Eggs, sugar,and pizzas....

This weekend the Economic Times had a piece by Vikram Doctor on the use of eggs in Indian cuisine. He made the interesting point that the domestic hens the world over are probably descended from the wild indian fowl and it is therefore strange that many people in the country shy away from eating an egg. Even an unfertilised egg. The piece also had curious references to indian sweets made from eggs. I was not aware of these. In particular I liked the idea of the Moplah sweet called mutta mala which is a string of batter fried egg yolks. The theme of food continued to resonate in other pieces in the newspapers that day. There a was this piece in the Hindu about a book called The Romance of a Naxalite written by Vineet Aggarwal a police officer. This is based on his experiences in Gadchirauli in Maharashtra. What caught my eye was his comment that people in that area are so poor that sugar and salt are luxuries for them. They leave their food exposed to ants because they say that after the ants have spent time on the food in large numbers the food tastes sweet from secretions that they leave behind. The theme of food recurred in another unusual piece the same weekend in the story of the lady who has come up with an unusual approach to track down men who do not fulfill child support commitments and vanish by changing their home and city so that they cannot be traced and held to account. She reasoned that these people would be too lazy to cook and too scared to be recognised to go out to eat. She further reasoned that such people would be too irresponsiblt to eat healthy and must therefore be ordering pizzas from home. She is trying to convince pizza chains to allow pasting a sheet with the photographs of such 'scofflaws' on the pizza delivery boxes - presumably so that the delivery boys can identify them and report to the police!

Laurie Baker RIP

Laurie Baker's death was reported early this week in all the papers. This was sad news. I remember coming across an article in 'Inside Outside' which had pictures of his work. This was in the early eighties and my first exposure to a different kind of architecture rooted in local material and construction practices. Affordable architecture tuned to the local climate and living habits. It was eye-opening for me. He must have died a disappointed man because while he won awards and acclaim and was so obviously doing the right thing his style never caught on. Not in the metros, not in the smaller towns and not even in the villages (-where people tend to copy the city-dwellers to the extent that they can afford it). The rising prosperity has probably pushed back the raison d'etre of Baker's work. Maybe the scare of global warming and the increasing need to conserve energy and stay green will bring him back in fashion. I would like to remember him from this piece in The Hindu http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo9908/99080300.htm

For Hindi Film Fanatics...

Oxford University Press has just brought out a glossy hardcover book containing all the dialogues of 'Mughal-e-Azam' (MeA). It has a foreword by Javed Akhtar and an introduction by Nasreen Munni Kabir. Ms. Kabir has done a lot in recent times to bring interesting facets of the hindi film industry to a wide set of readers. I cant think of anyone who has done anything comparable now or in the past. MeA is a landmark film and an all-time favourite. Even the story of its making is fascinating to hear -what with the extravagant sets, the funding problems & delays and K. Asif's maniacal attention to detail . The film set a new high in the use of urdu in hindi film dialogues and this was possible because the dialogues for this film were jointly written by - not one, not two but- four leading writers of the time : Amanulla Khan, Kamal Amrohi, Ehsan Rizvi, & Vajahat Mirza. The book is a delight to behold and hold. On opening, it presents an 8.75" high and 21.5" wide view of four elegant columns of text. From left to right these contain the english translation of the dialogues, the roman script transliteration of the urdu to allow accurate reading, the rendering in devanagari script and finally the original rendering in urdu script. At the end the book recreates the magic with a set of large full-page colour prints of key scenes from the film. Strongly recommended as a collectors' item. It is priced rather steeply at Rs 1500 and that may put some people off but MeA fans may decide to forego other pleasures for a couple of months to indulge in a lifetime of evocative reading and re-reading. The book becomes even more attractive when one notes that it contains all the dialogues and songs including those edited out by the recent colour version of the film. Every MeA fan has his or her own favourites among the dialogues many of whom can be elegant, sharp and moving all at the same time. I cannot help reproducing my favourite which will need no elaboration of context for MeA fans: "Shahenshah ki in behisaab bakshishon ke badle mein ye kaneez Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar ko apna khoon muaff karti hai .."< " The Immortal Dialogues of K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam"; 250 pp; Oxford University Press; 2007>

Barbarians at the Gate...or Liberators?

The March 26 issue of Newsweek carried some reassuring bits of information on private equity firms. Apparently an Ernst & Young study has found that PE firms double the value of their acquisitions in three and a half years. Also, a Citigroup study has concluded that over the last ten years companies acquired by PE forms have shown annual returns averaging 14% which is much more than the 8% delivered over the same period byy firms comprising the FTSE All Share Index. Finally, a Nottingham University study has found that employment at companies acquired by PE firms dips by 5% in the first year after acquisition but rises by 21% after four years. Clearly PE firms do a good job for their shareholders. I wonder if there is a study that looks at the way they treat employees of the companies they acquire? For instance how many of the acquired employees are around after 1, 2 and 3 years and how does this loss look at different levels of the organisation acquired? After all the total number of employees may remain unchanged or even grow but this may arise from new hires replacing those let go..