PICS: The fascinating history of the Khan-i-Khanan Tomb

The tragic and endearing tale of Abdul Rahim Khan's tomb.

Who can forget reciting dohe in our school Hindi classes? Dohe are short Hindi couplets conveying profound messages that draw meaning from everyday life for easy understanding. Apart from Kabir, another prolific dohe writer was Rahim. To understand the childhood connection with Rahim, we need to jog our memory to recall a popular doha:

Rahiman Dhaga Prem Ka, Mat Todo Chatkaya,Toote Se Phir Na Jude, Jude Gaanth Pari Jaaye

It can be loosely translated in English as 

Rahim says: Do not break the thread of love between people. If the thread breaks, it cannot be mended; even if you mend it there will always be a knot in it. The friendship will not be same anymore.

Now, that sure brought an instant childhood connection with Rahim and a smile to the face. 

Khanzada Mirza Khan Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana (17 December 1556 -1627) popularly known as Rahim was one of the Navratnas (Nine Ministers or Nine Gems) in Akbar's court. 

Abdul Rahim Khan was the son of Bairam Khan. 

History is amazing -- how could a son of a Mughal general infamous for atrocities could turn out to be composer and poet.

Akbar who was probably sick of the overbearing and revolting Bairam Khan -- his tutor, regent and general -- retired him and sent him packing to Mecca. This was better than being thrown off the Agra Fort as Adham Khan would testify.

On his way, in Gujarat, Bairam Khan was recognised by a certain man called Hazi Khan whose father was brutally killed by Bairam Khan during the Second Battle of Panipat between Akbar and Hemu.

Bairam Khan had exhorted the kid Akbar to behead Hemu as he lay bleeding from an arrow wound in the eye. 

Bairam must have done something similar to this guy's father too. Anyway, Hazi Khan takes revenge and kills Bairam Khan. Maybe it was all planned by Akbar! However, Rahim Khan then four and his mother were released unharmed and they returned to Akbar's court. 

Rahim Khan joined Akbar's court, regaled the court with his songs and poetry, rose through the ranks until he was promoted as one of the Navratnas and conferred with the title of Mirza Khan.

He was master of several languages like Persian, Chagatai, Sanskrit and Hindi. To augment his salary, he started writing Hindi Couplets for NCERT books. He was a contemporary of Tulsidas and both would exchange notes.

Although a Muslim, he was a devotee of Lord Krishna and wrote poetry dedicated to Him. The reason could be owing to his maternal lineage tracing back to Jadaun Rajputs and Yadavas.

History again has a way of repeating unflinchingly in gory ways. Just like Rahim's father Bairam Khan tutored Akbar and was unceremoniously disposed off in an ambush in Gujarat for his efforts.

Rahim tutored Akbar's son Jahangir. For his efforts, Jahangir had Rahim's two sons killed and their bodies left to rot at Khooni Darwaza opposite Feroz Shah Kotla.

Jahangir was simply annoyed that Rahim supported Jahangir's eldest son Khusrau to succeed Akbar. 

During his trips to Delhi, Mirza Khan marvelled at the beauty of the recently built Humayun Tomb. He figured that he would build something similar for his wife; just like Bu Halima did in her husband Humayun's memory.

Built in 1598, about 30 years after Humayun's Tomb, the structure and planning of Khan-i-Khanan Tomb are similar. However the latter is in on a much smaller scale. 

The tomb, like Humayun Tomb is faced with red sandstone and white marble. The high dome has decorated plaster work. On his death Rahim Khan was also buried here along with his wife and sons.

Mirza Khan's cenotaph lies on the first floor. The tomb was stripped of its sandstone and marble for building the Safdurjung Tomb -- a pattern repeated earlier by Sher Shah Suri who dismantled Siri Fort to build Shergarh and Shahjahan who walked away with Feroz Shah Kotla to build Shahjahanabad.

The chain of inspiration for building tombs for spouses continued and later Shahjahan taking a cue from Rahim Khan built a popular tomb in Agra for his wife.

Today, the Khan-i-Khanan Tomb sits on prime real estate in East Nizamuddin. The lawns are lush and well maintained. Since it is a ticketed monument and that too in the shadow of Humayun Tomb, it does not get many visitors. 

Most people driving on the busy Mathura Road are too busy negotiating the traffic to look. Few who do, look at the tomb with some bewilderment. People are not sure what to make of the stripped exterior.

The tomb looks like a once rich person who has been dealt a bad hand and all that is left now is a tattered coat and some old glory. It looks tragic and at the same time endearing -- just like Rahim's life.

Come and spend some time among the scarred and stripped walls. You just might hear poetry and couplets wafting in the air.

Getting There: As you drive on Mathura Road from Subz Burj roundabout towards Nizamuddin Railway Station, the tomb lies on the left.

IN PICS: The hottest IPL wives and girlfriends

The sexier halves of our swashbuckling cricketers

What is IPL without a dash of glamour right? Stepping in to break the monotony of the game are these hot wives and girlfriends or WAGS of IPL glamming up the stands.

Mashoom Singha

We start off with the stunning Mashoom Singha and Shaun Tait who are making their long-distance relationship work really well.

According to reports the lovebirds met a few years ago during an IPL event and have hit it off ever since.

The Australian cricketer who divides his time between his hometown of Adelaide and Mumbai confesses that he is a much calmer person thanks to Mashoom.

Shaun Tait plays for the Rajasthan Royals.

Kyly Boldy

Michael Clarke's first reaction to his relationship with Kyly Boldy was the predictable 'She's just a friend!' Having burnt his fingers earlier with another model Lara Bingle, Clarke was keen to play out this relationship tad differently.

Even though they got married only in May last year, Boldy and Clarke have known each other since school.

Boldy, a former swimsuit model currently runs an interior design business, has also helped Clarke design their new pad.

Michael Clarke plays for the Pune Warriors.

Sakshi Dhoni

Next up is the Queen Bee herself. In the almost-three years of being married to one of India's hottest cricketers, Sakshi Dhoni nee Rawat has slipped into the role of the first lady of Indian Cricket rather well, we'd say.

All of 21 when she married Dhoni, Sakshi had only just completed her internship with Hotel Taj Bengal in Kolkata after completing her hotel management degree.

She's been by her husband at all the major matches, managing to make all the right noises in the stands and being a media darling. What else could Captain Cool ask for from his wife now? Really!

Mahendra Singh Dhoni plays for the Chennai Super Kings.

Jeanne Kietzmann

When South African bowler Dale Steyn spotted Jeanne Kietzmann working in a restaurant in Cape Town and asked her for her number the young lady had absolutely no clue about who on earth he was.

Kietzmann is a model and an actress, who has gone on to act in television shows such as League of Glory and BBC's Outcasts. She is also said to enjoy adventure sports such as mountain biking and hiking. An even though she confesses that she isn't a cricket fan Kietzmann travels with him as often as her schedule permits.

Dale Steyn plays for the Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Geeta Basra

She may not have a particularly flattering career in Bollywood but if rumours are to be believed Geeta Basra has managed to land herself a fairly good catch in Harbhajan Singh. The two have been linked for years now but for some reason both insist on denying all rumours, including Geeta who told us that Bhajji was just a friend  Really now!?!

Harbhajan Singh plays the for Mumbai Indians.

Shamone Jardim

The South African model has been dating Jacques Kallis for over half a decade now and has been by his side all along. Like all the WAGs here, Shamone Jardim also follows her better half around the world to watch him play.

In the various trips to India, Jardim has fallen in love with the country and hopes they get married or at least host one of the ceremonies against a rural set-up in India.

Jacques Kallis plays for the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Lee Furlong

The sports presenter was introduced to the dashing Shane Watson's by his teammate Brett Lee way back in 2006. But it wasn't until late 2009 that he popped the question and the two were married in May 2010. Lee Furlong has since delivered a baby boy and continues to feature in various lists of hottest WAGs even beating Victoria Beckham in some of them.

Shane Watson plays for the Rajasthan Royals.

Jessica Bratich-Johnson

This hottie who is married to the Australian fast bowler Mitchell Johnson isn't just a pretty face. Besides holding a degree in communications, Jessica Bratich-Johnson is also a karate professional, designs leather accessories and a mother of one! Whoa! Right?!

Mitchell Johnson plays for the Mumbai Indians.

Weird superstitions of Karnataka politicians

Superstitions always seem to leave a mark in Indian politics. And that's no exception in the case of poll-bound Karnataka.

Many candidates have been rushing to file their nomination papers on Monday following astrologers' advice that today happens to be a very auspicious day to do so.

Also, most leaders will use either blue or green ink pens to file their nomination papers.

That's not all. There are other stranger acts.

Many Congress leaders would never use a black ink pen to file their nomination papers. They would also wear four layers of clothes while doing so.

BJP leaders consult at least four to five astrologers and depend a lot of vaastu shastra before filing their nomination papers.

A common thing noticed is that these leaders always point their nomination papers North before filing their papers.

There is also a BJP leader who always wears a fur hat before he files his nomination.

Some leaders from B S Yeddyurappa's Karnataka Janata Party have decided to wear clothes which match the colour of their birth stone before filing their nominations.

Yeddyurappa himself has been famous for visiting several temples before he files his nomination.

Then there some leaders who leave very early in the morning to either campaign or file their nomination papers. They do not mind waiting for a couple of hours. They do want to get stuck in traffic as they feel that a red signal means bad luck.

The Deve Gowda family is all about numerology.

Five is considered to be a lucky number for Deve Gowda. The first list announced had 122 names, adding up to five.

Gowda's son, H D Revanna wears a gold chain around his neck and also his waist before filing the nomination for good luck.

rediff

Centre opposes PIL seeking removal of Sebi chief

The Centre on Wednesday opposed in the Supreme Court a plea seeking removal of  SEBI Chairman U K Sinha on grounds of alleged irregularities in his appointment, saying the charges against him are false as recently he acted against corporates including Sahara.

"They are obsessed with conspiracies...This man (SEBI chairman) has gone against Sahara and is looking into the case of RIL [ Get Quote ] and others," Attorney General (AG) G E Vahanvati submitted before a bench of justices S S Nijjar and Pinaki Chandra Ghose.

The AG was responding to arguments of Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner Arun Kumar Agrawal, that M Abraham, a Kerala-cadre IAS officer and a whole-time member of SEBI, had written a letter to the Prime Minister that information regarding cases, pending with the market regulator, against some corporates were sought by the Finance Ministry.

Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran said Omita Paul, Secretary to the President, who was then advisor to the then finance minister, had "no role" in the appointment of Sinha as SEBI Chairman.

The Cabinet Committee on Appointment, headed by the Prime Minister, appoints the SEBI chairman and the advisor has no role in it.

Seeking dismissal of the PIL of Agrawal, the AG said that complete facts relating to two earlier petitions on the same issue were not disclosed to this court.

"I should have raised preliminary issues earlier. The court entertained the petition in good faith. The PIL petitioner should have disclosed these facts," Vahanvati said, adding "this kind of selective amnesia is not expected of a veteran PIL petitioner...”

Bhushan, however, said the PIL, filed by Agrawal, was different from earlier petitions of retired IPS officer Julio F Ribeiro which were dismissed as withdrawn and moreover, the court had granted him the liberty to file it afresh.

He also referred to the prayers sought by Agrawal and Ribeiro in their respective pleas.

Initiating the arguments, Bhushan said Sinha, who was appointed as SEBI Chairman for three years in February 2011, allegedly lacked "integrity" to head the market regulator which has "become an extremely important institution in the wake of various scams in the stock market in recent past."

He also referred to the rules governing the salary to be drawn by an IAS officer if he is sent on deputation to a PSU or to private firms, NGO and other independent bodies.

Sinha, who had become the CMD of UTI Asset Management Company, earlier hit by the Ketan Parikh stock scam, withdrew salaries which was inconsistent with the rules, he said.

The lawyer also said Sinha, who also served as Joint Secretary (Banking) and CMD of UTI Asset Management Company, gave wrong undertaking before becoming SEBI chairman that he was not privy to "various sensitive and strategic information".

Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Sinha, raised preliminary objections relating to previous PILs on the issue and said "this court needs to decide the preliminary issues ... what the champion of human rights and public cause was doing since 2005."

The petition is a "motivated one" and does need to be entertained, Salve said, adding that he would later advance arguments on merits in the case.

Earlier, the court had issued the notice to the Centre and others on the PIL alleging irregularities in Sinha's appointment as chief of the market regulator.

The bench had impleaded the President's Secretary Omita Paul, who was advisor to the then Finance Minister, when the decision to appoint Sinha as SEBI chairman was taken.

The impleading was done after it was alleged that the process of selection of SEBI chairman was interfered with due to which incumbent C B Bhave was refused extension and Sinha appointed. It was contended that Sinha had not even applied for the post.

Bhushan had submitted the "appointment of Sinha is malafide and a result of a deep-rooted conspiracy" and placed various documents which were procured through Right to Information Act to buttress his allegations.

"Sinha failed to fulfil one of the eligibility conditions as laid down in the SEBI Act which requires that the Chairman shall be a person of high integrity. He is not a person of high integrity as is apparent from various facts," Bhushan had further said.
rediff.com

Big Brother is listening

With the government planning to set up a central monitoring system, it can track telephone calls, mobile networks and the Internet. V. Kumara Swamy on how the government will snoop on terrorists — and you

Shambu Nath Kow didn't stand a chance when a posse of policemen swooped on his hideout in a village in eastern Uttar Pradesh early one April morning this year. A Trinamool Congress councillor of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Kow had been absconding after his name came up in the murder of party activist Adhir Maity.

Kow's mistake was a call he made to an acquaintance, asking to be picked up. That was enough for the police to track him down.

The sleuths at the command centre of the Kolkata Police were following several of his phone numbers. A 15-member team on the hunt was carrying sophisticated equipment that could track him through his calls.

Advances in communication technologies are making the proverbial long arm of the law even longer. With the continuing threat of terrorism and other forms of crime, the government is seeking to intercept voice calls, fax and text messages, emails and so on.

A team of engineers at the government-run Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) campus at Mehrauli in Delhi has been testing the proposed central monitoring system (CMS) that would be able to legally snoop around. Once fully functional, it will monitor telephone lines, phone networks and Internet transactions, among others.

"Authorised law enforcement agencies (LEAs) would be able to monitor any piece of communication taking place anywhere in the country in real time," says a C-DOT official.

So is Big Brother listening to us?

"Not really," says a Union home ministry official. "Law abiding citizens will have nothing to worry about. It will only be good for the security of the country. There will be better co-ordination among all the agencies."

Currently, around nine central agencies can intercept and monitor telephone calls within the country. These include the Central Bureau of Investigation, Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing, and National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO). Now, all these and state LEAs will be able to access the central system. It is estimated that 10,000 phones of citizens and others are being monitored by the central government.

With CMS in place, agencies can bypass telecom operators and directly snoop on the targeted numbers. It is also expected to help ease delays in the relaying of intelligence.

A company commander of the Rashtriya Rifles stationed in north Kashmir recalls an incident in 2008 when his battalion received a transcript of a phone intercept between a militant and his handler from across the border. But by the time the information was relayed to the army unit, the militant had been killed by a team led by the officer. Now, with the CMS having central and regional databases, LEAs at both levels will be able to carry out interception and monitoring in real time.

The benefits of the system are many. It can, for instance, draw up charts based on the calls that a suspect receives. The charts can trace all those who call the suspect, and find links among them, if any. Or, if CMS members intercept a call and get to know about a bomb that has been planted in a troubled area which can be detonated only through a mobile phone, they can, while sitting in Delhi, disable all the phones near the bomb.

The system was supposed to have been in operation by now, but problems continue to dog the ambitious project. For instance, since service providers use various vendors' servers, the CMS needs compatible interfaces — which will enable it to read data.

To cite a case, though BlackBerry established a server in Mumbai for intelligence agencies to access and intercept communications, India has been unable to decrypt the coded communications. "We forced the BlackBerry guys to establish servers in India with much fanfare. Now we have the data, but we cannot decipher it," says a former NTRO official.

Another issue is that telecom operators have to provide the government with call detail records of all their users. Operators are pressing the government to fund the operation. They point out that maintaining the call records of some 650 million active phone users is a tough task. In 2010, Bharti Airtel wrote to the department of telecommunications (DoT) saying it could cost as much as Rs 4,500 crore to implement the project.

"We are trying to sort out these issues. We hope to reach an agreement very soon," says Ashok Sud, secretary general, Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India.

For the system to run, it needs, according to modest estimates, about Rs 4,000 crore. The government, however, has so far invested only Rs 400 crore in the system.

In recent months, C-DOT has been inundated with offers from Indian and foreign equipment suppliers. But the suppliers are not sure if the government is moving in the right direction. "They are trying to re-invent the wheel," says Lalit Chandak, Span Telecom, one of the leading suppliers of lawful interception equipment in the country. "People are not working in tandem."

The new system has also raised the hackles of activists. "The government has to maintain a balance between civil liberties such as the right to privacy and law enforcement requirements," says Praveen Dalal, a Supreme Court advocate and expert on cyber and communication technology-related laws.

Officials say some safeguards are in place. For instance, an intelligence bureau official will be able to access only that information which he has been authorised to seek — and nothing else.

The home secretary has been designated the "competent authority" at the Centre to issue written permissions to agencies that are involved in interception, monitoring and decryption. In the states, home secretaries have been given similar powers. However, exceptions can be made in emergencies.

The CMS has some distance to travel before it is fully operational. The C-DOT official contends that all the doubters would be proved wrong once it is fully functional. "We may be a little late, but we will be there eventually with the best of systems possible," says the official.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.
the telegraph

‘Corporate Money Has No Nationality. They Just Run India’

Author and activist Arundhati Roy sent some "cryptic" answers to an e-mail questionnaire sent by Outlook. Excerpts:

Can India's corporate sector, with all the taints of corruption and scams, decide India's political future?

Of course it can and of course it will. The whole point of the corruption is to consolidate power and money, isn't it? But perhaps we should not use the words 'Corporate India'...it is just a few corporations that run India who will be making those decisions. Even within 'corporate India' and the business community, there is an accelerated process of marginalisation and consolidation taking place. And corporate money has no nationality.

Considering that the corporate sector's worldview is so unidirectional and self-serving, why is it being accepted so blindly by the media and in turn by the people?

Because the corporations own and control the media. And the media controls the imagination of the people. RIL, for example, owns controlling shares in 27 TV channels. Logically, ril's political candidates are going to be promoted on those channels.

What gives the corporates the strength to force such views on the people?

Let me guess...could it be money? Lots of it?

"Corporations own and control the media. Their political candidates are promoted on those channels."

In the US, the corporate sector plays a key role in the selection of the president. The corporate sector here seems to be pushing in that culture—individual-based politics as opposed to issue- or party-based public debates....

This election the Corporate Candidate will be the person who is seen as being able to 'deliver'...and that will include being able to put down people's rebellions across the country by deploying the army if necessary, in places like Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, where, in the corporate view, massive reserves of cold cash are languishing in the forests and mountains—not quite the US model, but getting there.

Do you consider all this to be good for India's democratic system and values?

Yes, it's excellent for Indian democracy. We should be run by corporations. The army should be deployed. Nothing should come in the way of corporate need. The poor should be moved into concentration camps outside large cities. The surplus population should be exterminated.

Delhi’s Chhatarpur farmhouses are the playpens of the mysterious rich

Among the BMWs, Audis, helipads, swimming pools and other assorted bric-a-brac that enlivens the farmhouses of Chhatarpur in outer Delhi, lives a shy young Jersey cow. Every morning, long before young Shamsher Gurjar rises to face another day—his is a family of late risers, never fully up before 10 am—she is milked for the 19-year-old, six-foot scion of the 'CDR' establishment. "We keep several cows but this one is exclusively for Sha­msher. He must have at least two glasses of milk before he even opens his eyes," says mother Aruna Gurjar, a dignified-looking fortysomething who has lived in one or another of the family's several sprawling Chhatarpur-Mandir Road farmhouses for over 20 years.

Aruna married into Chhatarpur. It was an arranged marriage that transported her from a typical Delhi neighbourh­ood—Okhla, billowing out from a very 1980s-style industrial area—into the most prominent (and some say most wealthy) 'rural' family of this southernmost district of the capital. Her husband Trilok Gurjar's father was the late Chaudhary Daya Ram, a.k.a. 'CDRr', a farmer-turned-real-estate-mogul who struck lucrative deals with hundreds of local farmers during the 1970s and '80s. It was a time when builders were voraciously buying up village land on which, for instance, neighbouring Gurgaon's high-rises and malls eventually came up.

Strung out in the ruruban swathe bet­ween Qutub Minar—once  land's end for Delhiites—and millennial Gurgaon to the south, Chhatarpur and its 13 nearby villages form a strange hybrid. Parts of it still designated as a rural area in gov­er­nment records, this zone hosts roughly 300 farms. Altogether spanning some 700 acres, this is Delhi's independent republic of far­mhouses. Its residents are a wealthy, quiet, reclusive bunch. Fif­t­een-foot-high walls enclose well-manicured gar­­dens with fountains and fancy dwellings. Musclemen man the gates.

The owners are obviously people who foresaw how much homes in green belts would be worth once the rest of Delhi (and lately, Gurgaon) bec­ame a concrete jungle. Typically, land sells for anywhere between Rs 2-10 crore an acre in Chha­t­a­rpur today. Their possessions tower over the otherwise modest roads and impoverished quarters that dot the landscape every few hundred yards. Besides the owners of large companies, it has proved to be an area of investment for real estate magnate DLF too—it has sold over 100 farmhouses here. DLF, of course, was a pioneer of the land bank model. Its deals negotiated in the early '80s with local farmers ensured it a str­ong foothold in the Mehrauli-Gurgaon belt.

Security guards dutifully stonewall enquiries about the identity of resid­ents, but voter lists reveal some names. Businessman Rakesh Bharti Mittal owns a farmhouse here, as do lawyers R.K. Anand and K.K. Venugopal. Avtar Singh Rikhy (ex-LS secretary-general) figures, as does the infamous Ponty Chadha's relative R.S. Chadha. Retired army officers too have made Chhat­arpur their home, as have writers such as William Dalrymple and several politicians. Diljit Titus, the reputed lawyer who owns a vintage car museum, is another one with a farmhouse here.

"It takes a long time to get used to living in a farmhouse, without neighbours dropping in," says Aruna Gurjar.

Last November, liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his brother and their priv­ate security forces—another trapping of Chhatarpur's wealthy elite—whip­ped out guns and shot each other dead after a fierce gunbattle. The calm and privacy of Chhatarpur was shattered for awhile. Everyone got a peek into the massive houses from which the only signs of life at other times were the giant suvs zooming out at alarming regularity. But the residents quickly gathered themselves and restored normalcy—which is to say, retreated behind their walls. "Contrary to what people think, Chhatarpur is largely a regular colony of Delhi where ordinary people live ordinary lives," says a resident who shares a boundary wall with the property Ponty Chadha and his brother died in. The family was not at home when the shootout took place.

One fixture of ordinary life in Chh­a­ta­r­pur is the need to leave the area for productive work—there are no regular office buildings, no factories, nor, really, even farms in the strictest sense in the area. In fact, there are no signs of a living, vibrant community—no libraries, malls or even shopping centres in the immediate vicinity. There is a dearth of public spaces—the seclusion of each house means residents have to meet via weekly rwa gatherings. "That's when we get to see the neighbours," says Sha­msher, most of whose friends live "in town". Kitty parties, with 20 or more members, many from outside Chh­at­a­rpur, are a common way for women to interact. "It takes a long time to get used to living in a farmhouse, without neighbours dropping in," says Aruna.

Earth movers The Trilok Gurjar family. (Photograph by Jitender Gupta)

For the rest of Delhi, Chhatarpur figures when there is a 'big' wedding to attend. Like in March 2011, when the "most expensive wedding ever" (sou­r­ces say some Rs 250 crore was spent) was held at Kanwar Singh Tanwar's farmhouse when his son Lalit married Yogita, ex-MLA Sukhbir Singh Jauna­puria's daughter. The groom was gifted a chopper, no less. The Gurjar family, though, isn't too impressed. "People in Chhatarpur own aeroplanes, who's in awe of a chopper?" asks Trilok Gurjar. The two families are, incidentally, rel­ated through marriage.

Indeed, Chhatarpur is "different" from the many other exclusive enclaves of the capital. From Jor Bagh to Sainik Farms to Nizamuddin to Sundar Nagar, there are many in Delhi which are wealthy and exclusive, even mysterious and forbidding. Some were car­ved out of rural areas or barren land but even among these, Chhatarpur is in a zone by itself. For one, things work like in a cabal: what happens in Chh­a­t­arpur stays there. It is an area that only opens its doors to you if you marry into it, if you are born here, or—and this is an increasingly popular route—if you make pots of money and buy your way in.

With the money rolling in, real estate firms such as CDR Estates, now led by Trilok Gurjar and son Shamsher, continue to shape Chhatarpur into an even more exclusive club—a mix of imp­reg­nable farmhouses and gated residential enclaves interspersed with older villa­ges. "Today's Chhatarpur is a product of yesterday's hard-nosed bargains with the landlords of 12 neighbouring villages who sold their holdings to builders in Delhi and Gurgaon," says property broker Pradeep Mishra. The villages inc­lude Ghitorni, Sultanpur, Mangl­a­p­uri, Gadaipur, Satbari, Mandi, Jaunapur, Fatehpur and lead up to Bhatti Mines.

Parts of this region fall under the Delhi government's expansion plans for residential buildings. Chhatarpur falls in the 'J' zone of Delhi's master plan for 2021, which foresees residential expansion beyond farmhouses for the area. Even now, from time to time, the state breathes down the necks of residents living in areas still designated as rural.

Even among Delhi's exclusive areas, Chhatarpur is in a zone by itself. It's like a cabal—what happens here, stays here.

In 1980, there were only five 1-acre plots in Chhatarpur proper that could flaunt their legal status as a "farmhouse". For all others, the minimum size had to be 2.5 acres. Today there are at least 1,500 farmhouses in Chhatarpur and their sizes vary from 1 to 13 acres (some say even larger 'farms' exist). Slowly but surely, a complex web of approvals and permits are pulsing in favour of Chhatarpur farmhouses. Just last December, an obvious concession was made to the residents, builders and brokers. A new 30 per cent floor-area ratio was announced—a big break for those who had already constructed much bigger houses than allowed.

"From outside, you cannot see what is going on inside, the walls go way up and the gates always closed. The people living inside are also perhaps too powerful to question," says a local property broker. Being a farmhouse owner means being bound by a number of tough laws—which still exist on paper. For instance, a farmhouse cannot be split into apartments. With the rules slowly changing, Chhatarpur may become an even more prominent status symbol for the elite. The rush has pushed a host of professionals into Chhatarpur homes over the last two decades. Chartered accountants, "soc­ial workers", writers, businessmen and a host of others have started moving in.

This is something the Gurjar family and other original residents rue—and sort of poke fun at. "Many Dilliwallahs move to a farmhouse only to return to the hustle and bustle of Greater Kailash or Vasant Vihar within months," says Trilok Gurjar. Life on the farm isn't easy, even one within city limits. With peace and privacy comes the harsh reality of seclusion and isolation. Yet, the rush hasn't abated.

outlook

Chashme Buddoor (1981)

Each time you view Chashme Buddoor it makes you long for Delhi of the
'80s, quiet and laidback. It lets loose a nostalgia for simple
pleasures like Campa Cola and Tutti Fruti ice cream, and makes you
rediscover the times when jaunty young men could fall for girls in
two-plait hairstyle and "leheriya dupatta". Yet you also sense that
the characters and their relationships still have a contemporary ring.
The bachelors' barsaati with half-smoked cigarettes and coconut shell
ashtray could be true of any age. The theme of friendship, jealousies
and misunderstandings coming in the way of love is as timeless. Yes,
the acting is great and pace unhurried. But what you notice most are
the small things. How the minutest of characters come alive, how Sai
Paranjpe liberally uses popular Delhi actors like Vinod Nagpal (music
teacher) and Keemti Anand (the waiter), regulars back then in the
theatre circuit and DD serials. There's an unca­nny eye for detailing,
right down to the banal chore of the grandmot­her: filling achaar from
a huge martbaan into a small bottle.

The magic is in Paranjpe's writing. She is irreverent and cheeky, be
it the inventive titles where she asserts herself by showing a woman's
hands replacing the man's in the director credit. Or the way, she
rolls in the interval. The odd line from the song (kali ghodi pe gora
saiya chamake) is delightfully tongue-in-cheek, when juxtaposed with
the hero riding a black mobike. Even the romance begins quirkily—over
a besan laddoo served in a tea cup and a clean towel washed with
"khushbudaar, jhaagwala Chamko". And then there's the dad refusing to
acknowledge his daughter could be in a relationship with insane logic:
"Chhoti hai abhi, ice cream khaati hai". Best is the manner in which
Paranjpe plays with the conventions of Hindi cinema—right from the
brilliant songs' montage to the deliberately over-the-top climax with
a suitably deafening BG score. Chashme Buddoor is joy forever.

Outlook

China's 'String of Pearls' is closer than you think

For the first time, the Indian Navy has strong indications that a fleet of Chinese nuclear submarines is making frequent forays into the Indian Ocean.

22 such Chinese operations have been recorded, one as recently as February, 2013. One submarine was spotted near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Headlines Today has exclusive access to a report from the Indian Navy to the Defence Ministry that says 22 unknown submarine contacts were detected by Indian and U.S sonar in the Indian Ocean.

The assessment is that China is the only other navy capable of operating in the area. The assessment has been confirmed by U.S. and Indian intelligence inputs.

The extent of Chinese submarines' unchallenged forays into the Indian Ocean can be deeply troubling for the Indian Navy.

Sources tell Headlines Today that one contact with a suspected Chinese submarine took place just 90 km from Indian soil in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Six contacts took place north-west of the Straits of Malacca, 13 south of Sri Lanka and two as far as the Arabian Sea.

The first such Chinese submarine was spotted on sonar in August 2012 during a patrol of Indian and U.S. navy ships, confident that they are the only two navies operating in the southern part of the Indian Ocean.

According to the report, the People's Liberation Army's naval wing is deploying the state-of-the art nuclear submarines on a 10,000-mile deepwater run. The launch location is Sanya in the South China Sea.

Official sources say the Chinese submariners could be preparing to sneak into India's backyard, test Indian Navy's conviction in keeping them out and probably pioneer a permanent presence in the Indian Ocean region.

indiatoday

Are Ads Moving Past the ‘Standard Indian Housewife’?

If I won a rupee every time an Indian commercial stereotyped women, I could have bought a Ford Figo to use as storage space.

The timing of the Figo ad, which showed buxom women tied up and stuffed in the car’s trunk to emphasize the “extra-large boot,” not only caused national outrage and international embarrassment, but also extinguished whatever lingering hope we Indians might have had from our advertisers. Indian advertising had been outrageous enough lately, with a series of brands reminding the Indian woman of the value of submission – whether through whitening their vagina for her prized husband (Clean and Dry), or by enduring his sharp rebuke without a single word (Mother Dairy).


But that’s just one side of the story. The other is the recent attempt by a handful of brands to be different. Sit before your television set for an entire day, and there are chances you will catch new ads that are creating alternative narratives around women. Most of them are doing so by transcending the basic building-block of Indian advertising: The Standard Housewife. No matter what else women do in commercials, whether it is selling cement in bikinis or waxing clearly hairless legs for a date, their ultimate aim seems to be to keep a great house – judged by the whiteness of her husband’s shirt and the height of her child.

And why should they show otherwise, advertisers have argued, for according to them, the majority of Indian women, particularly in what they call India 2 (Tier II and III cities), know of no greater validation than being appreciated for precisely these things. This is why the recent trickle of ads extending the idea of the woman consumer is worth noting.

Some of them have the single working woman spending her own money for her own sake.“Kuch apne dil ke liye” (something for your own heart) goes the tagline for the new Vita Marie honey-oat biscuits by Britannia, a straight response to the standard trope of the housewife fussing over the cholesterol level of her overworked husband. In the ad, a young photographer spends a long, rough day on the streets, capturing charming images of homeless children at the order of her demanding editor. We see her next at her house, where she presumably — and happily — lives alone, starting her crazy day with a healthy snack, because as she stresses, “Dil pe bahut pressure hai yaar” (there is too much pressure on the heart).

In another example, an ad for the Mia range of jewelry for Tanishq, a young, stylish girl is getting ready for office, trying to make some space in her cluttered bedroom to approach the full-length mirror, when she spots a small box, takes out a pair of light earrings and puts them on, to feel a little positive about what is going to be the day on which she receives another unsatisfactory pay raise. Both these ads try to capture the everyday struggles of what is a fast-growing section of the Indian female workforce: the mid-level professional.

In an ad for MIOT Hospital, the pilot getting a joint replaced is a woman – because, the ad says, she can’t rely on anything less trustworthy for her own most-valued self. Since pain-relief brands have always used the image of the aching housewife, it is surprising that the MIOT ad makes not the slightest deal of her being a woman, that too in a traditionally male occupation.

Working women in Indian ads aren’t that new. But what is new is the treatment: the new ads neither feed the old stereotype of whip-cracking boardroom woman, nor project them as inspirational do-gooders. The girl on screen is no longer working to prove herself to a man or, worse, her own parents. It is almost as if nobody remembers the Fair and Lovely ad from just a few years ago, in which a girl’s first response to her father lamenting the lack of a son is to buy a tube of the fairness cream – a purchase which leads, naturally, to an unspecified great job and proud parents.

The other set of the new Indian woman ads present married women trying to balance work and family, and often – like many people we know – failing.

In the new Idea commercial, the wife is dealing with an absent maid, the bane of the Indian housewife, at the same time as she faces an urgent deadline for a freelance writing assignment, and she takes her frustrations out on the husband. In a new Ariel commercial, the husband proceeds to cook dinner after a text from the wife about being stuck at work, and then, for the first time in the storied history of the Indian Husband in Advertising, washes his stained shirt himself. In a third example, the ad for Google Chrome, a bored wife decides to do something with the recipes her mother sends her over e-mail and ends up blogging her way to nothing less than a book contract.

I am not suggesting that showing a woman as independent or concerned about her job is the best way to challenge stereotyping, or that this recent trend indicates a conscious decision or a coherent shift. My point is that the more we try out new themes, the less dominant the old fixations will become. Didn’t the terrorizing mother-in-law (remember the early Harpic ad, where she inspects the toilet bowl for stains as the daughter-in-law’s heart drums in her chest?) disappear, as the advertisers discovered the more pressing challenges before Indian women?

We are talking about a very small proportion of our advertising output – I can count the ads on my fingers – made even more insignificant by the mad flow of television; but together, they promise some minor relief from the dispiriting sameness of the most mass media content involving women. If advertisements do indeed create normalcy, then we might be headed somewhere less bizarre.

Snigdha Poonam is Arts Editor at The Caravan.
NYT

Lashkar despatching best brains to die in Kashmir, says study

A detailed analysis of over 900 biographies of dead Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives has revealed that some of Pakistan’s best educated men are being “dispatched to die” in the unending conflict with India over Kashmir with Punjab providing the bulk of this cannon fodder.

Based on historical precedent, the study on ‘The Fighters of LeT: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death’ warns that the reduction of the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan could bring them back to Kashmir. While admitting difficulty in predicting the directional priorities of Pakistan-based militant groups, it warns that internal security challenges faced by Pakistan and the State’s own shifting threat priorities could result in some of these groups reorienting and investing more broadly in the conflict in Indian Kashmir; the preferred “fighting ground” for 94 per cent of LeT recruits.

The study — conducted with the support of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point — challenges the official narrative that Pakistanis are not involved in acts of terrorism, and only “diplomatic and moral support” is rendered to indigenous mujahideens fighting in India. “There is considerable overlap among the districts that produce LeT militants and those that produce Pakistan Army officers, a dynamic that raises a number of questions about potentially overlapping social networks between the Army and the LeT.”

In fact, according to the study, the expansive and overt presence of LeT throughout the country and its ability to recruit from schools, mosques and madrasas besides circulate its publications “speaks to a degree of tolerance if not outright assistance from the Pakistani State.”

As for the best-educated men being sent for jihad by LeT, it does not reflect the quality of their education but the level. The biographies challenge conventional wisdom that these terrorists are the product of low or no education and are being produced in madrasas. The “LeT militants are actually rather well-educated compared to Pakistani males generally” and the data shows that a bulk of them are products of regular schooling, not madrasas.

About 63 per cent of them have at least a secondary education; “suggesting that their educational distribution is slightly higher than the national attainment levels.” A majority of them have completed secondary school with high grades and quite a few of them have gone up to graduation levels.

Reflecting a concern expressed in several quarters that Pakistan’s breeding grounds for terrorism are not just the tribal areas but a more fertile ground exists in the heart of the country, the study shows that 89 per cent of LeT terrorists are recruited in the country’s most populous and prosperous province of Punjab.

thehindu