Malavika’s Mumbaistan: The Rajah Retires

The party saw staff in specially designed tees, cake, a taped video of salutations from his Indian friends and colleagues, Coleridge-masks, and a turban for the chief guest.

It was a farewell fit for a Rajah, when around 200 of Condé Nast’s employees in Mumbai gathered at the group’s stylish office at Ballard Estate to bid adieu to President, Condé Nast International (the division of Condé Nast, which publishes 139 magazines in 27 international markets), Nicholas Coleridge, on what would be his 50th and final visit to the site. And, by all accounts, Coleridge, an impassioned India lover and the man who spearheaded the media conglomerate’s entry into the subcontinent 11 years ago, when he brought in international fashion Bible, Vogue, could not have been more pleased. “How kind of Condé Nast India to give me such a splendidly OTT send-off,” the dashing publisher instagrammed about the party that saw staff in specially designed tees, cake, a taped video of salutations from his Indian friends and colleagues, Coleridge-masks, and a turban for the chief guest. We’d met the celebrated media maven in 1984, in London, when he was Feature’s Editor for London’s high-society glossy, ‘Harpers and Queen’, at the start of what would become a wildly successful career in media. It had been at a lunch hosted by the magazine’s iconic editor Willie Landels and the afternoon had passed in happy banter (and a bit of unabashed celebrity-spotting: David Bowie happened to be lunching at the next table). Coleridge had charmed us right away with his curiosity, interest and love for India. That and his sense of irreverence and fun: he liked nothing better than a good yarn, especially if it emanated from Kolkata, London or Kathmandu and concerned an eccentric media tycoon or a wayward Maharajah! No surprises then, that by the time we’d returned to Mumbai from the trip, there had been a letter from Coleridge in his official capacity, commissioning a story out of India; nor that a couple of months later, on Landel’s retirement, he had been appointed as editor; nor that a few years later, he’d been snapped up by Condé Nast as one of its youngest and brightest executives and that his career successes mounted exponentially since. Through it all, even as a high-flying publisher, he continued to pen popular novels at the rate of almost one every year, made innumerable private family vacations to India, continued to expand his employer’s businesses across the globe with unwavering zeal, write a few, excellent non-fiction tomes (such as Paper Tigers, the clever, big, fat, gossipy book about publishing’s icons), continued to be a doting family man and a kind and thoughtful friend. And what now for Coleridge? A memoir of his life and times through the golden years? A series of best-selling racy novels across the world’s hotspots? A rambling farm on the outskirts of Delhi or an old colonial bungalow in Kolkata, where he can spend the rest of his days surrounded by all things Indian? Why not? Stranger things have happened. Ask author-historian William Dalrymple or one-time head of Penguin John Mackinson.

Nicholas Coleridge at the farewell.

Have Brush, Will Paint

Sharmistha Ray

As is known, there is an India season unfurling in artsy cultural NYC even as we speak. ‘The Progressive Revolution’, which opened on September 14 at Asia Society New York, saw erstwhile Mumbai and now NYC-based artist, and TED fellow Sharmistha Ray as one of the visitors. “It’s brought an important wedge of Indian Modernism to America’s shores,” she said, when we texted her yesterday. As for this image of her posing before a canvas by Francis Newton Souza, who she describes as ‘the most interesting of the Modernists from India post-Independence’, she says, “He certainly had enough Catholic guilt to infuse his paintings with a wayward brilliance that I believe outstrips his peers many times over, in terms of personal risk and painterly expression. In this painting for instance, he proclaims himself as a Progressive Artist for Modern India, fully nude, wielding paintbrush in his palm. I’m loving the machismo and grit: loving it, and also attempting my best mimicry, proclaiming that I can still be as audacious as the best of them (with my clothes on).”
Indeed!

Rachel Dwyer

The delightful, ever-impish SOAS academic and Indophile Rachel Dwyer’s piquant sense of humour and love for pachyderms are well-known. This week, she combined both to produce this wonderful visual gag. “I am delighted to have been elected a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Resources Species Survival Commission Asian Elephant Specialist Group. (IUCN SSC AsESG),” she wrote, adding, “And, must now get on with writing my research publications on the Asian elephants in India,” while offering the poster for the much loved 70s Bollywood blockbuster and cult classic, Haathi Mere Saathi, which had made such an impression on people of a certain generation. Unsurprisingly, the responses flew in fast. From “Haathi mere Saathi was huge in my childhood, especially the title song” to “Can still perform the lead number, when needed in an emergency!”
Come to think of it, most of us can.

WTSWTM
WTS:
“I’ll develop a proper, phonetic, linguistic-capable vocal cord for monkeys, lions and tigers by initiating them into super-conscious breakthrough. Within a year, I’ll establish this.”
-Rape accused, self-styled spiritual leader Nithyananda.

WTM:
“After all, I have already, successfully established that human beings can bray like donkeys.”