resident of Kolkata, I had never been to Khidderpore. I took this opportunity to know more about Bengal’s Islamic culture, and to redeem myself of the guilt of assuming that it is a crime-prone area,” says Sanjukta Choudhury, who participated in a KYN walk.
Novelist, academic and foodie Samim Ahmed, an expert on both the Mahabharata and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s Bengal, says visits to areas like the Sibtainabad Imambara, a less ornate grave of the last King of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah, “adds more excitement to the walk.”
Often, visitors discuss food traditions with locals and learn, for instance, about the German bread distributed in Kolkata during the Second World War, dry fruits, and recipes for delicious haleem and biryani.
Non-Muslims are invited to break bread with their Muslim counterparts in KYN’s ‘Dosti ki Iftari’ get-together.
Linguistic explorations, such as tracing the etymological roots of ‘azaan’ (the Islamic call for worship) ringing within the old architecture of the Nakhoda Masjid, are also encouraged.
“Hindus barely visit these pockets of Kolkata, whereas such paranoia is less intense in the rural areas. We aim to eradicate cultural misconceptions by spreading knowledge on prevalent Islamic practices,” Mr. Ahmed says, adding, “Such walks provide an opportunity for communities to know each other in an atmosphere of unmitigated fun.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Tannistha Sinha / Kolkata – August 25th, 2018
Says the BCCI’s aim is to have more umpires in the ICC Elite panel
It’s been almost three months since Saba Karim, the former India wicket-keeper-batsman, took over as the BCCI’s general manager – cricket operations.
One of the biggest challenges he has is to ensure umpiring standards, especially in domestic cricket, improve. At a time when the BCCI is being forced to re-conduct umpiring examinations due to goof-ups of the operations department last year, Karim opens up in a chat with The Hindu.
Excerpts:
Despite the umpires academy in place for over a decade now, the quality of Indian umpires continues to be questionable. Is it time to have a re-look?
We are doing that. We do have our regular training workshops. In the end, we need hard-working professionals to come into this field. We are trying to put in some stringent and transparent measures so that the best candidates come out of it. That is why we may redesign our Level 1 and Level 2 examinations so that we get the possible candidates. That’s in the pipeline. Very soon you will hear from us.
Starting with the just-concluded season, 23 of the 40 domestic umpires are supposed to retire in three seasons. How do you plan to maintain — if not raise — the standards in domestic cricket?
It’s not about maintaining. It’s about evolving. We have to raise our standards. That is one point that we will discuss with our umpires during the workshop. Umpiring standards have to go up.
That is how we can have more footprints at the international level. The BCCI’s aim is to have more umpires in the ICCElite panel. Right now we have five (four international, one Elite) and we do have some very good young umpires coming through.
The reports from the exchange programmes with ECB and CSA have been wonderful. Last year, some of our umpires did fairly well in IPL. Going forward, that is what we want to do, to have more and more umpires at the international level.
We need to have a solid education pathway for them, need to update them all the time, there has to be upgradation and faculty development all the time and then the exams that we conduct have to be transparent.
Will involving more former players as umpires help?
We are open to that, but they have to go through the entire process. It is quite similar to coaching. Just because you have played the game does not mean you will be a good coach. Same stands for umpiring. We are extremely open to First-Class or international cricketers getting into this role. It is tough work, so they’ll have to consider it.
Are former cricketers not attracted towards umpiring because it is not as lucrative as it should be, especially at the domestic level?
We will try and make it lucrative for them. Try and make it possible for First-Class cricketers to get into this profession. It is a highly demanding and a respectable profession, but you are right. We’ll have to work something out.
Cricketers’ match-fees have been revised but that for the other staff — umpires, scorers and video analysts — is still pending.
It is a decision that is taken by the top management. They are aware of the fact that something should be done about it and I am sure they will look into it.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sport> Cricket / by Amol Karhadkar / Mumbai – March 21st, 2018
State champion Ayesha Mohammad during the Mumbai District carrom final in Lower Parel recently
The respective top seeds among men and women Sandeep Deorukhkar and Ayesha Mohammad won the men’s and women’s singles titles in the Bank Of Maharashtra-sponsored Bajarang Krida Mandal-organised Mumbai District Ranking carrom tournament at the Maharashtra Labour Welfare Board Hall in Lower Parel recently.
In the men’s singles final ONGC’s Sandeep beat Vikas Dhria of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation 25-11, 25-13.
Jain Irrigation’s Ayesha beat Shilpa Palnitkar of LIC of India 25-12, 13-25, 25-4 in the women’s final.
source: http://www.mid-day.com / Mid-Day.com / Home> Sports News> Other Sports News / by A Correspondent / December 19th, 2015
Liveried servants of the Nawab of Oudh wait with a palanquin in one of the rare photographs of Metiabruz, during Wajid Ali Shah’s time. The royal insignia is embroidered on the back of one of them. Copied from the original by Rashbehari Das
A portfolio of fast-fading photographs that provides possibly the only pictorial document of the second Lucknow that Wajid Ali Shah had created in Metiabruz, after he was exiled there, is urgently in need of preservation. The photographs are, moreover, some of the earliest examples of the art as practised the world over.
Amjad Ali Mirza of Garden Reach Road, in his 60s, who is a great-great-grandson of the ruler of Oudh, possesses the photographs. But he doesn’t know how to preserve these friable prints whose sepia has, in some cases, turned a ghostly shadow of its former self. Says Mirza: “I have no doubt about the authenticity of the photographs. The portfolio is ancestral property. It was handed down to me by my uncle, Yaqub Ali Mirza, who died in 1973.” Some of the photographs are captioned in Urdu. But the identity of the photographer shall always remain a mystery. Oscar Mallitte, a French commercial photographer, we know, had captured a view of the village at Garden Reach, circa 1864, but there is no evidence he did this assignment.
Abdul Halim Sharar (1860-1926) tells the story of Oudh in his book Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture. In it, he has also documented the last days of Wajid Ali Shah in Metiabruz, where he set up a city whose splendour surpassed Lucknow’s glory in the pre-Mutiny days. The palaces, pleasure gardens and zoo that the Nawab had created on the banks of the Hooghly come alive in these photographs, not much larger than postcards. It is as if chemicals and light had “fixed” the scenes that Sharar’s readers conjure up in their mind’s eye.
Soon after the Mutiny had fizzled out, the Nawab was released from confinement in Fort William and he returned to Metiabruz. There, while turning abstemious, he developed a passion for animals and for building beautiful houses. Before the Zoological Gardens was established in Alipore in 1876, the Nawab had already acquired a large menagerie that included rare birds, deer, horses and an open-air snake-pit that left visitors awestruck. But after Wajid Ali Shah’s death in 1887, Metiabruz became a hell-hole almost overnight.
The photographs prove that Sharar, when he described Metiabruz, never deviated from reality. Unlike the Lucknow architecture, with its embarrassment of stucco ornaments, the buildings of Metiabruz are constructed on the lines of European bungalows. The lines are simple but no less grand than the palaces of Lucknow.
Overlooking the river or surrounded by expanses of water, they are connected by bridges. Flags flutter on their tiled roofs. There is hardly any Islamic influence in their architecture, save a low-rise with triple minarets. Ostriches, deer, sheep and horses were the showpieces of the Metiabruz parkland. The snake-pit resembles a giant termite hill. One can almost hear the harsh calls of the clumsy pelicans and cranes strutting around the aviary. The liveried servants wait outside the palace gate with a palanquin. The piscine insignia of the royal family of Oudh is stitched on to the back of one man’s coat. There are two significant photographs. In one, the gang of smiling labourers carry construction material on their heads as they create the new Metiabruz. Another shows the buildings of Metiabruz being demolished. An exquisite way of life being wiped away forever.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph / Home> West Bengal / by Soumitra Das in Mirza / July 14th, 2003
Writing about an immigrant Muslim family in America, A Place for Us author Fatima Farheen Mirza says she wanted to place their lives and concerns at the centre of the narrative.
Visiting India for the first time five years ago, author Fatima Farheen Mirza visited the masjid (mosque) where her parents had her nikkah (wedding), in the city of Hyderabad. Fatima was then the same age that her mother was the same number of years ago.
“A man was sitting outside in the courtyard, threading flowers that would decorate one of the shrines. I asked if I could have one flower, because I wanted a souvenir of the place, and he denied me. I remember telling him, ‘But my mother got married here’. And he looked at me, asked me to wait for a minute, and then threaded an elaborate string of flowers that I could tie to wear in my hair. I’ll never forget it.”
This is how Fatima describes that moment. It is almost as if this passage has filtered out of the consciousness of one of the characters of her famous debut, A Place for Us. As a family gathers for the nikkah of their eldest child, the obedient, precocious doctor Hadia, their youngest, the delinquent, the errant Amar, cannot be found for the family photograph. This is a family, but the discord is unbelievable, and the silhouette of the elephant in the room grows darker and darker.
“I wanted to do my best [for] this family. I wanted to do justice to their lives, I wanted to understand their experience with as much complexity and care as I possibly could. I loved them, and it was a privilege to be able to write about them,” says Fatima about the book’s keenly felt impulses, its ability to pick up life’s mundane moments lying unnoticed in our midst and light them up with meaning. A Place for Us was recently chosen by Sarah Jessica Parker — Carrie Bradshaw of the hit American sitcom Sex and the City — for her publishing debut with her imprint for Hogarth Press. And while Parker has called it a “book about a quintessentially American family”, Pulitzer Prize-winner novelist Paul Harding has exalted it as “a work of extraordinary and enthralling beauty”.
Born and raised in California, it is natural to assume that Fatima not only spoke and wrote English for the majority of her life, but wrote about characters that belonged to a certain place, a certain way of life. How did the book come about? “Writing has always been a part of my life. Recently, I was surprised to find a story from when I was maybe seven or eight, because it was written in both Urdu and English—an impulse that returned when I was working on the novel. But throughout high school, I wrote about characters with names like Corrie, and now I wonder if my imagination had internalized the belief that stories belonged only to the kind of characters I’d grown up consuming. I remember pausing when I first wrote the name Hadia, how I not sure if I could proceed, but once I started writing about this family, I was committed,” says Fatima.
But conceptualising Hadia — which means the ‘guided one’, and is the ideal daughter, freethinking but also committed and devoted, and thinking for her — surely must have come somewhere from inside Fatima, who was once pursuing medicine, and has similar beliefs about religion and autonomy?
“Once seeds from one’s own life are planted into the novel, they are altered by the personality of the characters, and begin to take on their own significance. I might relate to the pressure Hadia feels to pursue a medical career path in order to make her parents proud, or Amar, keeping journals and looking to lines of poetry as a way to make sense of his own life — but the way these pursuits and pressures manifest in Hadia and Amar’s life is theirs alone,” Fatima shares.
At a moment in the novel, Hadia, soon to turn nine, contemplates intensely on the looming prospect of wearing the hijab, which her faith requires of her. With religious symbols coming under a lot of fire lately throughout the world, how does choosing or rejecting the hijab empower Hadia or her mother Layla? “Each character is aware of what the world wants from them. They have to navigate what their community, family, and faith want from them. It can be difficult, in the face of all of this, to know what they want for themselves. Figuring out their desires and attempting to make choices is what each of the characters contends with,” she says.
“[So], they are empowered when they make a choice that is aligned with their inner voice. This also applies to religious practices — Layla is empowered when she wears the hijab, and Hadia, when she decides not to.” And indeed, when not touching your deepest impulses about life and relationships, A Place for Us is a work about the significance of choices: An otherwise patriarchal father passes on a watch meant for a son, to his daughter. A deeply conservative mother gathers the courage to roll up her shalwar to meet her little son in the river. A young couple in love chooses to continue to meet in private, risking everything at stake for their families.
In this book about a quintessentially American family, white characters make short appearances as the immigrant minority dominates the focus, and their customs and sensibility — Sunday school, the significance of prayer, community gatherings — comes to the forefront of an American consciousness. Can one interpret this novel, then, as an attempt to envision a new America?
“This is rather [my way] of presenting the experience of living in America that is true to these characters. I wanted to place their lives, their concerns, at the centre of the narrative. If what results is a version of America that seems new, then what that speaks to is the lack of adequate representation in literature — because these lives are here, they have been here, and they have stories to tell,” Fatima says.
Modest though she may be — Fatima has undeniably mastered the art of sticking to describing life through memory. From the first scene, the narrative shifts into a series of flashbacks, in no particular sequence, from the collective consciousness of this family. From the parents’ wedding in India, their relocation to the US, the birth of their kids, the little moments as they grow up — the childhood stories, picnics, crushes, school, their rivalries and revelries — the narrative reveals itself both all at once and in parts.
And she explains the systematic revelation and withholding of information that take place through such a technique. “The [flashbacks] appear the way memories rise in a mind trying to understand something about one’s past — seemingly at random, skirting around a conflict, until enough context is understood that the centre of the conflict can be tunneled towards.”
Most of A Place for Us is poetry, and poetry is what moves its author. “I loved and returned to The Lover by Marguirite Duras and The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. I listened endlessly to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, trying to pay attention to the mood and movement in it, and how that could translate into the way I thought about the structure for the sections within the novel. I wrote and rewrote quotes by Muhammad Ali into my journal to stay focused,” says Fatima, who is learning boxing these days.
Interact with the author @Prannay13
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Books / by Prannay, Hindustan Times / September 19th, 2018
A Kitchen Full of Stories, a coffee table book on Mappila cuisine, released
Every ingredient has a story to tell, and the dishes are like a great story, as chef Regi Mathew described cooking in a nutshell.
Similar is A Kitchen Full of Stories, a coffee table book released on Saturday. The book, in a mix of stories and recipes of traditional Mappila cuisine, documents the culinary journey of its writer, Ummi Abdulla.
Alongside are anecdotes from her growing years and tips from her own kitchen. The book that has evolved over seven years was conceptualised by her grand-daughter, Nazaneen Jalaludheen.
Releasing the book, N. Ram, chairman, The Hindu Publishing Group, said, “It goes without saying that this book is indispensable to anyone interested in Mappila cuisine. At one level, it is a cookbook — a practical guide to and celebration of Mappila kitchen treasures. But it is more than that. It introduces us to the culture and tradition of a community.”
“In a wider sense, it is a celebration of the idea of India, the rich diversity and plurality and the secular spirit of its historical civilisation that has come under stress and challenge today. It is the celebration of the greatness of our historical civilisation, which has welcomed influences from anywhere in the world,” he said.
Nandini Rao, chairman and managing director, Orient Blackswan, said coconut, coconut oil and rice formed the foundation of all food from Kerala.
“But Arab influences in Mappila cuisine are clearly evident and provide an element of surprise. A Kitchen Full of Stories evokes not just the food of the community but also the customs and traditions of the community that has contributed to the richness and diversity of India,” she said.
Ms. Jalaludheen said being a self-published book, they used crowdfunding as a way for people to book in advance. S. Muthiah, historian, Geeta Doctor, author and S.R. Madhu, writer-editor were present.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporter / Chennai – September 29th, 2018
From Marathi to Tamil, and classical to rock, Razzak has it all.
A little corner of analog music on a Mumbai pavement
As I walk down the cobbled pavement under the famous blue-and-white arches of Kitab Mahal, I almost walk past ‘Royal Music Collection’ without noticing it. But Lata Mangeshkar crooning ‘Chhod De Saari Duniya Kisi Ke Liye’ lures me to the shop tucked away between others selling helmets and mobile phone covers. I am immediately struck by the hundreds and hundreds of vinyls and cassettes that are immaculately organised in the tiny space.
The shop’s owner is Abdul Razzak, a man of few words. It is difficult to tease answers out of him; he prefers to reply in lists: genres, artists, languages, types, sizes, speeds of vinyl. He has facts about his collection of LPs and EPs and LDs at his fingertips.
“There’s Hindi, English, Gujarati,” he intones, “Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali, Indian classical, Western classical, pop, rock jazz, blues, hard rock, soft rock, soft instrumental,” barely pausing to take a breath. If I slip in a word edgeways, he chides me gently, like a parent frustrated their child isn’t solving a math problem right.
A special bond
He pulls out stacks of vinyls, neatly arranged by genre in plastic bags, from a small, almost hidden, cupboard that holds his more expensive collections. He then lists out artiste names in another rapid-fire burst: “Boney M., ABBA, The Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who.” “I don’t really relate to them or understand them,” he says, but he clearly knows what to stock.
As the conversation progresses, the 54-year-old slowly begins to warm up. He tells me why vinyls are special to him. “When you play it, it feels like someone is sitting in front of you and singing,” he says. Razzak’s father worked at a printing press, and no one in his family was particularly interested in music. As one of five siblings growing up in Mumbai, Razzak would inevitably watch as many films as he could in theatres and religiously listen to their songs on cassette tapes. That is how his love for music began.
“I listened to old Hindi songs,” he reminisces. “I loved Rafi saab’s music. I’d listen to mix collections of Mangeshkar and Talat Mahmood.” Then, as a teenager, Razzak discovered a friend’s collection of vinyl records. There was no turning back. “Once I realised the quality of records, I would only listen to them. The sound is so sweet to the ear.”
One day, the friend gave Razzak his entire collection of 300 records. This was the impetus that kick-started Razzak’s vinyl business in 1980. The collection had songs and dialogues from classics like Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat (1949) and Shree 420 (1955), and Sholay (1975). With these classics, Razzak began to expand his collection and also his network of collectors.
Razzak had gone into business with his uncle, who sold old stamps and coins at the same spot in Kitab Mahal where Razzak now sells vinyl. Uncle and nephew still work together and, in fact, the shopfront abutting the pavement sells coins and stamps during the day, and in the evening after his uncle closes shop, Razzak moves in from the alley at the back where he sits during the day.
Gandhi on 78 rpm
The oldest record in Razzak’s possession is Ashok Kumar’s Jhoola (1941). He also has Mahatma Gandhi’s voice on a 78 rpm. Kanan Devi, Suraiya, Noor Jehan, they all feature strongly in the mix.
The shop has changed little in the 37 years of its existence. A store in Chor Bazaar is offering competition, but that doesn’t appear to worry Razzak. “A lot of the stuff in Chor Bazaar is from scrap dealers, from posters to antique furniture,” he explains, “but they sell at high prices.” Why doesn’t he do the same, I ask. “I don’t want to. I want to run this place as it has always been run,” making enough to cover his family’s expenses.
Kala Ghoda’s famous Rhythm House shut down last year because music downloads proved too big a competition. But online streaming doesn’t affect Razzak whose customers seek him out for a different era, a different sound, for an experience that digital cannot give.
The demand for his wares has slowly grown, as vintage becomes hip and electronic vinyl players buttressed the market. From DJs to interior designers to Bollywood stars, Razzak attracts a tony crowd. He proudly shows me a picture of director Madhur Bhandarkar visiting his shop. Nobody in his family has shown any interest in continuing the shop, but Razzak is unfazed. “I’ll sell them for as long as I can. I can definitely run the shop for another 10 years.”
Anahita Panicker is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist who is as obsessed with cinema as she is with gender rights.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Music / by Anahita Panicker / September 30th, 2017
Circle Inspector and station house officer Shanty Cyriac giving instructions to her team members at the Kasaba police station in the city on Thursday. | Photo Credit: K-RAGESH
They handle services efficiently at 5 stations in city on International Women’s Day
Scripting a new chapter in women-friendly policing, khaki-clad women on Thursday handled the entire administrative and law and order responsibilities at five police stations within the Kozhikode city limits as part of the International Women’s Day observance.
The five stations — Kasaba, Panniyankara, Elathur, Mavoor, and Chemmangad — functioned under the control of woman station house officers (SHO) who were deputed by the District Police Chief (Kozhikode city).
Celebrating the occasion, the officers hosted special events including a reception to women who had made outstanding contributions to various fields. The Mavoor police station honoured eight such women who were short-listed from various fields. A.K.Jameela, who was given the charge of SHO for the day, coordinated the event and felicitated the women.
T.P. Banisha, a civil police officer (CPO) attached to the Mavoor police station, said it was for the first time that women personnel had got an opportunity as a group in charge of the entire responsibilities of a station, including the General Diary responsibility. They recorded all major incidents that happened within the station limits on Thursday. “We had the support of five women to handle the job, and the rush was moderate,” she said.
At the Kasaba station, there were seven women personnel to handle administrative affairs and law and order issues. To mark the day, CPOs accorded a warm reception to Circle Inspector Shanty Cyriac who assumed charge as SHO. The CPOs said that many of them had prior experience in handling duties, but doing everything on their own created some joyful moments.“It was a wonderful experience, and we shared the delight among ourselves by greeting the SHO with a bouquet,” said C. Sajitha, a CPO at Kasaba station.
“All our team members performed well in their assigned duties such as reception counter management, case registration, and counselling service,” she pointed out.
At the Elathoor station, Sub Inspector Raziya Bengalath led five women personnel in discharging duties. Most of them were busy with the routine administrative duties as the number of complaints was minimal. The SHO said that she had received only one complaint till Thursday evening, and that it was temporarily settled through mediation. The complained pertained to a property dispute between two bus owners from Elathur, she added.
Assistant Commissioner K.P. Abdul Razak said that the purpose of the novel observance was to highlight the need for women empowerment. There had been no such celebrations in the past covering the five major stations within the city limits, he pointed out.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kozhikode / by Staff Reporter / March 09th, 2018
