R. Madanagopal, professor and head, ENT, Government Vellore Medical College Hospital along with V. Anandan who underwent the surgery. Hospital dean, Usha Sadasivam, is also in the picture.- Photo: C. Venkatachalapathy
After experiencing difficulty in swallowing food and losing close to 15 kilos in two months, 21-year-old V. Anandan is returning to normal life. Little was he aware that a cricket ball-sized tumour was growing in his oral cavity, giving him a tough time even for breathing.
It was only 15 days ago that Anandan, a carpenter from Ambur, knew he had a tumour in the oral cavity after being examined by ENT doctors at Government Vellore Medical College Hospital (GVMCH), Adukkamparai.
“We did a MRI scan and found that he had a parapharyngeal mass present in the oral cavity. This has been causing difficulty in swallowing, breathlessness, change of voice and loss of weight,” R. Madanagopal, professor and head, ENT, GVMCH told reporters on Tuesday.
Following this, the doctors planned a surgery to excise the tumour.
“However, we did not want to perform the procedure by cutting open the neck as the nerves and blood vessels will be compromised. Instead, we did a tracheostomy to enable him to breathe. We secured his airway, and performed the procedure through the oral route and excised the mass,” he said.
A team of five doctors performed a two-hour surgery on March 11 and removed the tumour. Also a Fine-Needle Aspiration Cytology found that the tumour was benign.
However, the cause of the tumour is not known, Dr. Madanagopal observed. “The tumour could have started to grow slowly at least in the last six months,” he said.
The surgery was covered under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme. Usha Sadasivam, GVMCH dean, was present. Doctors -Bharathi Mohan, ENT professor, R. M. Elango, Kalidas and Thilagavathy – assistant professors – were part of the surgical team.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Tamil Nadu / by Staff Reporter / Vellore – March 16th, 2016
It began in a small household in Triplicane… Here’s the story of Ambika Appalam, established long before the Second World War
Ambika Appalam owes its legacy to a man called Ayappan
They say the trick to achieving the perfect appalam lies in the hands of the maker. The process is referred to as appalam ‘iduradhu’ — a Tamil word that doesn’t have an exact English equivalent. Shaping, perhaps? It is a task that requires far more than a machine’s precision. Which is why at Ambika Appalam, every appalam is still hand-made. “I spent lots of money in R&D on making them with machines,” says K.V. Vijayaraghavan, who owns the company. “But I was not successful. Something or the other would go wrong if a machine was employed. The dough wouldn’t be right or the appalam would turn brown when fried.”
Ambika Appalam owes its legacy to a man called Ayappan, about whom the present generation that runs the company knows little. “All I’ve heard about him is from my father K.A. Velayudham. Poverty forced Ayappan, my grandfather, to come from Kerala to Madras to make a living,” remembers Vijayaraghavan.
This was in the 1920s. Far from home, Ayappan started with what most of his neighbours in Triplicane did — making papadums. A little moist before being fried, a papadum puffed up like a poori when it came into contact with hot oil.
And so the young Ayappan, barely into his twenties, made dough using urad dal and shaped it into little circles. Although they cost just a few annas, each one was handled with care. He sun-dried them, packed them into bundles of 100, and arranged the lot in a bag. This marked step-1. Step-2, the more difficult one, consisted of Ayappan journeying with his precious cargo to various houses in the area to sell them.
The business gradually developed, and Ayappan married and started a family. His wife and children then joined him in making papadums at home.
Soon, Velayudham took over. He made appalams instead, for the lifespan of an appalam was up to a year, but that of a papadum was just seven days. It was Velayudham who gave his family business a brand and an identity — he named it Ambika, after his favourite goddess back home in Kerala. An artist in the neighbourhood sketched their logo — a line drawing of a goddess seated on a lotus. Even today, the same logo with the tagline ‘Azhagaai porium’, meaning ‘Fries beautifully’, adorns their wrappers, except that it has been embellished with technology.
Velayudham ferried appalams in a cycle to not just households in Triplicane, but to those as far as Tambaram. “My father then opened a small shop in Mathala Narayanan Street in Mylapore,” says Vijayaraghavan. It was “just enough for one person to stand amidst the appalam bundles.” From then on, Ambika grew much like a dream business, with Velayudham opening one shop after the other across the city.
They did have a hitch. In 1966, the business was shut down due to labour issues. “We had about 600 people working for us then. They would work from 3 a.m. to 7 p.m. in three houses in Triplicane that doubled as their workplace,” recalls Vijayaraghavan. Suddenly, it was all over. But they bounced back, with well-wishers who worked for them, offering to make appalams for them in their respective households.
It’s this model that the company follows till date — apart from their factory in Choolaimedu, their appalams are made in households across Chennai and Kanchipuram as per Vijayaraghavan’s specifications.
The crispy appalam that reaches our plate is extremely delicate in its initial stage. “If the maker grips a just-shaped appalam hard, it might break. But if not held properly, it might slip and lose shape,” says Vijayaraghavan. “This is why they stack the circles and pat it together. This is tricky too, for the circles might stick.”
Vijayaraghavan has various memorable customers – Kavignar Kannadasan among them. “He would buy an entire tin,” recalls Vijayaraghavan. The poet was a huge fan of Ambika’s potato chips.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Akila Kannadasan / Chennai – March 15th, 2016
Walking into their alma mater after 50 years on Sunday was a joyful experience for the 1960-1965 batch of students of the Thiagarajar College of Engineering.
The batch comprised the creamy layer of students who entered the premium institution that was founded in 1957. Correspondent of TCE Karumuttu T Kannan presided over the function and listened to the elderly alumni narrating their experiences as carefree students in this institution. He said the alumni would be an inspiration to the present day students.
They had gone on to become chief engineers of PWD, defence, electricity board, steel plants, harbours, while some of them contributed to the various space projects in their capacity as research scientists at ISRO. Forty of them attended the event along with their families.
The old students re-lived their days in the institution and visited various departments. “This is a place that brings us immense joy that cannot be replaced by any other,” they said sharing their experiences with the students of today who were eager to listen to them.
V Sathappan, president, 1965 batch alumni reunion committee, welcomed the gathering, N Shanmugam, secretary explained the objectives of the reunion.
Karumuttu T. Kannan presided over the function. Former principal M Maria Louis and C. Kothandaraman addressed the gathering and greeted the alumni. V Abhaikumar, principal, made a presentation about the progress of the college over the years.
M Vettrivelswamy proposed a vote of thanks.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Madurai / TNN / March 14th, 2016
An Indo-Canadian trio has put together a video timeline featuring 20 of Tamil cinema’s eternal favourite songs
Nothing is better than listening to the classics; some hits are immortal, even as pop, rock and hip hop continue to top the charts. It’s the same when it comes to Tamil film songs. No matter what the latest composers dish out, it’s the oldies that bring us together.
In an effort to pay homage to their roots, Thakshikah Sritharan, Kavistuthy Thavanesan and Saikavin Sritharan, an Indo-Canadian trio, has put together a nostalgic six-minute video called Tamil Mime Express, tracing the history of film music.
Thakshikah, a classical dancer, talks of the inspiration behind the video, saying, “We were fascinated by a video called Mime Through Time by SketchShe; so we decided to do the same with Kollywood, trying to make it as appealing and innovative as possible. We thought that a timeline of Tamil songs shown through dance would be a fun way for everyone to remember and enjoy some of the songs they grew up listening to.”
Throughout the video, which is shot entirely in a car, the three of them sport various outfits with élan — shirts with rolled-up sleeves, popped collars, saris, lehengas — which is what has caught the fancy of many viewers. “We invested a lot to acquire the perfect costumes to match each song,” they say.
Starting from ‘Naan Aanaiyitaal’ from Enga Veettu Pillai, all the way through ‘Chikku Bukku Rayile’ from Gentleman to ‘My name is Billa’ from Billa, the video concludes with the latest ‘Thara Local’ fromMaari.
“We initially listed about 150 songs, but narrowed down to just 20 spanning all genres,” says Thakshikah. The trio credits their parents, as well as G Design Labs and Yashtra for their support in the video’s production.
Thakshikah and Kavin have only been to India four times, but concur that, “The food is absolutely amazing. The best trip was our visit to Agra and the Taj Mahal.”
They’re currently working on a couple of projects but are keeping them under wraps. A timeline of Bollywood music, perhaps?
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Justin Dominic / Chennai – March 12th, 2016
Coramseemee Leembruggen’s memorial at Armenian church Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu
International Women’s Day was celebrated this week and so it’s perhaps appropriate that this week’s story is about a remarkable woman, who may not have lived in Madras, but has a memorial in the city’s Armenian Church.
Located on the western wall of the verandah that leads to the church is a handsome memorial dedicated to Coramseemee Leembruggen. As to what such a Dutch name was doing in the Armenian church was a puzzle to me till I readArmenians In India, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Mesrovb Jacob Seth, written in 1937. I learnt that the lady was an Armenian whose real name was Hripsimah. Coramseemee or Khoromeseemee is apparently the corrupt form of the Armenian name.
She was born in 1778 as the only daughter of Eleazar Woskan, a wealthy Armenian based in Surat. While still in her teens, she was given in marriage to Stephen Agabob, an elderly widower whose sole aim in life appears to have been to marry young girls and treat them harshly. Not one to stand such brutality, Coramseemee left him and took refuge in the house of an English doctor, who was a family friend. In 1795, she fell in love with Robert Henry Leembruggen, a Hollander who was in the employment of the Dutch East India Company in Surat. However, knowing fully well that he was not to be trusted financially, she had the prudence to enter into what would today be known as a pre-nuptial agreement. As per this, her Rs. 40,000 in cash and valuable jewels were to be hers alone, and she was in no way to be held responsible for any debts her husband may incur.
They lived happily for a while, during which time Leembruggen was transferred to Colombo and Nagapattinam. By then, they had begun a business, of which she was sole proprietor. Differences arose over Leembruggen’s profligate nature and the couple separated in 1817, with Coramseemee paying her husband a monthly maintenance allowance of 25 pagodas thereafter. He died in 1819, leaving behind nothing but some old furniture that she never bothered to claim. She ran her business successfully on her own, till her death in 1833.
Between 1819 and 1833, she had the habit of making a new will each year, copies of which were sent to the Armenian Church, Madras. When she died, the last will and testament, after several charities to Armenian causes, left the bulk of her estate to the Armenian Church, Madras, for the Armenian Orphans Fund. The memorial here was put up for her in gratitude. Two other legatees, the Armenian College and the Armenian Church of Nazareth in Calcutta put up a memorial for her in the church in that city.
Taking into account her tombstone in Nagapattinam, there are therefore three memorials to her in India. That must be a record of sorts.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Shriram V / Chennai – March 14th, 2016
V Vedavalli, who was leading the life of an orthodox housewife from a middle class family that was reluctant even to let her work, responded to a bigger calling at the age of 60 and started writing books. Her first book was released at the age of 64. Now at 70, she has completed the draft of three books – one on Indira Gandhi, one on Buddha and the other on Velunaichiyar, the valiant queen who fought the British.
She says at the age of 59 when she looked back at her life, she realized that she hadn’t achieved anything. All she could see was that she had been a daughter, a wife, a mother and a home maker. “I wanted to leave my mark and do something that would remain long after I am gone,” she says. Interested in history, social science, politics and spiritual studies, she wrote her first book on Mahabharatam at the age of 60.
Vedhavalli belonged to a very orthodox family and was not even allowed to work after marriage. “Only when we faced a financial crisis, was I allowed to work as an accountant in a company. After the company shut down, I indulged in some handicraft. But I always loved reading and writing,” she said.
But when she decided to write a book, everyone including her family mocked at her. “Everyone laughed and asked me if this was necessary at this age. As I came from humble backgrounds, nobody took me seriously as well,” she said. Not one to be discouraged she started reading voraciously and after reading over 100 books and travelling to various universities to get help from professors, she completed her first book ‘Vedhavalliyin Mahabharatham’. With little knowledge of computers and internet, she said her main aim was to ensure that her book was error free. She was even felicitated for her book by the Tamil Sangam. “When my first book was published, I was on top of the world. I felt I had achieved something and that is when my family also started taking my work seriously,” she said.
She has also written three other books and has travelled extensively for those. She is working towards getting these books published. “I got very little support from my family and so I struggled a lot in my research work. I would get up at 4 and write till 6.30 am. Then after completing my household chores, I would visit libraries at 4 pm and return by 6 pm. Again I would start writing at 11 pm and work till 12.30 am on my book,” she said. When she had to stay for 14 days in Madurai alone to research for her book on Velunaichiyar, she said she was very scared. “I had never lived alone before. That was a challenge and I am glad I have overcome it successfully,” she said. Her book is available at the government libraries. “The other three books will also be published by April and will be available at government libraries,” she said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Coimbatore / by Komal Gautham / TNN / March 08th, 2016
A small shop is tucked away at the shaded turning across the Vivekandanda College road in Mylapore. In this space that doubles as a warehouse, at least a hundred different mridangams sit set for the fingers — 22-inch ones for women and 24-inch ones for the male singers, as the artisan and the owner points out.
“The smaller ones come in the sruthi ranges of 4, 5 and 6 which suit the women voices better, and their slightly larger cousins produce sound that match the lower sruthis of 1 and 2 to suit a male vocalist’s voice,” says Arogyam A, sitting down for a chat. A fifth-generation mridangam maker, he says there is a certain dignity the instrument commands from anyone who lays a finger on it.
Hailing from Thanjavur, where his forefathers also hand-crafted the instrument for ages, he keeps alive the art today, with his helpers working on different parts of the instrument — polishing the body of the hollow mridangam, stitching the three layers of skin on either side — which Arogyam informs, is made of cow hide. “We can modify the sruthi based on the thickness of these layers of skin,” he says. And finally, looping the holder-strings tightly, criss-crossing the body of the instrument. The process takes over seven days if done leisurely.
“But during months like December, or when a stream of orders comes in, we have to sit the extra hours and finish each piece in 4 to 5 days,” he says as he points to a newly crafted piece. There are also several antique mridangams, that carry yesteryear shades of wood — all made of jackfruit tree wood from Panruti — they all sit gathering dust, many here for repair.
When asked if today’s young musicians are dwindling, the answer jumps from his lips. “Not at all!” He explains that not only are younger players aplenty, there are also 4-5 women who come by regularly.
“There are also customers from London, Geneva and Canada who place orders, though we don’t advertise. The tradition still gets around, and people are genuinely interested. It is a satisfying trade and art,” smiles Arogyam
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Amrutha Varshinii / March 10th, 2016
They were once hallowed spaces of knowledge. Today derelict and with aging collections of books, libraries in the city still hold secrets within their cavernous halls.
There’s pin-drop silence. The gentle whirr of a fan, the rustle of paper, and the thud of a dropped book often cracks it. Unlike in school libraries, there are no ‘shushers’. There isn’t need for one; there aren’t many visitors to shush. A few of the city’s grand old libraries, for most part of the day, are left with just the aging books. Pick one from the shelf, amidst a cloud of dust, and you’ll see tiny silver fish play hide and seek. Many of them, difficult to maintain, have been brutally shredded in the past, says Uma Maheshwari, librarian at Madras Literary Society (MLS) — the oldest in the city. But not anymore. People are now adopting books — paying all it takes to get them back in form. These sit on a separate shelf, newly-bound and way past their lifespan. “We have given them a grace life of 200 years for now,” says Uma, drumming her fingers on the remaining 45, which await adoption.
Braving vertigo
Madras Literary Society
“Books can be taken from there, but then most do not, because of the dust,” shouts Uma Maheshwari from below, as I carefully climb the metal ladder leading up to a set of shelves. “We should probably install a chair lift…” she says, before turning away to attend to an elderly visitor, who wants a certain book about writings by (Jawaharlal) Nehru. The search begins. The books are not classified; catalogues not set in order. After the renovation of the 203-year-old red-brick structure a few years ago, the wiring has been detached, and the books moved from their places. Founded in 1812, the Society was part of the College of Fort St. George, started by the then collector of Madras Francis Whyte Ellis. In 1830, the Society became an auxiliary of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, and functioned out of Connemara Public Library, before moving to its current location on College Road, inside the Directorate of Public Instruction complex, in 1905. “We need volunteers to dust, classify and set them all (around 80,000) up again,” says Uma, leaning on an antique rosewood chair. Clutching the shaky railing, I take another flight of steps. From here, the thick layer of dust on the fan and on the cupboards is visible.
So are the brick-and-lime mortar walls and tall windows with Rajasthani accents. Looking down through the grill gets me a little dizzy. “So when is the lift due?” I ask.
Home to: Arretolis Opera Omania QVAE Extant Graece and Latine (1619), Travels in India by John Baptista (1680) and Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1740)
Coffee with Captain G.A. Mustafa
Mohammeddan library
From inside a glass cubicle, an elderly man asks for my business card and tells me to write my address and contact number in a visitor’s register. Retired Air India commander Captain G.A. Mustafa’s family, starting with his great grandfather, has been taking care of the library ever since it was established in 1850. According to the book Madras Rediscovered by chronicler S. Muthiah, ‘the library was started as Madras Muslim Public Library by Surgeon Edward Green Balfour, head of the Museum, and his sponsor, Nawab Ghulam Mohammad Ghouse Khan of Arcot.’ Mustafa was there during the critical period between 1939 and 1945, when the library lost much of its collection; and when the building, which boasted Islamic architecture, was pulled down in 1996, and reconstructed in 2005. “There are over 15,000 books and manuscripts, many gifted by the kings of Egypt, Turkey and Jeddah in the 1850s. They cannot be found anywhere else in the world,” chips in librarian Tameemur Rahman.
It’s around 5.30 p.m., almost closing time. Hot cups of coffee are brought in. An 1852 edition of a yellowing astronomy Persian book in one hand and a freshly-bound book in another, Tameemur gets technical about photo encapsulation — a technique to document manuscripts using specially processed polyester film coated with glue — which he claims was kickstarted in the library.
On my way out, Mustafa stops me and says, “Saba Mustafa is my wife.” There is a long pause. “She was the one instrumental in getting the library back in shape. Will you please mention that?”
Home to: H.D. Love’s Vestiges of Old Madras (100 years old), The Lancet magazine (July 1883),Ramayana written in Persian, and the Bible of Barnabas
Walking in the dark
Connemara Library
On the first floor of Egmore Museum Library, at the far end of the room, a faded poster reads: ‘Way to the old building’. The narrow path leads into a bright circular room with desks and tables, and a staff member who takes your reference requests — just like in a departmental store. That is the closest you can get to the Connemara Library (established in 1890 by Bobby Robert Bourke Connemara) — unless you have special permission to visit.
It’s 15 minutes to 5 p.m. — closing time. I walk down the red-carpeted floor to a mammoth structure with an array of teak wood shelves. To my right is a glass case with important books like Thambiran Vanakkam by Henriques (the original copy of which rests in London); bang in the middle is a Gandhi statue by Roy Chowdhury; and on the floor are old maps of the Tamil Nadu villages, laid out like tiny step mats. I open one to see a dark sketch of Kulavoipatti village in Pudukottai district. To my left is a counter with a small window, from where the librarian used to issue books back in the day. A narrow wooden staircase leads to a long wide hall spread with books that have been left to dry on the floor. The other end includes large circular reading desks. Connecting both is a small space with shelves that house records of Lok Sabha debates. As I pick up a book, the lights snap. It’s spooky, but only for a while. The colourful Burmese windows let in soft shades of light, just enough for me to see the truncated semi-circle roof and the ornamental acanthus leaves and flowers adorning the pillars, marble-floors, and the exit.
Home to: Omnes Quae Extant by D. Hieronymi Strido (1553) and Opera Quae Exlast Ominia (Greek Latin) by Plato (1578) are part of the nearly eight lakh books.
Smelling lemongrass
Oriental Manuscripts Library
Librarian R. Chandramohan carefully unlocks a glass panel inside a room with double doors to take out a lingam-shaped structure. “This is the original text of the Thiruvasagam written by Manikavasagar,” he says. The over-350-year-old palm manuscript was showcased at the World Manuscripts exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, a few years ago, he says. Next, he takes a set of palm leaves which have the famousThirumurugatrupadai by Nakkeeran inscribed on them. Right next to it is The New Testament in Hebrew, Soolini Manthiram, Mahabharata drawings on handmade paper, and an ivory manuscript case. “There is more,” he says, opening the door to rows of wooden shelves with compartments filled with over 70,000 manuscripts in Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu, Arabic and Persian; and air thick with the smell of lemongrass. A few palm leaves, freshly anointed with the oil, are spread on the floor. Most of these are personal collections of Colonel Colin Mackenzie (who came to India in 1783 as a Cadet of Engineers on the Madras Establishment of the East India Company), linguist and traveller Dr. Leyden, who was in India between 1803 and 1811, and C.P. Brown who was part of the Indian Civil Service in the 1830s, Chandramohan reads out from a presentation. The library, which is controlled by the Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu, was established in 1869 with the collection which was first housed in Presidency College, before moving to Madras University. Locking the door behind him, he says, “Even if you go out of this room, the memory of the smell will linger.” Ten minutes later, I realise he was right.
Home to: Tolkappiyam, Manimegalai, Silapathikaram
Meeting the grandfather of Tamil
U Ve Swaminatha Iyer Library
The security at the Kalakshetra Colony gate says “Go right ahead”, and sure enough, hidden behind the trees, is a white building. A statue of U Ve Swaminatha Iyer, the grandfather of Tamil, welcomes visitors. Only, there are none inside. Just staff members, who are on their lunch break. The library, which was established in 1943, includes Tamil literature collected by UVS, who is known to have spent his life searching for palm leaf manuscripts and transcribing them into books. This content has now been converted into microfilms (462 in total) by Indira Gandhi National Arts Centre; and these have in turn been converted into DVDs. The library in itself is being computerised with research facilities; it clearly seems to know the road ahead.
Home to: 69 of the 96 palm-leaf manuscripts of Sangam literature; 32 of the surviving 120Tolkappiyam palm-leaf manuscripts.
In pursuit of art
DakshinaChitra Library
After catching a show at the Kadambari art gallery, I head to what is probably DakshinaChitra’s best-kept secret. Serpentine queues of children walk in and out of the heritage houses, and a significant crowd waits to get their hands messy at the ceramic art centre. But the library seems withdrawn from the buzz. The library started at Madras Craft Foundation office in 1984 with around 200 books, now has over 9,000, apart from the 5,000 volumes that are National Folklore Support Centre’s collections. With out-of-print art books and journals like Indian Magazine, Lalit Kala, Indian textile history and Marg, and around 1,50,000 photographs, the place seems like an extension of the gallery.
Home to: Traditional Indian theatre, UMI’s dissertation on Therukoothu, Theyyam and Tolubommalata, Sargam; Thurston’s volumes on Castes and Tribes of Southern India
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Naveena Vijayan / Chennai – March 11th, 2016
Padma Lakshmi with Salman Rushdie in Calcutta in 2004, the year they got married
London :
Padma Lakshmi has written an “autobiography” in which she has revealed she slept with Salman Rushdie on their first date but eventually could not satisfy his insatiable sexual appetite after they were married.
When she could not have intercourse with him because of an operation for a painful medical condition, called endometriosis, the author apparently turned surly and commented sarcastically: “How convenient!”
Each year when the Nobel Prize went to another writer, Rushdie took it hard. Padma would console him, she claims.
Padma’s book is in the shops in the US tomorrow but ahead of its release, the most salacious aspects of Love, Loss, and What We Ate (HarperCollins; $26.99) have already been picked out from early review copies sent to the American newspapers – and also given general coverage in British newspapers as well.
Padma, a TV cook and one-time model and actress (she starred in the Bollywood movieBoom), married Rushdie in 2004. The marriage ended in acrimony after three years.
He was unkind to Padma in his autobiography, published in 2012, and now she has got her revenge.
In his memoir, Joseph Anton – the pseudonym Rushdie assumed in hiding by mixing “Joseph” Conrad and “Anton” Chekov – the author wrote about himself, somewhat curiously, in the third person.
“Then he went to Paris for the publication of La terre sous ses pieds (The Ground Beneath Her Feet) and she (Padma) joined him for a week of intoxicating pleasure punctuated by hammer blows of guilt,” he said.
“‘You saw an illusion and you destroyed your family for it,’ (his third wife) Elizabeth would tell him, and she was right,” Rushdie acknowledged
“She (Padma) was capable of saying things of such majestic narcissism that he didn’t know whether to bury his head in his hands or applaud,” he continued. “When the Indian film star Aishwarya Rai was named the most beautiful Indian woman in the world in some glossy magazine or the other, for example, Padma announced in a room full of people, that she had ‘serious issues with that’.”
“She was ambitious in a way that often obliterated feeling,” he said of Padma. “They would have a sort of life together – eight years from first meeting to final divorce, not a negligible length of time – and in the end, inevitably, she broke his heart as he had broken Elizabeth’s. In the end she would be Elizabeth’s best revenge.”
Padma is now 45 and Rushdie 68. It wasn’t like this when it began.
This is the New York Daily News on Padma’s revelations: “Lakshmi was 28 and single, Rushdie was 51 and married to his third wife. A bit part in Mariah Carey’s disastrous 2001 movie Glitter was the apex of Padma’s big screen acting career. The pair first met in 1999 at a party. On their first real date – Rushdie initially wooed her by phone since she lived in Los Angeles – the pair fell into bed.”
“At 3am, I woke with a start. I’m naked in a married man’s bed,” the good south Indian girl thought before sneaking out of the hotel room.
Today’s Daily Mail is a little more direct: “Rushdie initially pursued her by phone since she lived in Los Angeles, and on their first date they ended up in bed together.”
The Daily News is rather taken with Padma: “The stunningly beautiful Padma Lakshmi, in her new memoir, Love, Loss, and What We Ate, serves up the hot, steaming dish about the egotistical writer.” The strap reads: ” Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi recalls her years with author Salman Rushdie as a once beautiful meal that ultimately left her with mood poisoning.”
And: “The ever-demanding Rushdie needed constant care and feeding – not to mention frequent sex, according to the book.”
Padma “wrote that Rushdie was callously insensitive to a medical condition that made intercourse painful for her”.
Rushdie once became so enraged by her rejection of his overtures that he denounced Padma as a “bad investment”, she alleged. “When her undiagnosed endometriosis diminished Padma’s sex drive, the unsympathetic Rushdie became furious that she was unavailable for the fevered, urgent intimacy they’d once enjoyed, according to the book.”
The marriage was initially blissful. And then it wasn’t.
At one point, Newsweek put her on the cover illustrating a story about the “New India”.
“The only time Newsweek put me on their cover was when someone was trying to put a bullet in my head,” came Rushdie’s less-than-enthusiastic reaction.
“Rushdie was often away. After one five-hour surgery, Lakshmi came home with stitches in four major organs and stents in both kidneys. Rushdie left the next day for a trip.” “The show must go on, after all,” he said on his way out of the door, according to Padma.
Her first post-op trip out of the house was to a divorce lawyer.
It’s unlikely that Rushdie will take his ex-wife’s revelations lying down.
The New York Post has offered some insight. Apparently, Pia Glenn, a new girlfriend of Rushdie, gave an interview after they split up to the Post, saying he was “cowardly, dysfunctional and immature”, and that he kept talking about Padma.
It was claimed that Rushdie then rang the newspaper to label Glenn “an unstable person who carries around a large, radioactive bucket of stress wherever she goes”.
There was a period when Padma was having sex with two men.
The Daily News reports: “The troubles in her next serious relationship were all of her own making. Ted Forstmann, the billionaire CEO of the global sports and media empire IMG, had previously dated Princess Diana.
Life with Forstmann was definitely an upgrade for Lakshmi. In 2009, for example, he asked where she would most want to travel on a fantasy food tour. Lakshmi named the two most exclusive restaurants in the world. Soon after, the couple was dining at the legendary elBulli in Rosa, Spain, followed by Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark.”
Padma says she had some lesbian experiences in Europe. She “didn’t want to settle down so soon after her marriage ended. Back in the day, when modelling in Milan and Paris, she indulged in some bacchanalian evenings where she ‘acted out my curiosities and fantasies’.”
She adds: “Some I regret, but not all, like knowing what it’s like to touch and be touched by a woman.”
The Daily News adds: “While those days were in the past, Lakshmi didn’t see her future in an exclusive relationship with another much older man. Forstmann was 30 years her senior.
“While still seeing Forstmann, Lakshmi took up with Adam Dell – a venture capitalist and brother of Michael, the founder of the eponymous computer company. It was only after Dell returned to Texas that Lakshmi learned she was pregnant with his child. She had wanted a baby for so long, but this wasn’t entirely happy news.
“Forstmann, who had waited out her affair with Dell, became enraged when Lakshmi told him he might not be the father. She was terrified that she might have squandered his love. When a paternity test proved the baby wasn’t his, Forstmann pleaded with Padma not to involve Dell, she wrote. The lifelong bachelor, who had adopted two boys he met in a South African orphanage in the ’90s, promised to support the child as his own. But Padma felt Dell had a right to know. She writes that she was fully willing to involve him, but Dell kept his distance through much of her high-risk pregnancy.”
More drama followed. “Forstmann was in the room for the C-section, and handed Padma her baby daughter, Krishna, on Feb. 20, 2010. Dell appeared to stage a scene in Padma’s room. She remembers crying and asking him not to yell. He was furious that his name wasn’t on the birth certificate, pacing ‘ominously’ at her bedside for hours. Hospital security subsequently escorted the infant to another room to visit with her father.”
The story goes on: “Later, when Dell came to New York, Lakshmi sent Krishna to visit her father in the arms of her own mother – accompanied by a security guard. A custody battle ensued. Forstmann warned Padma that things would get ugly, but offered his unending support. Not long after, he started exhibiting symptoms that would lead to an eventual diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. Forstmann suddenly had only months to live.
“On her last visit before his November 20, 2011, death, the toddler crawled on his bed while dressed as a lion for Halloween. Forstmann could barely open his eyes, but their last words to each other were, ‘I love you’. She soon settled the custody issue by agreeing to amend Krishna’s last name to ‘Lakshmi-Dell’. The three have since shared some lovely times together. According to news reports, Forstmann’s will established a trust for Krishna – and so he, too, remains a part of their lives. It’s not a perfect ending by any measure, but certainly a new beginning for Lakshmi and her little girl.”
Padma has told People magazine: “Nobody is responsible for my actions except me. There were a lot of difficult things I went through in a very short intense period under very public circumstances. It was something that affected my family who are very private and it affected people I love, who probably didn’t deserve it. And so I needed to be honest and forthright about that.”
She has also been “honest” about her romance with Rushdie. While their early years were full of passion (and a lot of great meals) he bristled as her career blossomed. “I just wanted my own identity. I was making the transition out of one stage of my life and into another. But in order to do that, it required that I wasn’t everywhere that he needed me to be.”
Rushdie will probably point out that the world had not heard of Padma Lakshmi until she had met, married and divorcced him. For her, he was a good career move.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Front Page> Story / by Amit Roy / Tuesday – March 08th, 2016
In 1960s, Barbara Harriss-White along with her husband John Harriss began an extraordinary journey driving down from Europe to India in an old Ford van to take part in a mountaineering expedition to Kishtwar Himalayas.
The journey changed her life forever and for the next 44 years, Barbara spent visiting Indian small towns to understand the informal capitalist economy and its regulative politics. She chose Arni, a municipality in Tiruvannamalai district, for her life time study.
In an exclusive e-mail interview with S V Krishna Chaitanya from Oxford ahead of the International Women’s Day on March 8, Barbara, who is an Emeritus Fellow, Professor of Development Studies and Senior Research Fellow in Area Studies at Oxford University, took him through her astonishing journey, her love for India, especially Tamil Nadu, which sowed the seeds for her lifelong study that inspired her to pen 35 books, over 225 book chapters and journal papers, almost all on India. Her work in India is now setting a trend for other sociologists across the world to take up similar studies of small towns.
Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us about the experience of driving all the way from Europe to India.
In the 1960s many young people from Europe took the Overland Route in search of exotic India. We had been invited to a mountaineering expedition to Kishtwar Himalayas. Mountaineering had suited my need to escape and learn about extreme environments. We were poor students at Cambridge. My husband John bought an old Ford van, and we set out. The experience was life-changing. Our van passed through Pakistan descending down the Khyber Pass. The Green Revolution was in its infancy in both Punjabs.
Why did you choose the town Arni for your lifelong study?
People ask me why bother to sweat it out in episodes of field research over four decades in a rapidly growing and changing town, Arni, that is obscure to all but those who live there? With a touch of incredulity local businessmen enjoyed the sight of a European woman, tailed in those days by a line of small ragged children, drawing maps of the businesses in town.
It became known locally as ‘professor’s work’. Because of Arni’s multiple societal dynamics and it being at the centre of the Green Revolution on TN’s Coromandel plain, I chose this town. Besides, it was also the closest market town to the village in which my husband John was researching capitalism and peasant farming.
What purpose did such exhaustive study of a small town serve? Whom does it benefit?
Over four decades, this research has explored a rolling agenda of questions about ‘Middle India’, non-metropolitan India’s economic and social development, which cannot be answered in any other way than through sustained or long-term rural and urban field research.
Over the years it has been possible to build an archive of comparative field material on rural markets and the policy processes through which the State intends to control them on the ground: rice in southern India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Bengal; coarse grains in central India and Francophone West Africa; and lately jhum products in Arunachal. A Chinese sociologist is taking the questions we asked in Arni to market towns in China. If only a young generation of Indian scholars would carry it on into the future!
What are the challenges you faced…did the people accept you to begin with?
To start with, I found Tamil very hard to learn because in the field, talking to businessmen I had no opportunity to practice, make mistakes and learn this beautiful but difficult language. Gradually I came to terms with the fact that I would never be a fluent speaker but I understand the language – territory of my research and work through assistants.
This means I can check and write down the interviews while the conversation is being choreographed. In fact, in juggling all these roles at once, an English interview is quite difficult!
The first wholesaler I ever interviewed, one very long evening in Vellore in 1973, took me through the entire process of paddy and rice marketing and milling and taught me about equipment, technical terms and the tricks of the trade. That was a revelation and a huge gift. Some of the most fascinating details come as digressions in talks about politics, or how local business builds the local economy or visits to meet their families at home.
Is the rural India keeping up with the pace of urban India which is seeing rapid growth?
That’s a question not answerable through field economics. It needs all India statistics, which many feel are not reliable. But we know from India’s fine school of long term village studies started exactly a century ago by Gilbert Slater in what is now Tamil Nadu that the urban industrial economy feeds upon the rural one.
In some regions returns to agriculture are good, even to rice but especially to vegetables, sugar cane and high value crops. But the reasons people are migrating in droves off the land are environmental degradation, the water crisis, the encroachment of common land, the squeeze of costs and prices, the pull of higher wages in the non-farm economy and the constant need to supplement the returns from tiny smallholdings by work other than in agriculture.
Even now, a majority of villagers have agriculture as their primary source of income. So the relative neglect of agriculture by the State is something this cannot support.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Express News Service / March 07th, 2016
