The author as rock star

It only ever happens at the Jaipur Literary Festival

A literary festival is where authors come to feel like stars. But when they want to feel like rock stars, they come to the JLF. And if you have ever attended the Jaipur Literary Festival (JLF) you will know why. This is where you will find authors of every ilk (historians, scientists, economists) encompassing every genre (spy thrillers, literary novels, biographies, autobiographies) from all over the globe coming together in the Pink City to paint it (entirely metaphorically) red. 

Last year, I attended as an author-speaker to talk about my novel, Madam Prime Minister, and moderated a few sessions. This year, I was there with my Spectator hat on. And so, for the benefit of those of you who weren’t in attendance, here are some of my impressions. 

• When you are at the JLF, it is hard to feel pessimistic about the future of reading. The place is crawling with young people (some of them still in their school uniforms) who don’t just love books; they live and breathe them. They crowd the bookshop, looking for titles and authors they admire and for those that they have yet to discover. They line up with patient good humour to get their books signed at the end of every session. And they have intelligent conversations about books with everyone who is willing to engage. 

• Actually, truth be told, at the JLF, it is easy to feel optimistic about the future in general. This is a place where the right wing and the liberal wing can debate in a civilised manner; where there is space for every opinion across the political spectrum, so long as it is expressed with respect and decorum. And where disagreements are treated not as mortal threats but as an inevitable part of life, to be both embraced and examined. The JLF proves that civility can and does exist in political debate - even if it is missing in our TV studios. 

• There are all kinds of literary stars  in attendance at the JLF. And then, there is Shashi Tharoor. It would be no exaggeration to say that Shashi is the Shah Rukh Khan of the literary world. And nowhere is this more obvious than here, where Tharoor is surrounded by a ring of over-muscled bouncers wherever he goes, such is the hysteria of the selfie-seekers who hound him. His sessions are always standing room only. And woe betide the author who is unfortunate enough to have a session scheduled the same time as Tharoor. He or she will have to sit in a half-empty hall, while the audiences surges to listen to Shashi. (I should know; last year, I was one of these unfortunate authors!)

• Books are the main attraction here, for sure. But people-watching comes a close second. There is such a cross-section of humanity here that you can be entertained for hours just watching the crowds. There are the grey-haired worthies, who always sit in the front rows and clamour to ask questions at the end of every session. There are the young girls who have turned out in their Sunday best, teetering along on heels that were not made for walking on lawns. There are the journalists, scurrying after ‘celebrities’, trying to coax a ‘quote’ out of them for their papers and digital outlets. And then, there are the authors themselves, trying gamely to navigate the kind of attention they hardly ever get in the real world. It’s as good as watching a show. 

• And then, there are the parties: held in one impossibly glamorous Jaipur location after another every night, culminating in the Writers Ball, which ends the Festival. There is music; there is dance; and so much fun is had by all. And then, it’s time to pack away those glittering outfits, until it’s time to play at being rock stars again the following year. 

The substance of style

How do some people get to be so stylish, without even trying?

As you may have noticed, last week HT City gave out its annual Style Awards. The list was eclectic as always, ranging from artists (Anjolie Ela Menon), politicians (Jay Panda and his wife, Jaggi), television producers (Ekta Kapoor), TV anchors (Shireen Bhan), advertising professionals (Swapan Seth), film stars (Akshay Kumar, Sharmila Tagore) to a police officer (Hargovinder ‘Harry’ Singh Dhaliwal). But what united all of the recipients was one single theme: none of them could understand why he/she had been chosen for a style award in the first place!

All of them expressed themselves with varying degrees of bemusement (and some bewilderment). I don’t even possess a single designer garment, said one. I never ever go shopping for clothes; my mother does all my shopping for me, said another. I live in my jeans; my clothes are made by my local darzi; I wear chappals all the time; the disclaimers came loud and fast, tripping over one another as each awardee tried to explain why they didn’t deserve a style award (but were very happy to receive it all the same).

As I sat listening, all I could think of was that these modest denials showed such a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes style. 

But first off, let’s establish what style is most assuredly not about:

• It is not about wearing designer clothes. Any idiot can walk into a designer store and buy up everything in sight (and alas, too many do just that) in the hope that it will make them look stylish. It won’t. They will just look like people who have too much money and not enough confidence in their own taste (hence the top-to-toe designer labels).
• It is not about being a slave to the seasonal diktats of high fashion. All that establishes is that you have money to burn and time to spare. After all, how else could you update your wardrobe every three-four months, changing your look as often as shops change their window dressing? But remaining au fait with the trends is not all it takes to remain trendy. 
• It is not about buying expensive things. You can buy the latest It Bag, pile on the jewellery, slip into the priciest shoes in the market, flaunt the flashiest sunglasses. But unless you have a good eye and a good idea of what works for you, style will always escape you. You may look fashionable but you won’t look stylish.

So, what does style consist of? What makes a person truly stylish? Well, let me count the ways.

1) The confidence to be completely comfortable in his/her own skin. We all know people like this in our own lives. They can slip on a simple white kurta-pyjama and an indigo-dyed dupatta, accessorise with Kohlapuri chappels and a jhola, and look more perfectly put together than that woman in a designer salwar kameez and a Louis Vuitton bag. These are the kind of people who can rock a pair of blue jeans, exude glamour in a simple cotton sari, and look as elegant in sportswear as they do in formal togs.
2) The ability to ignore fashion when it is doing you no favours. Jeggings may be all the rage, but if your legs are not your best feature, you may be better off in a crinkled skirt. Crop tops may be ‘in’ but if your stomach is ‘out’ it may be wise to step away from that shelf. If in doubt, try it on and stand in front of the mirror. If the question, “Does my bum/stomach look big in this?” pops into your head, the outfit is not for you.
3) The knowledge of what works for you; and to work with it. 
4) The talent to create a strong individual look, and stick with it through thick and thin.

So, who qualifies as stylish in accordance with the criteria listed above? Or, to put it another way, who would win the Style award if I were the only one making the decisions? 

Well, the entire list is too long to fit here but these are some names that would surely feature: Meryl Streep, who has cracked the code of how an actress of a certain age should dress; Christina Hendricks, who makes the most of her curves without worrying about what the stick insects of the fashion world are up to; Deepika Padukone, who wears her clothes rather than allowing them to wear her; Shah Rukh Khan, who can even make man cleavage work; Omar Abdullah, who can look beyond the usual politician staple of khadi kurta-pyjama. 

And how could I forget my own personal favourite: Arvind Kejriwal, who has single-handedly popularized the Gandhi topi and muffler look. Long may his version of air-hostess chic rule!

Climbing the ladder

How you define success depends on the kind of person you are

Success. One word; with a hundred different ways to define it. Some measure it in terms of money: how much they take home every month or how much their business is worth at the end of the financial year. Others find it in the quality of life they have managed to create for themselves: how often they can take their kids on holiday, the kind of cars they drive, or even the size of the home they live in. Some define it in the context of happiness, in how much pleasure they have managed to extract from everyday, humdrum living. And others see it in more intangible terms; in whether they have succeeded in living life on their own terms, and enjoyed themselves while doing so.

How you define success in the end depends on the kind of person you are. If you are the kind who sees the world in purely materialistic terms, then you measure success by money and all the stuff that it can buy. And the more money you earn, and spend, the more successful you feel. But if, on the other hand, you define success on the basis of emotional, even spiritual well being, then you only feel truly successful if you achieve some measure of it in your own life.

And then, there are those people who are so driven that they never feel truly successful no matter how much they achieve. In their view, success is an ever-moving goal post that recedes further and further away the more they try to close the gap. And no matter how far they get down that road, they can never quite grasp that glittering prize.

Just take a good long look at L.K. Advani. Anyone else would feel that his was a life well spent. Here is a man who single-handedly revived the fortunes of his party with his Rath Yatra and the Ayodhya movement. He stepped back at the crucial time to allow A.B. Vajpayee, a more conciliatory figure, to form the government, but became the second-most powerful man in the country nonetheless. After the NDA was voted out of power, you would have thought that he would accept that his time in the sun was over and make way for a new generation. But no, the dream of being Prime Minister survives even a decade later, because anything less than that seems like an anti-climactic end to a political career.

Not that Advani is the only one to measure his success in terms of the top job. Narendra Modi, his erstwhile protégé and current bête noire, is also not content with just being a three-time chief minister of Gujarat – quite an achievement in itself for a man who began his political life as a humble RSS pracharak. But no, Modi too will only feel truly successful if and when he becomes Prime Minister of India.

So, in that sense, success is linked to ambition. The more ambitious you are, the more it takes for you to feel like a success. Lesser beings may be content being chief minister or home minister. But for some nothing less than being sworn in as Prime Minister will spell success.

Ambition, though, is only part of the story. Your peer group also plays an important part in determining what you see as success. If the rest of your friends are high-powered corporate honchos, then you probably won’t feel much of a success if all you’ve achieved is a middle-management role. If your college mates are being courted by the best companies with six figure compensation packages, you won’t be content with any less. If you are surrounded by two-car households, then one car – no matter how fancy – won’t feel like a totem of success.

Which is why I often feel for the friends of high achievers like Shah Rukh Khan. No matter how hard they work, no matter how much money they make, no matter how high they clamber up the ladder of achievement, can they ever feel truly successful when they measure themselves against their superstar friend? I think not.

Unless, of course, they have mastered the art of contentment, the ability to be happy in their own skin and find pleasure in their own lives, no matter how ordinary, and resist the temptation to judge themselves by the achievements of others. Now that, as far as I am concerned, is the true definition of success.

The clock is ticking...

Will Anil Kapoor’s 24 change the landscape of Indian television?

Like much of the world, I was addicted to 24. And like any fully paid-up addict, I would stock up on the good stuff, shut the door on the rest of the world, and mainline. Because I came to it rather late, I could swallow seasons one, two and three in one greedy gulp. Staying up till four in the morning, trying to squeeze just one more episode in, before the rising sun shamed me into going to bed, became a regular feature. And when my stock of old episodes ended and I had to wait for the new season, I suffered serious withdrawal symptoms.

Yes, as you've probably gathered by now, 24 was addictive. The central conceit of the series was that it chronicled 24 hours of a national security crisis in real time. Keifer Sutherland played the main character, Jack Bauer, as a superhero without the cape (and no visible underwear either, thank God!) maiming, torturing, blowing things up, and then torturing some more, to get to the bottom of some diabolical terrorist plot. The storyline tested the limits of our credulity, the stunts were sometimes plain unbelievable, and the twists and turns of the plot often bordered on the ludicrous. But the series was tightly scripted, fast paced, and things went by in such a blur that you didn't even notice the glaring holes in the plot - until much later, in bed, when you were running through the best moments in your head.

Looking back now, 24 was prescient in many ways. In giving us a Black candidate in the guise of the future President David Palmer in 2001, it eerily foreshadowed the election of Barack Obama in 2009. Its brutal rendering of the torture of terror suspects was an early hint of the Abu Ghraib-style security scandals to come. And who knows, the female US President Allison Taylor who premiered in 24 Redemption in 2008 and then starred in seasons 7 and 8, may well be a nod to the election of Hillary Clinton (the Democratic frontrunner for the 2016 polls) as the first woman President of the United States.

But watching all those endless episodes, perched at the edge of my seat, I was never prescient enough to think that I would soon see an Indian version of the series. No, not even when an Indian actor, Anil Kapoor, played an important role in the last and final season, starring as the ill-fated President Omar Hassan of the fictional Islamic Republic of Kamistan (modeled on Iran) who is assassinated by the bad guys – but not before putting in some good old-fashioned action hero stuff in the company of Bauer.

His messy end in the series notwithstanding, Anil Kapoor knew that he was on to a good thing. And after endless negotiations he bought the rights to make the Indian version of the show, with Kapoor himself playing the Jack Bauer role. In some ways, of course, Kapoor is uniquely qualified to play the superhero, or more accurately, the super anti-hero. His Mr India, released in 1987, brought the legend of the Invisible Superhero to us a full decade before JK Rowling wrote about the Invisibility Cloak in the first Harry Potter book in 1997. (Yes, yes, I know, H.G. Wells wrote The Invisible Man a century ago in 1897; we can play this game endlessly.)

As of this writing, the first two episodes of the Indian 24 have been aired on Colors. And I have to admit that my initial reservations about how this would work have been belied. The storyline is strong, the characters are well defined, the pace is fast, the action well choreographed, and bar a few, the performances are strong. Even the so-called Indianisation works. Instead of Presidential hopeful David Palmer we have a putative Prime Minister from a political dynasty that appears to be loosely based on the Gandhis.

So, will 24 be a game changer as far as Indian television is concerned? Will our TV production companies finally move away from their Saas-bahu Sagas and their Mangalsutra Melodramas, and give us quality television of the like that the West enjoys?

Well, frankly, it is too early to tell if there will be a substantive change in the Indian television landscape. Shows like 24 cost money, they need good writers, talented directors, committed producers, and a top-quality star cast to work. And so far, at least, Indian TV shows no signs of being able afford any of the above. So, I don't really see things changing very much in the short term.

What will change, I think, is Bollywood's attitude to television. Until now, Indian film stars have treated television fiction shows with a certain disdain. Everyone from Amitabh Bachchan to Salman Khan to Shah Rukh Khan is happy to play quizmaster to the nation. Stars like Madhuri Dixit, Hrithik Roshan are happy to turn up to judge singing and dancing competitions. And the likes of Karan Johar delight in hosting their own talk shows.

But TV series? That seems to be strict no-no (unless, of course, if you are a no-hoper like Vinod Khanna). This is in sharp contrast to the West where everyone from Glen Close (Damages) to Martin Sheen (West Wing) to Kate Winslet (Mildred Pierce) to Ashton Kutcher (Two And A Half Men) is happy to transition from the movies to TV (and back again). But rare is the film star in India who is willing to play a role in a TV drama.

That may well be changing though. Even before 24 aired, Amitabh Bachchan announced that he would be starring in a TV series directed by Anurag Kashyap on Sony. And where the great man goes, the rest are sure to follow.

The clock is ticking...

Will Anil Kapoor’s 24 change the landscape of Indian television?

Like much of the world, I was addicted to 24. And like any fully paid-up addict, I would stock up on the good stuff, shut the door on the rest of the world, and mainline. Because I came to it rather late, I could swallow seasons one, two and three in one greedy gulp. Staying up till four in the morning, trying to squeeze just one more episode in, before the rising sun shamed me into going to bed, became a regular feature. And when my stock of old episodes ended and I had to wait for the new season, I suffered serious withdrawal symptoms.

Yes, as you've probably gathered by now, 24 was addictive. The central conceit of the series was that it chronicled 24 hours of a national security crisis in real time. Keifer Sutherland played the main character, Jack Bauer, as a superhero without the cape (and no visible underwear either, thank God!) maiming, torturing, blowing things up, and then torturing some more, to get to the bottom of some diabolical terrorist plot. The storyline tested the limits of our credulity, the stunts were sometimes plain unbelievable, and the twists and turns of the plot often bordered on the ludicrous. But the series was tightly scripted, fast paced, and things went by in such a blur that you didn't even notice the glaring holes in the plot - until much later, in bed, when you were running through the best moments in your head.

Looking back now, 24 was prescient in many ways. In giving us a Black candidate in the guise of the future President David Palmer in 2001, it eerily foreshadowed the election of Barack Obama in 2009. Its brutal rendering of the torture of terror suspects was an early hint of the Abu Ghraib-style security scandals to come. And who knows, the female US President Allison Taylor who premiered in 24 Redemption in 2008 and then starred in seasons 7 and 8, may well be a nod to the election of Hillary Clinton (the Democratic frontrunner for the 2016 polls) as the first woman President of the United States.

But watching all those endless episodes, perched at the edge of my seat, I was never prescient enough to think that I would soon see an Indian version of the series. No, not even when an Indian actor, Anil Kapoor, played an important role in the last and final season, starring as the ill-fated President Omar Hassan of the fictional Islamic Republic of Kamistan (modeled on Iran) who is assassinated by the bad guys – but not before putting in some good old-fashioned action hero stuff in the company of Bauer.

His messy end in the series notwithstanding, Anil Kapoor knew that he was on to a good thing. And after endless negotiations he bought the rights to make the Indian version of the show, with Kapoor himself playing the Jack Bauer role. In some ways, of course, Kapoor is uniquely qualified to play the superhero, or more accurately, the super anti-hero. His Mr India, released in 1987, brought the legend of the Invisible Superhero to us a full decade before JK Rowling wrote about the Invisibility Cloak in the first Harry Potter book in 1997. (Yes, yes, I know, H.G. Wells wrote The Invisible Man a century ago in 1897; we can play this game endlessly.)

As of this writing, the first two episodes of the Indian 24 have been aired on Colors. And I have to admit that my initial reservations about how this would work have been belied. The storyline is strong, the characters are well defined, the pace is fast, the action well choreographed, and bar a few, the performances are strong. Even the so-called Indianisation works. Instead of Presidential hopeful David Palmer we have a putative Prime Minister from a political dynasty that appears to be loosely based on the Gandhis.

So, will 24 be a game changer as far as Indian television is concerned? Will our TV production companies finally move away from their Saas-bahu Sagas and their Mangalsutra Melodramas, and give us quality television of the like that the West enjoys?

Well, frankly, it is too early to tell if there will be a substantive change in the Indian television landscape. Shows like 24 cost money, they need good writers, talented directors, committed producers, and a top-quality star cast to work. And so far, at least, Indian TV shows no signs of being able afford any of the above. So, I don't really see things changing very much in the short term.

What will change, I think, is Bollywood's attitude to television. Until now, Indian film stars have treated television fiction shows with a certain disdain. Everyone from Amitabh Bachchan to Salman Khan to Shah Rukh Khan is happy to play quizmaster to the nation. Stars like Madhuri Dixit, Hrithik Roshan are happy to turn up to judge singing and dancing competitions. And the likes of Karan Johar delight in hosting their own talk shows.

But TV series? That seems to be strict no-no (unless, of course, if you are a no-hoper like Vinod Khanna). This is in sharp contrast to the West where everyone from Glen Close (Damages) to Martin Sheen (West Wing) to Kate Winslet (Mildred Pierce) to Ashton Kutcher (Two And A Half Men) is happy to transition from the movies to TV (and back again). But rare is the film star in India who is willing to play a role in a TV drama.

That may well be changing though. Even before 24 aired, Amitabh Bachchan announced that he would be starring in a TV series directed by Anurag Kashyap on Sony. And where the great man goes, the rest are sure to follow.

Age is just a number...

But only if you are a hero in Bollywood; heroines come with an expiry date

There’s one thing that the three reigning superstars of Bollywood have in common. And no, it’s not that they all rejoice in the surname Khan, though God knows that has been commented upon a million times. What binds Salman, Shah Rukh and Aamir together is that they are all 48 this year.

Go a little further down the rung of super-stardom and it is pretty much the same story. Saif Ali Khan is 43; Akshay Kumar is 45; Ajay Devgn is 44; hell, even Hrithik Roshan is nudging 40 (he hits that milestone birthday next January). And all of them are doing very well indeed at the box-office, singing and dancing, romancing the ladies, and beating the bad boys to a bloody pulp, thank you very much.

Now, here’s a challenge for you. Can you name a single Bollywood actress who is still a top star past the age of 38? Yes, take your time. Scroll down the list of all the usual suspects. Use that old search engine thingie. Phone a friend. Found anyone who is still a significant player past that magical figure? No, I thought not.

Something mysterious seems to happen to our actresses as they creep – ever so slowly and oh so unwillingly; but honestly, given what awaits, can you really blame them? – towards their late 30s. One minute they are flying high on the helium balloon of success and the next they have crash-landed on hard ground. And no amount of Botox, Juvederm or plastic surgery can ever make them whole again. Well, not in the eyes of film producers and directors anyway.

When it comes to female stars, ageing seems to be calculated in dog years where 16 equals 25; 25 equals 30; and 38 equals death (at the box-office, at any rate).

No matter how brightly their star may have shone before, it tends to fizzle out around the mid 30s mark. Sridevi last big release was Judaai in 1997 and she effectively retired from the business at 34. And it is telling that she only put one cautious toe out to test the waters once she was pushing 50 and unambiguously past leading-lady age.

It is no secret that Madhuri Dixit struggled to find a decent role in her last years in the business. Or that Karisma Kapoor never managed a comeback after marriage and kids, even though she has never looked better. Rani Mukherjee tries hard to stay relevant with releases like No One Killed Jessica, but we can all see that this is a losing battle. And even Aishwarya Rai, delivered her last big movie, Guzaarish, in 2010, at the venerable age of 37 (though if anyone can make a sizzling comeback, it is her).

And these are the stars who have actually been on top of the heap for most of their time in moviedom. Those who were lower down in the pecking order fare even worse. Preity Zinta struggles on gamely at 38, but even she has to produce the movies she stars in (and it doesn’t help when they are like Ishkq in Paris). And Bipasha Basu seems to have slipped completely off the radar at a youthful 34.

But while the women fall by the wayside like so many dominoes, the men just go on and on. It’s almost as if with male stars the ageing process has been halted by some ancient alchemical process. Ever since Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar canoodled with actresses half their age, Bollywood heroes have seen it as a badge of pride to be paired with heroines who could well be their daughters. In fact, some of the heroines Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Dharamendra have romanced on-screen could well have been their granddaughters.

And over the years we have become so inured to this December-April pairing that we see nothing incongruous about Salman Khan playing the romantic lead against Sonakshi Sinha who was two years old when he became a star with Maine Pyar Kiya. Or when Shah Rukh Khan sings and dances around the trees with Anoushka Sharma, who was five years old when he was stammering K.K.K.K.Kiran in Darr (Deepika Padukone was seven years old at that time, in case you are interested).

I wondered about this as I watched Madhuri Dixit (Shah Rukh’s co-star in Dil To Pagal Hai) play judge on the TV dance reality show Jhalak Dhikla Jaa, biding time, no doubt, till she is old enough to play the glamorous yummy mummy or the beatific badi bhabhi (given that her comeback vehicle Aaja Nachle didn’t exactly set the cinema screens on fire). Is this the way the cookie will always crumble for our Bollywood heroines? Or will the film industry change its sexist, ageist ways?

The way I look at it, Kareena Kapoor Khan will be the test case. At 33, she is veering close to the danger mark. Will she be able to change the rules? Well, I am sure we wish her the very best but if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath.