Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Sule’s Stellar Performance

“There are millions of women who work much harder than me,” said three-time MP from Baramati, Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP leader Sharad Pawar who has topped the

“There are millions of women who work much harder than me,” said three-time MP from Baramati, Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP leader Sharad Pawar who has topped the national average in all aspects of parliamentary performance such as attendance, debates, private member bills raised etc. for the second time. “The woman who comes to do your daily housework works harder. She cooks and cleans her own home and sends her kids to school and then does so for your home. Women in farms across India work harder,” she said, when we spoke yesterday. Sule, whose attendance in this Lok Sabha session was at 97%, with the most amount of debates raised, a total of 45 to her credit whereas the national average is a meagre 7.7%, says she would like to work even harder. “I hate it when parliament is adjourned. We have such a huge responsibility. We represent 20 lakh people and so much work has to be done.” As of now, she spends 80 to 100 days in Parliament, three-four days a week in her constituency, two days a month travelling the state and one day a week in Mumbai at her office at the YB Chavan Centre. No surprises then that it’s been almost two years since her last vacation and even longer since she’s watched a movie in a theatre. “I opted for this vocation with my eyes open,” says the politician, who cites stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Chandrashekhar as her inspirations in Parliament. “In any case, my family is completely supportive of my career choice. In fact, last week, when I was visiting my constituency and my son had a fall and had to be rushed to the hospital, no one even bothered to inform me! My mum, bless her, just took over,” she says, adding, “We joke that my two kids, husband and Mum have formed a family of their own and that me and my dad have visiting rights now and then.”

Supriya Sule and Sharad Pawar (HT File)

Red, Orange and Green

(From left) Rishad Premji, Manoviraj Khosla and Sanjay Sree.

“My style is casual in a sense, but funky and edgy. I love jackets, but jackets with a twist. Colour is very important to me and shoes are an obsession,” it was peripatetic designer, the Bengaluru-based Manoviraj Khosla on his sartorial swag. We’d reached out to the jet-setting, party-hearty when we chanced upon this arresting picture of him on social media recently, wearing orange pants along with two of his equally dapper friends Rishad Premji, chairman of Wipro and IT maven Sanjay Sree. “Orange, you glad I’m here. Especially when you’re green with envy and red with rage!” Khosla had quipped about their brilliant colour choices. “Men in India have started to dress well and have become very aware of the way they dress. Problem is sometimes they don’t realise that they should wear only what they can carry off,” he said. As for his pick of sharp dressers who can carry off their choices, he mentions the aforementioned Premji, along with Bengaluru’s fashion icon Prasad Bidappa, fellow designer Rohit Bal and restaurateur AD Singh as men who get his vote in matters sartorial. Interestingly, Khosla says his own dressing has sobered. “I used to be very outlandish in my dressing as a kid but have toned it down now,” he says, adding, “Today, the clothes I wear need to stand out but don’t necessarily need to be over-the-top. Though it doesn’t hurt if they are!”
Indeed.

Tweet Talk
“The economy has slowed to such a degree my credit card is now classified as single-use plastic.”
-Tweeted by Kajol Srinivasan

The Non-Conformist

Balraj Sahni with Parikshat Sahni at the premier of the latter’s Pavitra Papi in the early 1970s.

A declaration of interest: This Saturday, our uncle, the actor Parikshat Sahni will be releasing his long-awaited book on his father (and our grand uncle), the iconic and much-revered actor Balraj Sahni, at a sparkling launch, presided over by Amitabh Bachchan. Titled The Nonconformist, the book has been published by Penguin and contains not only hitherto revelations about the actor, but also rare archival photographs of his journey from Rawalpindi to Mumbai and the many detours he took along the way. Balraj Sahni was truly a non-conformist. Born in to a wealthy trader’s family, he opted for a life of creativity, taught at Tagore’s Shanti Niketan, lived at Gandhi’s Sabarmati ashram as a volunteer, worked in London at the BBC and was an ardent member of the Communist Party. All this he did along with turning out sublime performances in movies such as Do Bigha Zameen, Kabuliwala and Garam Hawa. But more than his professional and ideological moorings was the kind of man he was. We were 13 when he died of a massive heart attack and recall the day vividly. Even as Bollywood’s stars gathered to bid him adieu at his home in Juhu, the room also featured clusters of anonymous people whose lives he had touched. Fishermen from the beach who he regularly interacted with, staff of the nearby Sun n Sand who he’d helped during their strike, people from Bhiwandi to whose side he had rushed during their communal riots. Two memories of Balraj Mamaji define the kind of person he was. As children, he would take us to the beach and on one memorable occasion, we recall, he brought along a small tape recorder on which he made us listen to a song that had mesmerised him: Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Sound’s of Silence’! The other memory is when we, as a precocious child, had asked him why a certain pompous Bollywood individual was described as ‘committed’ What do they mean when they say he’s committed, we’d enquired.

“What can I say,” he’d responded, his eyes twinkling, “It’s like a flea that keeps biting a dog, you’d call that committed.”

As always, the non-conformist refused to toe the given line.