To steal perchance a dream

A 21-year-old Oxford student, whose debut novel is a futuristic fantasy about a young clairvoyant in a dystopian world, is being touted as the next JK Rowling.

It's early days yet, but protagonist Paige Mahoney has the personality and pluck to fill the void left by Hogwarts wizard Harry Potter. Many fictional characters and their authors have tried - and failed - to scale those magical heights of success that Potter's creator JK Rowling still enjoys. Now, the publishing house Bloomsbury hopes to relive its success through Samantha Shannon's debut novel, The Bone Season. It's the first of a seven-book series that will be unleashed next month on an audience always eager for a new fantasy fix.

Drawing from the rich tapestry of London and Oxford, Shannon weaves a dystopian world set in 2059;a world where clairvoyants are guilty of simply existing. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney works in Scion London, the city's criminal underworld. She uses her powers as a dreamwalker to enter the spirit world and break into the minds of people to gather intelligence for her boss, mine-lord Jaxon Hall, who offers protection to talented 'voyants' in return for their services. But one rainy night when Paige is captured by the secret police, she is flung into a world of government conspiracies that goes back to 1859. Instead of being executed at the Tower, Paige is taken to a penal camp, Sheol I, which is run by an alien race called the Rephaim. We learn that the prison city is Oxford, a place whose very existence was disavowed by the government so that the Rephaim could make it their home and harvest voyants for their powers. 

Unlike the first two Harry Potter books that had an Enid Blytonesque quality to them with their boarding-school backdrop, The Bone Season vibrates with darkness from the word go. "Yes, it's going to be a dark series, but perhaps not as brutal as George Martin's Game of Thrones, " says Shannon, who graduated from St Anne's College, Oxford, just a few weeks ago. 

The 21-year-old author's life makes for a compelling story. It has all the elements of a coming-of-age novel: a teenager's desire to write;the rejection of a sci-fi novel she wrote while still at school;the courage to try again. Shanon got the inspiration to write a story around clairvoyants during an internship with the literary agent David Godwin. His offices are located at Seven Dials, a junction in the Convent Garden district, where seven streets converge. 

Gentrification has altered Seven Dials, and today it's quite different from the poor and gritty landscape captured by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz. (Agatha Christie fans may recall The Seven Dials Mystery. ) During her lunch break, Shannon roamed the streets, catching glimpses of shops selling crystal balls. Seven Dials was the seed for The Bone Season, a place where the worlds of spirits, clairvoyants and underworld lords brush against each other;the place, she says, is "where it all began". 

Paige Mahoney was born during Shannon's second year at Oxford. Like the protagonist, Shannon was 19 at the time. "I'm nothing like Paige, but I live vicariously through her, " she has said. "She is hot headed, and has a life I'd like to lead. But Paige is not as independent as she'd like to think. " The three dominant characters in the voyant's life are all male. The good Dr Nicklas Nygard was the first to recognise her talents. Mine-lord Jax, who can switch from vicious ruthlessness to easy charm, has a strong hold on her. And finally, there's her captor and keeper, the Rehpaite Arcturus, whom she calls Warden even in their most intimate moments. "Warden is his title. Her use of the name is symbolic. " 

Shannon says that writing such an ambitious book was not an isolating experience. "I tried to control myself. I didn't want to flunk college because of my writing. The liberating thing about writing a sci-fi fantasy is that you can break the rules. " 

She gives full reign to her imagination, and this is reflected in her description of the Rephaim, physically perfect creatures that looked like humans before the Fall in Genesis. "The Rephaim are a race that feature in the Hebrew Bible, and their basic description inspired me to create a brand-new supernatural creature, " Shannon writes in a blog post. They are giants of the world. The Hebrew Bible also describes them as shades or spirits, inhabitants of the netherworld. 

In The Bone Season, they reside in Oxford, a mysterious and beautiful place that defies the ravages of time. "As students, we called it the Oxford Bubble. There was a sense of claustrophobia that contributed to this feeling. " Shannon draws on this sense of time standing still and carves a space between the action-packed pages to dwell on this. The gramophone is a recurring motif that evokes an anachronistic Victorian atmosphere. Often, the reader catches Warden listening to old music on the gramophone. "It was deliberate. The year 1859 is ever present, and has a bearing on the events in 2059. I indulged a bit by putting in my favourite songs. " When Warden questions Paige, you can hear Frank Sinatra's 'I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance (With You)'. In one scene, she wakes up to the soft strains of 'It's a Sin to Tell a Lie' by The Inkspots. 

When they read the manuscript, Bloomsbury offered Shannon a six-figure advance and the publicity machinery was set in motion. There's already a film in the pipeline. Perhaps comparisons with Rowling are not so farfetched. Shannon is uncomfortable with the comparison. "I really admire her, JK Rowling. I grew up on her books. I want to be known as Samantha Shannon."

Cruise control

We are educating girls, raising their aspirations, even giving them a taste of professional life, and then asking them to rein in their ambitions.

Mujhe lagta hai ki hamare andar itni shakti hai...jiska day to day life mein 10 per cent bhi use nahin hoti. " (I believe we have so much power hidden within ourselves. We don't use even 10 per cent of that power in day to day life. ) 

This is not a quote from a book by Paulo Coelho or Stephen Covey. These are the words of Premlata Agarwal, speaking to me at her modest home in Jamshedpur, as she poured me a cup of tea. Premlata Agarwal is a housewife, married into a Marwari business family. Premlata Agarwal is also a world-class mountaineer and the oldest Indian woman to scale Mount Everest, at the age of 48. She is an inspirational woman whose story I had the privilege to feature in my book Follow Every Rainbow. 

Telling stories of his experiments with truth

A veteran Gandhian fuses the power of storytelling with simplicity and warmth.

Ronak Patel is your typical 12-year-old. He has carefully stored an autograph that cricketer Virat Kohli once gave him, when in Ahmedabad for an ODI. But Ronak has stored another autograph with great care, of another youth icon - and a rather unlikely one at that, since Narayan Desai is 89 years old. Desai is a popular octogenarian who has taken it upon himself to make Gandhian teaching relevant to the 21 century. "I wish my school textbooks told Bapu's story as interestingly, " says a wide-eyed Ronak. 

Narayanbhai (as Desai is referred to by most folks) is the Mahatma's most notable new-age prophet; and one who still uses the simple power of the spoken word. No PowerPoint or multimedia presentations for him. And it appears to be a yeoman effort that's succeeding. People of all ages are known to flock to the Gandhi Katha series he started in Gujarat in 2004, and then took across the globe. Nine years on he finds that he has completed 108 of them and is still going strong. He did take a break in 2012 for a short while, he says, what with age catching up. But he has restarted the kathas now. 

There's also that ring of authenticity to his tales, since Narayanbhai grew up in Bapu's company. He is the son of Mahadev Desai, the Mahatma's trusted confidante and also his biographer, and indeed, talks of Gandhi as if he were an adorable grandfather, much like he himself now appears to many. But then he also talks of the Mahatma's ability to transcend human failings - both his and of others. 

Narayanbhai was born in December 1924 in Valsad and spent most of his childhood in ashrams, mainly Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and Sevagram near Wardha. He stopped attending school to be educated and trained by his father and other inmates of the ashram. He specialised in basic education and spinning and weaving khadi. He is also the author of a four-volume biography of Gandhi in Gujarati - Maru Jeevan Ej Mari Vani (My Life is my Message), a dream his father could not fulfill because of his sudden death in prison on August 15, 1942. 

But the oral narrative is now his only obsession. Narayanbhai begins one of his kathas in Ahmedabad in 2012 by stating that Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad, the Mahatma's first home in India (after returning from South Africa in 1915) was a bungalow on the banks of the Sabarmati. But all places that Gandhi went to were dubbed 'ashrams'. So the bungalow, too, he says, became an ashram. 

"When Bapu left for the Roundtable Conference in London on the steamer S S Rajputana in 1931, he chose to rest in a place close to the washroom because it was least used on the boat and also the most peaceful, " he says. "Later, even that corner was called an ashram, " he adds, a mischievous smile playing on his face. His audience laughs. 

"I want to demystify Gandhiji for my listeners, " he tells TOI-Crest. "He was not a god. He had shortcomings and he also broke the rules he made. The message is really about how he overcame these shortcomings and reinvented himself from time to time and became the Mahatma we know today. I hope that the Gandhi Kathas connect with every individual - right from a small kid to the eldest in a family, a government employee and a politician. " 

Even the mundane conditions in which Gandhi first met Vinoba Bhave are woven into a fascinating tale by Narayanbhai. "Vinoba had heard people in Benares say: 'Bhashan ho to Gandhi ka' (Only Gandhi gives great speeches). This fascinated him. After exchanging letters with Bapu, a 19-year-old Vinoba finally came to meet him in Ahmedabad. He was thinking about the grand conditions in which he would meet this great orator, but instead, he found Bapu sitting on the floor, dicing vegetables. Vinoba says Bapu noticed the surprise in his eyes and reacted by offering him the additional bag of vegetables that he had. Both sat down and diced vegetables together. "It was my first diksha in karmayog, " Vinoba had later said. 

As is a true Gandhian's wont, Narayanbhai shuns the limelight and continues to lead a simple life in his ashram called 'Sampurna Kranti' at Vedchchi, 60 km away from Surat. The very first Gandhi Katha was held on the campus of Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmedabad, the only university founded by Gandhi. Narayanbhai is the chancellor of the university. He narrates the kathas as if he was narrating the Ramayana, many of which have been converted into CDs and books over the past eight years. He has taken the kathas to Kerala, Odisha, Maharashtra and New Delhi. He has also journeyed to foreign shores and held session in the US, United Kingdom and Canada. 

Narayanbhai, who still spins the charkha every morning, always tells his audiences about his abiding faith in Bapu. The katha consists largely of a prose narrative but to break the monotony, he punctuates them with verses and songs - all of which he himself composes. When asked whether he prepares for these kathas, he says, "Never. I look into the audience's eyes and I start speaking. Bapu's speeches and talks were very contextual and simple. " He has also written a book on his first 10 years with Gandhi titled Bliss Was it to be Young with Gandhi: Childhood Reminiscences. Narayanbhai was also conferred the Sahitya Academy Award for Gujarati in 1993 for a biography of his father Mahadev Desai. 

Only recently has he reduced the frequency of his kathas. "Earlier, I used to travel every week, but now because of age I have reduced the kathas to one per month. In fact, I look to the young to reinterpret Gandhi for their generation. It might not be in the same form but the narrator should have three things - compassion towards the cause, understanding of Gandhi and his philosophy and good oratory skills, " says Desai. 

Does he plan to retire from his kathas anytime? Narayanbhai, with a gleam in his determined eyes, says that's unlikely. "The kathas are my life's mission and will continue till my last breath. I want to tell the world about the relevance of non-violence in the current turbulent times. "

From ‘Composition’ to Collaboration

A Natural Look Inspired by Jackson Pollock

Whether looking at fashion magazines, commercials, or blogs online, inspiration for everyday beauty can come from anywhere, including from a painting. Through my design studio, LKN Studio, I work as a wardrobe, set and prop stylist for photography and film productions. One of the most rewarding aspects about working within these industries is collaborating with the many accomplished creatives local to West Michigan. Today, I partnered with one of Grand Rapids’ top hair and makeup stylists, Rebecca Gohl, to create a natural beauty look inspired by the painting ‘Composition’ (ca.1946) by the American artist Jackson Pollock using eco-friendly cosmetics and hair products. It will give you a view into how we as production styling professionals work together to take inspiration and apply it to real life.

The Collaborator

Rebecca Gohl, a native to Grand Rapids, has been working in the production industry from age 15 where she started with her father, David Winick, building sets for film production. She has worked in various roles in the industry from production assistant, wardrobe and set stylist, but found her true passion as a hair and makeup stylist. “I’ve always loved fashion and people and have been drawn to period hair and makeup,” Gohl explains. “I set my hair in vintage sets regularly and spend most of my extra time researching different period hair and makeup to become an expert.” Even though her main draws are retro and historical fashion, Gohl loves to create styles from past to present. She works regularly on commercial and editorial fashion shoots for clients such as Hush Puppies, Merrell, and Amway to create fresh and contemporary looks that inspire the fashion forward beauty lovers. Her energy and creativity are inspiring to work with.

The Inspiration

Gohl and I met to discuss our inspiration, the painting ‘Composition’ (ca.1946) by Jackson Pollock. Pollack was a major figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement and is well known for his drip paintings. For the technique, Pollock would play music in the background as he worked, dip his paint brush into paint and start moving it to the music over the canvas without touching the canvas directly; allowing the paint to drip from the brush and create threadlike strokes that seem to shoot across the surface. While examining the painting, the dynamic expression of the motion of the strokes and the layering of neutral colors (black, white, tan and ivory) with accents of bright colors (aquamarine, cobalt blue, goldenrod yellow, blush pink and pure red) stood out to us both. We found our inspiration for the look.

The Collaboration

To create an eco-friendly look that would reflect Pollock’s work, Gohl utilized natural and organic products from the hair product company Onesta and the cosmetic company Ecco Bella. For the hair, she created a spiral texture throughout with a curling iron, which mimics the long strokes of Pollock’s paintbrush. Gohl used Onesta’s products to naturally protect the model’s hair from the heat and hold the style. As Pollock used layers of color in his painting, Gohl created a light neutral base on the face and cheeks and then layered bronze, deep blue and golden yellow tones from Ecco Bella’s product line to accent the eyes. To frame the eyes, she hand dipped the tips of faux eyelashes in mascara to imitate the dripped dot effect of Pollock’s technique and worked them in between the model’s lashes. A beautiful shade of rose was selected to top off the lips and reflect the pink accents seen in the work. Below is a list of the products used:

 Ecco Bella Cosmetics for the Face and Lips

Concealer: FlowerColor Coverup Beige

Base: FlowerColor Face Powder Fair

Cheeks: FlowerColor Bronzing Powders Hibiscus and Sunflower

Eyelids: FlowerColor Powdered Eyeliner Mystic, FlowerColor Powdered Eyeliner La Lune

Eyeliner: Soft Eyeliner Pencils Royal Blue and Bronze, FlowerColor Powdered Eyeliner La Lune

Mascara: Natural Black Mascara

Lips: FlowerColor Lipstick Claret Rose

Onesta Products for the Hair Styling

For Heat and Styling: Create Liquid Setting Mist

For Styling and Hold: Create Finish Spray Firm Hold

For the clothing, I kept the base palette dark and neutral with the black-fringed dress to mimic the darker tones of the painting. Yellow and gold tones were added through jewelry to imitate the bright splatter of goldenrod paint. The background is similar to the shade of aquamarine paint used by Pollack, which I decided to keep simple like an artist’s canvas so that the model’s look becomes the focus of the image.

When in motion, the combination of the free-flowing fringed dress, the hair, and jewelry streaming through the air along with the accents of color seen in the subject’s face creates an awe-inspiring effect that brings the strokes of Pollock’s painting to life.

Home can be the place you want to leave

Amitava Kumar, 50, believes that his home town of Patna actually has three avatars - the elsewhere city that lives in the imagination of those who, like him, left it behind;the nowhere city, filthy and frantic, that is inhabited by those who cannot leave it;and the city of hope for those who come from poor districts. He attempts to capture the essence of the city in a short biography, quite unattractively titled 'A Matter of Rats'. But Kumar, who teaches English at Vassar College in the US, says he wanted to write not about rulers but about rats, both the four-legged as well as the two-legged variety.

From Megasthenes' eulogies to its magnificence to Shiva Naipaul's description of it as the 'heart of darkness', how difficult was it to chronicle the history of Patna's fall? 

We learn history and everything else through textbooks. The approach is serious and dull. It lacks imagination.

Story without words

Virender Singh, the deaf and mute wrestler with an impressive list of wins, is the hero of a documentary, 'Goonga Pehelwan'.

It is a busy evening at Delhi's Chhatrasaal Stadium. A football game is on and athletes are practising on the synthetic tracks along the pitch. In one corner, a group of wrestlers are doing push-ups and squats. Among them is Virender Singh, a 27-year-old hearing-and-speech-impaired wrestler with an impressive list of wins, both within the country and overseas. 

Known as Goonga Pehelwan (mute wrestler), Virender is now the subject of a forthcoming documentary film of the same name. The 40-minute biopic will be released in early August and is directed by Vivek Chaudhary, Mit Jani and Prateek Gupta of the production house Videowala. "We came across Virender's story in a newspaper in September last year, " says Chaudhary, one of the directors. "I went over to see him at the Chhatrasaal Stadium, and he seemed keen on the idea of a film."

Virender is the only deaf and mute grappler among the 150 wrestlers at Mahabali Satpal Akhara, which is housed within the stadium. Run by the 1982 Asian Games gold medallist-turned-coach Satpal Singh, it is arguably the country's most illustrious akhara, having spawned Olympic champions like Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt. 

Virender joined the akhara at the age of 10 when an uncle, employed with the CRPF, spotted his talent. In the years since, he has gone on to become one of the akhara's most distinguished students with a proud list of achievements: a gold medal at the 2005 Deaflympics in Melbourne in the 74-84 kg freestyle wrestling category, a silver at the World Deaf Wrestling Championships in 2008 in Yerevan in Armenia, a bronze at the 2009 Deaflympics in Taipei, and a bronze at the 2012 World Deaf Wrestling Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria. 

The film on Virender got off the ground in February this year, with the money coming from a non-governmental organisation, Drishti, which works to promote human rights through art and media. Shooting happened in three stretches between February and June. The first stretch of shooting was done at Chhatrasaal with Virender;the team then travelled to his village, Sasroli in Haryana. Although he has a job under the sports quota with the state-owned electricity transmission company, Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited and earns a monthly stipend of Rs 17, 000, most of Virender's earnings come from dangals, or mud-wrestling tournaments. He fights wrestlers without disabilities and often wins prize money up to Rs 1 lakh. 

The filmmakers followed him as he fought these dangals through several villages in north India such as Kadma, Karuwara, Bir Chhuchhakwas, Godhri, Chandpur and Dholipalli in Haryana, and Kathumar near Bharatpur in Rajasthan. The rules are tweaked slightly when Virender is wrestling: instead of blowing the whistle, the referees usually touch Virender to point out a foul or inform him of the score. 

Virender's cousin, also a wrestler, helps him by playing the interpreter. As the filmmakers got more familiar with their subject, the wrestler began opening up, even talking about his relationships. "We got to know that the wrestlers from the akhara aren't allowed to meet or talk to girls, so we asked him about it, " says Chaudhary. Virender, he says, provided honest and fascinating insights into his life. 

The film's release in August is expected to not only highlight Virender's achievements but also push for his representation as a participant at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. That may be difficult given the stiff competition for the India berth at the Games, and the fact that wrestling now faces an uncertain future at the Olympics itself. But Chaudhary is hopeful. "There is a precedent where a deaf wrestler - Portugal's Hugo Passos - has participated in the Olympics. This was in the Athens Olympics in 2004, " he says. 

Virender, on his part, maintains a sense of equanimity about both the film and his shot at the Rio Games. He has something more pressing to deal with: the 2013 Summer Deafalympic Games to be held in Sofia, Bulgaria later this month - between July 26 and August 4. In his dormitory at the Chhatrasaal Stadium, a dingy, unkempt room where wrestlers sleep on the ground and live out of their suitcases, his interpreter says that he has lost 10kg and that this time he will be fighting in the 76kg category instead of his usual 84kg category. 

Virender fishes out a photograph of Turkish, Iranian and Bulgarian flags from an earlier championship taken on his cellphone, indicating they will be his main competitors this time too. He's working hard to get another gold, he indicates, holding his index finger up.