Ten days ago, I stood in the line for tickets at Bandra station and noticed that the guy in front of me had these lines printed calligraphy-style on his T-shirt:

Stone Dead Forever
Auttgart Sineers
Galaxy Rainers
Bengrance — Witteilingen.
Being Outstanding in a Complex Society Revolution

I know, I know. You feel envious that you weren’t there to read these words for yourself. Believe me, I felt privileged.

But on Sunday (Feb 10) at the Kala Ghoda Festival, I noticed this on a T-shirt that passed by:

Being Outstanding in a Complex Society

Now that has to rank as a seriously improbable coincidence. In years of being a T-shirt slogan watcher, I’ve never seen the same wacky slogan twice. Here it’s happened within ten days. Naturally, I wonder if this is some popular quote, sort of like “Don’t tase me, bro”.

Is it?

(Click here to read the whole post)

As someone else on this page remarked earlier, mornings at the Kala Ghoda festival are special. Reminds me of times I’ve gone flamingo-watching in Sewri on weekend mornings. There and here, there’s a slow move to wakefulness afoot, and it lends an air of lazy stretchy languor to everything.

So on Saturday morning (Feb 8).

I stumble across a man eating breakfast behind one of the stalls.

Two men sit on the stairs chatting in whispers even though they don’t need to but maybe they feel they must. When I first see them, I stop short — because from that angle, with the vast branches of a tree spreading above them, they are the only two humans in my field of view. And there hasn’t been a previous moment at the Festival when I could have made such a statement.

(Click here to read the whole post)

On Tuesday evening (Feb 5), the tables got turned. Up on stage at the David Sassoon Library, discussing travel writing, were four people: Naresh Fernandes (editor of Time Out Mumbai) moderating, Sarayu Ahuja, Hartosh Bal and me.

Naresh got the wagon rolling with excerpts from various ancient travellers/writers, mainly focussing their keen eyes on the chiquitas. Then he asked the three of us to read bits of our writing, to give our audience a flavour.

About now, a scrawny kitten climbed the stairs leading to the stage, but stopped at the last step.

Sarayu read first, a bit from a book she wrote with Dom Moraes, about the travels of a British writer. Hartosh had earlier confessed to me that he was a product of my college, BITS Pilani, where he studied Mechanical Engineering. He was at Pilani a few years after I graduated. His reading was from a book in progress, about a journey around the Narmada river. Mine was a short piece about a tiny place that touched my heart, Cayce in Kentucky. (Click here to read the whole post)

After Kiran Nagarkar, Saeed Mirza. Mirza’s new book, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, is out from Tranquebar Press. On Monday night, an hour after her conversation with Nagarkar, Nilanjana Roy sat on stage with Mirza to talk about Ammi. And Rahul Bose read several passages from the book.

Nilanjana said that when the manuscript came to her (as Tranquebar’s editor), she figured it would take her a week to read it. Instead, she sat up one night and finished it, and knew right away that she had to make it Tranquebar’s first book.

That was introduction enough.

Mirza began by telling us that his mother came from a “tradition of inclusion”, and had a “largeness of spirit.” These were values, he said, that are disappearing today, leaving only a chauvinism and a lack of the generosity he knew in his mother. Rahul Bose echoed that theme. He said of the book that it speaks of a world we all know; it is a lament for this country, a mixture of longing, love, unslaked thirst and a sense of loss. Books like these, people like Mirza, he said, are the “bits of chewing gum” that keep us together.

(Click here to read the whole post)

(Apologies for the technological incompetence that resulted in this being empty when I first put it up).

I’ve never read Kiran Nagarkar, but after Monday evening when he spent an hour in conversation with Nilanjana Roy, I resolved to fix that lacuna in my life. Not so much because of the samples of his writing we heard or heard described, but because of the man. If that makes sense.

For one thing, his sense of humour. It was there in the first bit of reading he did. This wasn’t a passage from any of his books, but three short fictional biographical blurbs about himself that he wrote for what he said was a short-lived website he had once. “Take your pick”, he said of the three, and it was hard. In one, he claimed to be the most prolific writer in history, having written works now claimed by such luminaries as Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Shobhaa De and the various apostles who put together that book known as the Bible. In another, he claimed to be the inspiration behind the crimes of Idi Amin, Osama, Mugabe and others. It wasn’t just that these outlandish claims were funny by themselves; it was the way he made them, and the way he read them out to us, that had the audience chuckling.

And it was apparent in the rest of his conversation too. Something about the way this man spoke with and to his audience hinted at an alert, vibrant mind, always a good substrate for humour, and so always on the lookout for humour. Not the laugh-out-loud slap-you-on-the-back humour of a Bollywood-style Johnny Lever, yes, but a subtle, self-deprecating kind that grows and builds with that twinkle in his eye. It brought to mind Davy Barry, or Groucho Marx, or perhaps someone even subtler, like Art Buchwald or PL Deshpande.

But there were other things about Nagarkar. (Click here to read the whole post)

On an apparently slow Sunday afternoon at the Festival, we — meaning the wife, our nearly-four-year-old and me — were the attraction for a reasonable crowd at the amphitheatre. It went like this: they were playing rocking Bollywood tunes, but they had nobody on stage to dance to them. I don’t know if this was a planned gap in the performance schedule, or if the performers for that slot decided to stay home. Either way, the two young emcees on stage wandered about, pleading into their mikes for people from the audience to climb up and dance. “The best dancer will win a prize!” they said.

Eventually, a slender young man in a maroon T-shirt and glasses leaped up. Handed over his glasses and began srutting about, pointing periodically up at the trees and sky, once falling onto his back and pointing from there. Yet it was all in time to the music, strangely graceful, and refreshingly different from typical Bollywood dancing.

Five or six more young men — only men — flooded on, some of them clearly trained and accomplished gyrators. But the most endearing was a thirty-something man with a thick moustache and a definite belly, moving about the stage, shaking an arm, shaking a leg, with abandon. When the song was done, everyone jumped off the stage, except him. He commandeered a mike and told us all: “I’m just an ordinary engineer! I just got up here to express myself! You all should come up and express yourself too!”
(Click here to read the whole post)

Admittedly, this is not about KGAF itself. Maybe it does raise some issues though. With no further ado…

After spending most of Sunday afternoon and evening at KGAF with the kiddos, they were starting to tire, asking to go home. Wife wanted to listen to two sessions at David Sassoon Library that would run later than the kids’ bedtimes, so she stayed on while a friend and I walked with the little ones to Churchgate and caught a train home.

About 10pm, wife called. I answered, but asked her to wait a minute because I had to tuck in the kids’ mosquito nets. When I returned, she said, as near verbatim as we can remember: “Dilip, I’m at a public phone and my time is running out!” She told me she was at Churchgate station, about to catch a train for home.

When she got home an hour later, she had a story to tell.
(Click here to read the whole post)

First visit to an event like the KGAF, I prefer not to go attend an event. Instead, I like to simply wander through, getting a feel of place and time and people. (Well, in that third case, not literally a feel, you understand).

And so here’s a feel of what I got a feel of, Saturday opening day evening.

Somebody sold us a lemon tart. (Food wasn’t quite the first priority on my mind as I strolled through, but close enough). Usually, I like lemon tarts: the taste, the texture, the colour. This specimen wasn’t bad, but failed on all three of those counts.

• Instead of a healthy bilious yellow, this one was a pale yellowish-grey.
• Instead of smooth and velvety, this one was grainy, almost crunchy. And that’s before I got to the crust.
• Instead of a pleasant blend of sour and sweet, this one was lip-puckeringly limey, with an intriguing aftertaste of ghee. Lots of ghee.

I immediately ordered another.

Wife yanked me away.

(Click here to read the whole post)

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

The Kala Ghoda Festival was bonanza time for one of my favouritest hobbies: looking at things written on T-shirts. Here are just a few:

Han Some Women

Pepe Jeans London Champions 1973

Your boyfriend says hi!

America’s Finest. Too Hot to Handle. 2nd Division League Life Be A Sport

The Deco & Style of Fashion

Hot Vibration! Uniform Original Design House. 45 MPR. A very fashionable wear collection. 100 % fresh designs. 7-86459-09889

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

Some things get me peeved. My 6.5-year-old son and I go to the screening of My Fair Lady at the Cama Institute, Sunday evening. Even though we get there 15 minutes before the start, the hall is full. Wandering around, I finally find a seat for him at one end of a row. Nothing else except some seats along the side wall, so I sit on the chair there closest to him.

Many more people stream in after us, also searching for seats. About half an hour into the film, a young mother wanders in, strolls about searching for a while, then scurries over (yes, rather bandicoot-like) to my son and worms herself onto his seat. First, she squashes him to one side, then she actually lifts him up and puts him on her lap. I’m hard-pressed to believe I’m seeing this. I lean over and say, that’s my son, I’m not happy with what you did, can you please leave him alone? She motions pleadingly to me.

I can’t make a scene here and now, so I sit back, fuming.

He sits on her lap, but I can tell he is uncomfortable because of the angle of her legs. He keeps sliding off and has to hold on to the seat in front to prevent that. Finally he stands. I call to him to come sit on my lap, whereupon the lady’s son runs over and occupies her sliding lap.

Why is it OK to do this to a kid? Would the lady have thought it acceptable if she had been sitting on the chair and a large man came over and wormed himself into it?

But apart from that: how many more loved, more familiar Western films are there than My Fair Lady? The delicious insults Higgins throws about, Eliza’s outraged Cockney howls, the melody in every one of those songs . no wonder several in the audience mouthed along as Eliza sang. Lots of chocolate for me to eat/Lots of coal making lots of ‘eat/Warm face, warm hands, warm feet/AAAAh-Wooo-dn’t it be loverly?

Ohhhh yes.

Done with the Dockyard walk, son and I happen on a rousing dance rehearsal, for the show scheduled for later in the afternoon. These kids are coordinated, smooth, and are clearly enjoying the dance immensely, and that’s why it’s rousing.

No, wait a minute! It’s really that way because one of the dances involves several of the kids’ fathers, all these moustache-and-shorts men up on stage, bopping and swaying and wiggling fingers and butts to that terrific tune from the ’50s: Buddy Knox’s Let’s Have a Party. (”Send ‘em to the store/And rock some more/Let’s have a party tonight!”)

Knox is from the metropolis of Happy, Texas (this is true). Maybe that’s why these dads looked so kicked to be up on stage whirling their little girls about. When they were done, I was nearly as kicked to have watched them perform. Because of Knox’s song, yes. But this was a fine antidote to disappointment in the dockyard.

The Naval Dockyard walk, Sunday morning, is a disappointment. Captain Talwar, the Navy official guiding us, is genial and funny, but he seems unaware of the heat, and of the composition of the audience. At the beginning and at every stop, he talks at great length. The scraps of shade are not enough for the couple of hundred of us, so the rest must stand in the sun, which is quickly too much to bear for the several older people in our group. And there are also several young kids, who are quickly bored.

The entrance to the dockyard has two lanes, one marked “four wheelers only” (words to that effect). A truck drives in, and the young boy beside me points out excitedly: “It’s a six-wheeler! It shouldn’t be allowed!” True: at the rear, the vehicle has two wheels on each side.

Immediately around the corner from there is a touching memorial to the “unknown worker.” I like that, somehow. Across the road is a banner that lists the “core values” of the Indian Navy:

Patriotism and Loyalty
Resolve and Fighting Spirit

Integrity and Honesty
Duty and Commitment
Example

Later, Captain Talwar tells us about how “Al-Omani” island became British-ized to “Old Woman” island, and how “Pal Bunder” became “Apollo Bunder”. These Britishers are crazy. And we also learned that the ship Minden, built right here in 1810, fought outside Baltimore during the 1812 War there, and it was on this ship that Francis Scott Key woke one morning, saw Old Glory still flying, and composed the Star-Spangled Banner. Besides, one more ship built here, the Trincomalee, is the second-oldest ship in the world that’s still afloat. (The first being the USS Constitution).

I love these tidbits of history.

Two ship’s steering wheels in the “Motivation Hall” - a sort of museum at the start of the tour. They have been polished and re-painted. This last, I know because on the face I read that the maker of these instruments is “A Robinson and Co”, of “Liverpool and Clascow”. (No typo, Clascow).

We get a good idea of how a dry dock works, why it is necessary and why it is such a valuable asset. We see two whale-like submarines and some other warships, hoisted up on pontoons. Men wandering below one of the ships, and I cannot help the macabre vision of the stands collapsing and the ship falling. (Doesn’t happen).

In the Duncan Dock, Captain Talwar tells us there is an unexplained source of fresh water, though it is not used for drinking. As we get there, he tells us that if we go look, we’ll see two men taking a bath in that water. So immediately, these two men have an audience several dozen strong, gawking as they lather and rinse themselves off. Why, I would have liked to ask the good Captain, make a spectacle of them?

A board we pass soon after reads, “Toilet for Ships”.

A piece of paper up on a wall lists a “Cricket Draw”. Matches are scheduled between “C of Y” and “MAST”, between “C.65? and “Ghatkopar”, between “C.37,38? and “MEPS” and between “MWEA” and “DAS-81?. When I last played a cricket tournament, oh about 50 years ago, we named our team “Tu Chal Mein Aaya” (”You Carry On, I’m Coming”).

No offence to the Navy, I like our name better.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

7pm: Rabbi. So says the KGAF schedule for Sat Feb 11, and since I live in a household of Rabbi fanatics, this is a must-see, especially give its kid-friendly time. Still, I think I should try to confirm that this is not a priest getting up to sing songs, or maybe a group named for a furry hoppity animal and they forgot the last letter in the schedule, or even the previous Chief Minister of Bihar crooning for KGAF and they mis-spelled her name. I think I should confirm that this is indeed the Rabbi of the eponymous album.

So I call the Festival hotline. This 7pm Rabbi show, I ask, is that Rabbi Shergill? “One minute”, says a nervous womanly voice. Much whispering and shouting and general crowd sounds - this hotline is answered in the open smack in the middle of Kala Ghoda - and several minutes pass, and a guy comes to the phone and asks me “What do you want?” Patience wearing thin, I repeat my question. He practically laughs in my ear. “No no! It’s not Rabbi Shergill! It’s that fellow who sings Bulla ki jaana!”

Anyway.

We get down to Kala Ghoda by just before 6pm, by which time I’ve seen my T-shirt slogan of the day, on a young lady crossing the road. “Han Some Women”, it says.

First order of business is a pencil portrait of my son. Meanwhile, Vikrum pushes his way through the crowd to run into us, doing a passable imitation of some quick-marching jawans he watched at close quarters last week. A little later Gregory Roberts, author of Shantaram, strides past and Vikrum has a short chat with him, interrupted by autograph-seeking swooners.

I note that the stall we buy candy-floss from also has available Chaineese Paittice, Chaineese Bhel and Caremal Popcorn.

We buy a dabba - you know, one of those things that dabbawallas carry, with food inside? - for several hundred rupees. Oh yes, it also tells time. This is true.

Some time after 7pm, we bundle ourselves into a cab and zoom over to Azad Maidan. Rabbi, here we come!

Only, they’ve switched the schedule. Indian Ocean was supposed to play after Rabbi, at 8pm. Instead, they have kicked off the evening, and Rabbi will play later. This is a great pity, for two reasons. First, Rabbi will now come on at a decidedly kid-unfriendly time, so we won’t be able to stay to hear him. Second, Indian Ocean is - how can I put this kindly - awful. I mean, it’s like a wall of sound, made up of interminable guitar riffs, drum riffs, more guitar riffs, on and on.

You three IO fans out there, don’t come after me.

So we rush hastily out of Azad Maidan, into the little food alley right there. This is where you get the world’s best kala-khatta. Same place also serves, going by the menu, “lemon juice”, “pineapple juice”, “white rose juice” and “sekonjbin juice.”

No thanks, I’ll stick with kala-khatta.

And then we retire across the alley to “Nagesh’s World China Town” for some non-veg fast food. Nagesh has one of those only-in-Bombay addresses: “near Jhunka Bhakar”. I want to find the establishments that are “near idli-dosa”, or “near hamburger and fries”.

And to still-blaring notes and riffs from IO, we find Nagesh’s menu has plenty to offer.

There is a “Chicken Dargon Special” soup. Mmm-hmm!

Under “Rice so Nice”, there is both “Veg Tripple Schez Rice” and “Chicken Tripple Schez Rice.” Both “Veg Wrong Rice” and “Chicken Wrong Rice”. Under “Manchurian”, there is both “Veg Wrong-Chilly” and “Chicken Wrong-Chilly”.

(Yeah, if they give me the food chilly, it would be pretty wrong).

All through my meal, I’m watched closely by two cats, two dogs and three street kids, all asking in their own particular ways for my food. And all through my meal, Indian Ocean blasts away tunelessly. Think they might benefit from a dose of Veg Wrong Rice.

Comments

Comment by Vikrum on February 13, 2006 @ 1:28 pm

Dilip,

Thanks for the hilarious write up. It was a great night, and it was also a wrong night. They should have had some jawans marching instead of Indian Ocean. I would have been there. I would have videotaped it. And watched it over and over again.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

I’m on the outside looking inside
What do I see
Much confusion, disillusion
All around me.

You don’t possess me
Don’t impress me

Just upset my mind
Can’t instruct me or conduct me
Just use up my time.

I talk to the wind
My words are all carried away
I talk to the wind
The wind does not hear
The wind cannot hear.

(King Crimson, I Talk to the Wind)

A thoroughly interesting experience at the KGAF yesterday, being on the other end of the stick. Meaning: on the inside, looking outside. It’s not that I’ve felt, all these days, the pessimism King Crimson seems to feel - no confusion or disillusion on display at sundry puppet shows and the like that I’ve attended.

But yesterday Feb 9, I was on a panel discussing non-fiction, trying my damndest to look out at the audience but mostly failing, because the People Who Organized This Event (the dreaded PWOTE) had these ghastly bright spots shining in our faces. And I don’t know, if you can’t see the people you’re speaking to or with, you do get the strangest feeling that your words are all carried away, the wind does not hear, the wind cannot hear.

At least until they begin speaking back.

I have a great deal of respect for the journalism of my fellow-panelists, Dionne Bunsha and Darryl D’Monte. They write from intimate and hard-working knowledge of their subject. I’ve travelled with Dionne, and watched her dogged insistence on answers, her quest for detail. Similarly, Darryl’s meticulous way with facts and figures are a lesson to any journalist, certainly to me. So I was honoured to be up there with them.

Yet as always with these things, the best part was not just that, not that I got to say my bit from a spotlighted lectern, not the mild ego kick of being on a stage, but that a lively audience kept us going with their questions and comments. And as Yaz’s spirited account of the evening shows, they were lively indeed. There’s something humbling, gratifying, about having a pretty large (must have been 70 or a 100 people) audience that’s listening and interested.

Plenty of questions about blogging, which for some reason I had to field. Plenty more about the media, about the mill lands, about the business of reportage. And if I could have asked, I would have liked to know from the 70 or 100, what is your interest in writing, what kind of writing do you do or want to do, can I take a look at what you write? Because that’s how you learn writing, by reading what others write.

There was, as well, one guy in a cap (if that was a cap I thought I saw through the dazzle of the lights) who asked a fair amount about blogging. I would have liked to say hi at the end, but he left before I could go over to him. So if that was you, please get in touch. Would love to hear from you.

And since I began this with King Crimson, let me end it with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, which if I’m not mistaken was some kind of spin-off from King Crimson (my memories of these groups are starting to fade as I hit my 70s):

One day in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well.
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of a great black bell.

One day in the year of the fox

When the bell began to ring.
Meant the time had come for one to go
To the Temple of the King.

There in the middle of the circle he stands,
Searching, seeking.
With just one touch of his trembling hand,
The answer will be found.

Daylight waits while the old man sings,

Heaven help me!
And then like the rush of a thousand wings,
It shines upon the one.
And the day has just begun.

(Rainbow, Temple of the King)

Hmm. What the relevance is, I’m not sure. Hell, what it means, I’ve never been sure! Never mind.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

German puppet show at the KGAF, what do I tell you. The Theater am Faden of Stuttgart consists of a wife-husband team: Helga Brehme and Karl Rettenbacher. Cheery Santa Claus types, they put a lot of hard work into a show that I don’t know how many of us could have appreciated.

Helga kicked off by telling us (in English) briefly about the story, and that they make the puppets themselves, and that since they are made of wood, they can’t learn any languages apart from German, and so the show would be entirely in German. Now I don’t believe she truly wanted to blame the puppets, poor things. She did say, “maybe some of you will understand German.”

At which point, Karl let out an agonized yell in German: “Helgaaaa!”

And the show began. I did my best to understand the story, and I’m going to tell it to you here in case you missed it which you probably did.

There’s a jester, and a shepherd who plays the flute. The king makes his entrance oddly; he sits in his throne with his back to the audience while the action, whatever the action is, is raging all about him. But when he turns around, the first thing he says, very very loudly, is (and the King’s lines are done by Helga) (and this is in German of course): “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

At which point, a huge cawing erupts above our heads: crows in the picturesque branches take off. Whether in response to the King, and whether they caw in German, and whether this is part of the show, I’m not sure still.

There’s suddenly a backdrop showing several sheep. The shepherd struts about, and a small duck makes an appearance, flapping its wings.

The King says, regally: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

The crows go nuts again.

Without warning, the duck attacks the shepherd, flying at him manically again and again. He stands there stoically. The King says his line again, and the crows caw once more. A bear appears, and spends the first several minutes of his time on stage stretching his limbs, as cats do. The shepherd is still standing there stoically.

Without warning, the bear attacks the shepherd, rushing at him manically, the shepherd ducks (no pun) out of the way, the bear charges again. Suddenly the bear is sitting on the shepherd. Suddenly the shepherd is sitting on the bear. Then they both fall to the floor in exhaustion. After a few seconds, the bear rises onto his hind legs and the shepherd starts playing his flute. This captivates the bear, and you wonder why the shepherd did not think of it before, during the assaults. The bear dances and jumps, then stretches, then stands on his forelegs for a long time, bopping his butt to the flute.

The shepherd goes over and nuzzles the bear.

The King says: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

The crows are silent. Perhaps they have emigrated to Siberia.

The jester comes in, and says “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”.

A court minister falls back in alarm, the shepherd comes in again followed by an insipid princess, and then the duck again. The duck flies repeatedly at the minister, who falls down again. He gets up and makes some karate moves, but the duck drives him off the stage and then settles on the King’s head. Then in the princess’s arms. This endears the princess to the shepherd, who looks at the princess tenderly. The duck sits on her ankles, and they exit stage right.

With much guttural snorting, two porcupines turn up, butt first, and start shedding quills in excitement. The shepherd clings in fright to a tree. They leap at him manically, while making more guttural sounds and whistles.

The duck shows up. By then the porcupines are asleep. The duck stands on one, then gets tangled in their quills, then kisses the shepherd. This inspires the shepherd to play the flute. The porcupines give up their hostility and, like the bear, begin dancing.

The jester starts a manic dance, complete with splits in the air, in front of an impassive King. Ends it on his head, which brings forth from the King a particularly emphatic “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

The crows are back from Siberia, because they erupt again overhead.

The minister plays the flute and gives it to the princess, who says “beautiful flute!” (Someone next to me translated this one line).

And suddenly the shepherd is back, with 4 nasty snakes after him manically. The jester arrives, cackles in front of the snakes, screams when they turn on him, runs away, comes back, cackles again, runs away again . Yet again, the shepherd finally picks up his flute and begins to play, which turns the snakes all coochie-coo and they sway about ecstatically.

At this point, a strong Kala Ghoda gust of wind knocks over the entire backdrop.

The King says, “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!” He falls over on his back. Miraculously, he levitates in that position and swings energetically through the air.

Crows caw in alarm.

The shepherd and princess go off together, then return and do a dance with much kissing. The duck returns, leaps about, does a dance all his own. And the bear, with the jester on his back! And the snakes! And the two porcupines! In their joy, they knock the snakes off the stage. And the minister arrives, but the duck chases him off.

The End

Comments

Comment by Shivam Vij on February 8, 2006 @ 5:58 pm

The great Indian middle ‘class’.