The success of a business depends on many factors, the most important of which is the decision regarding what industry it would like to pursue. In management terms, the blueprint for any business as to which niche it would like to operate in is called a ‘business model’. It is imperative to have a business model in place for it provides focus and direction to the management. Without such a structured approach, a business is likely to falter.
In Some Sizes Fit All, Akhil Gupta explains how the most important pillar for the success of any business is clarity on its business model. There are seven main issues which need to be considered and agreed upon for setting up a solid business model.
1. The line of activity
Almost all industries have multiple segments, referred to as ‘lines of activity’, which the management needs to carefully consider and choose from. In most cases, one would have to choose one or some of them as it may be neither necessary nor possible to pursue all possible lines.
2. Geography
It is important to identify the region in which the management would like to operate. The choice of geography would depend on the resources and ambitions of the management.
3. Target Customer
Companies need to carefully choose the segments of customers they wish to serve since the business strategy and required actions will depend upon this.
4. Sequencing and pacing of expansion
If multiple choices exist in any of the parameters above, it would be prudent to decide on sequencing and priorities and the milestones/time period for the introduction of specific products/services or specific geographies.
5. Revenue and profitability model and timing
It is important to have a clear revenue model, that is, a proper understanding of how and from where the revenue will come in, and also to have a time frame within which the revenue will start coming in. Companies that cannot demonstrate a revenue and profitability model do go out of favour sooner or later.
6. Clarity of objective
Every business needs to be clear as to what its main goal is—is it philanthropy or running a profitable business?Ideally, the objective should be to run a successful and profitable business with rapid scale-up using ethical means.
7. Revisit the business model at regular intervals
It is important for every company to revisit and review all aspects of its business model at regular intervals. These intervals can be time-based, say, annually, or can depend on specific events, such as regulatory changes, new technological innovations, the emergence of new markets, etc.
Some Sizes Fit All is an attempt to explain the fundamental pillars for any kind of business. An authentic and lucid presentation of management concepts and practices-which Akhil Gupta has tried and tested first hand through his illustrious career-this is a must-read for anyone trying to build a robust and financially sound business.
Friendships and sustainable, in-depth human bonds are crucial for survival and individual fulfillment. But like any relationship, friendships also need care and emotional investment for sustenance and strength.
In his latest book The Magic of Friendships, motivational speaker Shubha Vilas explores, in a straightforward, anecdotal manner, some accessible advice on how to sustain strong and magical friendships in your life. We take a look:
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Growing as an individual
‘Unless we work on our bad attitude and develop the right attitude and mindset, genuine friendship will always elude us.’
The Magic of Friendships || Shubha Vilas
Symbiotic and mutualistic dynamic
‘[A symbiotic relationship] should ideally not be developed with the intention of deriving gains from the other person, but should be born of compassion and empathy towards one another.’
Putting friends at the centre of our lives
‘Friendship begins when we get rid of our self-centred mindset. As long as we remain at the centre of our lives, making good friends is out of the question. […] As long as we are focused on serving our own needs, interests and concerns, there is no time or desire to focus on the needs, interests and concerns of another person.’
Be your own friend first
‘To be a friend to another person, you first need to be a friend to yourself. Before you take on the responsibility of a friendship, you first need to take responsibility for your own self. The responsibility for changing ‘me’
Invest time and effort
‘[Deep friendships] cannot be developed overnight. They need patient nursing, which requires time.’
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In these challenging, socially-distanced times, it is more important than ever to keep your friends close. The Magic of Friendships is a testament to the fact that those friendship goals are way more attainable than you think!
1994, twenty-year-old Gunjan Saxena boards a train to Mysore to appear for the selection process of the fourth Short Service Commission (for women) pilot course. Seventy-four weeks of back-breaking training later, she passes out of the Air Force Academy in Dundigal as Pilot Officer Gunjan Saxena.
On 3 May 1999, as the Kargil war begins, the time comes for Saxena to prove her mettle. From airdropping vital supplies to Indian troops in the Dras and Batalik regions and casualty evacuation from the midst of the ongoing battle, to meticulously informing her seniors of enemy positions and even narrowly escaping a Pakistani rocket missile during one of her sorties, Saxena fearlessly discharges her duties, earning herself the moniker ‘The Kargil Girl’.
The Kargil Girl || Gunjan Saxena, Kiran Nirvan
This is her inspiring story, in her words. Read on for some fascinating insights into the meticulous training and strategic testing that goes into the making of an officer of the Indian Defence Forces.
Testing involves almost superhuman levels of co-ordination and dexterity ‘Using one’s peripheral vision, one had to press the buttons on an adjacent panel as they lit up. A red and green light on the screen had to be switched off using one’s left hand. All this had to be done quickly and simultaneously.’
The psychological tests to determine the mental strength of people who will lead in battle form a major chunk of the SSB exam—the Word Association Test (WAT), the Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT), the Self-Description (SD) test and the Situation Reaction Test (SRT). ‘These might just sound like acronyms to many, but for defence aspirants, these are the devils that stand at the gates of any SSB centre, ready to peek into the darkest corners of their minds and reveal their true, hidden selves.’
There is almost no margin for error in even a single applicant-as the strength of the chain is only as much as that of the weakest link. ‘The rate of error has to be zero—one wrong selection and an entire platoon, battalion or even a division may suffer. Someone can be denied for being too young, too old, for having flat feet, anxiety, phobias and so on.’
There are several levels of testing and training that must be passed before one becomes a commissioned army officer ‘Getting recommended was only the beginning. The path to glory was strewn with obstacles, ones that would almost break me.’
Training commences with ordeals designed to engender the highest levels of fitness ‘Introductions began with us—the first-termers—in high-plank position. Some of us couldn’t even remain in the position for thirty seconds. Whenever one of us fell flat on the floor, the others were asked by the seniors to do more push-ups.’
A lack of preparation is simply not an option in the Indian military. ‘I spent the night thinking about what had gone wrong. I knew the answer, but I was not quite ready to accept it—not until the next day, when I finally told the CFI that it was the result of my lack of preparation. A long lecture followed, a lecture that shook me nice and proper, and I decided to pull up my socks after the incident.’
Every possible emergency is thrown at one out of the blue to test your ability to handle difficult situations instantly. ‘In the absence of rudders, which control the nose of the helicopter, it becomes difficult to balance the flight. I had never imagined Group Captain Sapre would ask me to perform this emergency procedure.’
The intense course culminates in a passing out parade that requires even greater levels of rigorous preparation! ‘Exhausted from the morning parade practice, we would hardly be left with any energy to go for it again in the afternoons. The scorching heat of peak summer, mixed with the heat reflected from a metalled parade ground, would leave us drenched in sweat.’
And despite all of this-the brave cadets who undergo this have no regrets in doing their duty. ‘Indian military is one place that is free from any gender bias or discrimination. If I could spend the rest of my life in uniform serving in the armed forces, I would willingly do so.’
There’s nothing like a book that touches your heart and stirs your soul. Coming across such books is often followed by a joyous realisation that we have, perhaps due to sheer serendipity, chanced upon a writer we would keep going back to.
Today, we are celebrating 70 years of Sudha Murty by revisiting some of our favourite quotes by the writer, whose words deeply resonate with us and to whose books we often turn to for comfort and wisdom.
Three Thousand Stitches || Sudha Murty
‘We all lose a few battles in our lives, but we can win the war.’ ―Three Thousand Stitches: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives
The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk || Sudha Murty
‘I realized then that only diseases and not honesty and integrity are passed down to the next generation through genes.’
―The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk: Life Lessons from Here and There
How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories || Sudha Murty
‘Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness.’ ―How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories
Wise and Otherwise || Sudha Murty
‘Life is an exam where the syllabus is unknown and question papers are not set. Nor are there model answer papers.’ ―Wise and Otherwise
Grandma’s Bag of Stories || Sudha Murty
‘We should always have some aim in life which we must try to achieve while being of help to others.’ ―Grandma’s Bag of Stories
House of Cards || Sudha Murty
‘Every woman values her freedom to choose— much more than her husband’s money or position.’; ― House of Cards
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We have a feeling these quotes would make you wish you could delve further into the brilliance of Murty’s elegant prose. To discover more such gems by her, you can simply visit here.
The first characteristic that I gave Tara was that she’s great at Maths, and that’s very funny, because I’m not, and it’s like projecting my fantasy of being a maths whiz onto my character. I had this image in my mind of this super sharp, entrepreneurial girl, one of those people you can’t pull one over. She’s always on her feet, boys her age are afraid to mess with her, and all of this stems out of the fact that she’s always felt put down by her cousins and her uncle, so she’s always trying to over-prove herself. It’s justa. mixture of some things I wished I was, some things I am, and also a synthesis of different people I have met in my life.
What is it like being a young author in India today?
I am not sure, because I actually don’t meet that many writers my age. To me it is a way of life and I can’t imagine not doing it. It’s really nice as well because I think India is a country hungry for stories, but also full of them, so I feel like a middleman trying to capture these stories and narrating them. The not-so-nice part is that there is a huge expectation on writers to have a huge following, so I feel many writers focus on that, being ‘authorpreneurs’ which is a bit of a ridiculous term- as a writer, one’s job is to write a good story, everything else should be secondary.
Your first book, Once Upon a Curfew, was set during the Emergency, while Lallan Sweets is set in the 90s. Is the element of nostalgia deliberate and where does it come from?
Once upon a Curfew was a bit more serious because it was a severe, dangerous time. There were great challenges, and it needed a lot of research because it’s so far in the past for me. 90s, however, was a much more fun time- there was all this foreign culture coming in after 1991, candies and food that people before never dreamt of. There was more to watch than Doordarshan, this great Bollywood era of Shah Rukh Khan and Yashraj and the feeling that love conquers all- I think it was a very fun and optimistic time, unencumbered by the limitless possibilities that technology offers, rendering an innocence to the time. I grew up in the nineties, and simply sought to capture my childhood by making it a setting for Lallan Sweets.
Lallan Sweets || Srishti Chaudhary
Lallan Sweets also talks about themes of family and traditions. What do those words mean to you – as an individual and as an author?
Family of course is the most enriching part of being human- there are these four or five humans around you who drive you absolutely nuts, but at the same time are crazy about you. Nobody else in the world is more annoying and more loving, and that is the dichotomy of family- they are there for you all the time (even when you don’t want). Traditions are nice and fun, if taken lightly; if you ask me, traditions are meant to be flouted, just like rules are meant to be broken. Traditions stop being important the moment they curtail someone’s freedom. Lallan Sweets shows that a traditional magic ingredient may be passed down for generations- but in the end, it’s what you make of the journey that counts.
What was the process of writing Lallan Sweets like and what kind of research did you do for it?
I had to find out about different cities since the story goes across Mathura, Agra, Bareilly, Delhi, Chandigarh and Ludhiana. The most fun part was creating my own little small town, Siyaka, which was a mixture of several small towns I have seen, but mostly a manifestation of my own childhood memories, which although was in a big city, yet my world was very small, so it had the feeling of a small town. Since it’s set in the 90s I got to revisit the pop culture of the time, which was honestly so fun- going back to Hum Paanch, Filmi Chakkar, Shaktimaan- all these series we used to watch. The games were different, past times had nothing to do with a screen- research was super fun because it was going back to an old me, like a friend I had forgotten about.
What advice do you have for other young authors aspiring to break out in the publishing space today?
Just to focus on writing a good story, make your friends read it, get sound feedback, and pitch like there is no tomorrow. Never ever be afraid of rejection- I go by the philosophy ‘fail faster, succeed sooner’ 🙂
The Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891 was hotly debated for months in Australia, Singapore, Great Britain and the United States. Highly controversial in the unfolding of the events of 1891 was the execution of Crown Prince Tikendrajit of Manipur. Today, the 13th of August, the day of the execution, is observed as Patriots’ Day in Manipur.
The day her uncle Crown Prince Koireng Tikendra Bir Singh was executed on the Mound of the Eunuchs by the royal market. Sanatombi saw this vividly before her eyes. It was the last time she saw her uncle. She leaned on a post and stood stock-still. She thought, ‘My uncle, hanged! Was the Indian who was also hanged for siding with the crown prince the Indian my uncle talked about? No, that was Niranjan the subedar. Then who was it? … … … Uncle, so was this what you meant when you said you would be back?’ Binodini, ‘The Princess and the Political Agent’.
Bir Tikendrajit
The Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891 was a highly controversial war that deeply convulsed the British Empire. In 1825, after seven years of occupation of the Tibeto-Burman kingdom of Manipur by the Burmese kingdom of Ava, the army of the East India Company and an army of Manipuri princes called the Manipur Levy joined forces to expel the Burmese. The subsequent Treaty of Yandabo of 1826 recognised the independence of Manipur.
The kingdom became a buffer state between the British and the Burmese. In 1834, under the regency of Crown Prince Narasingh, the Political Agency of Manipur was instituted by the British as a medium of communication between the East India Company and Manipur about the frontier between Manipur and Burma. The function of the Political Agent was dependent on the will and pleasure of the Maharaja of Manipur. British records described him as a British officer under Manipur surveillance.
The 1850s and the 1860s, however, saw a series of succession wars after the death of the popular and able Maharaja Narasingh in 1850. The instability led the British to provide a unilateral guarantee of protection of Manipur in 1865 by declaring Maharaja Chandrakirti Singh as an “Asiatic power” in alliance with the Queen of Britain.
In 1874 Chandrakirti and Lord Northbrook, Viceroy of India, reaffirmed the Anglo-Manipuri treaty of 1833. In 1886, the powerful and friendly Chandrakirti died and the British annexed Upper Burma as well. The weakened Manipur’s importance as a buffer state for the British came to an end. But the kingdom remained strategically important as it was located between Burma and Assam, two important possessions of the British Empire.
After the accession to the throne by Maharaja Surchandra, the eldest son of Chandrakirti, there was a palace coup in September 1890 led by his younger brother Prince Tikendrajit. The rebel faction deposed Surchandra and proclaimed Kulachandra, the next oldest brother, the king. Surchandra fled to Calcutta where he appealed to Viceroy Lord Lansdowne to reinstall him on the throne.
Instead, the British dispatched James Quinton, the Chief Commissioner of Assam, with an army to Manipur. His mission was to recognise Kulachandra as the king under the condition that they be allowed to arrest the coup leader Crown Prince Tikendrajit and deport him from Manipur. This aggressive imposition of British law in a sovereign state was rejected by the king, precipitating the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891. The Anglo-Manipuri War was fought for over a month in the spring of 1891.
In its first phase, the British under the cover of night before daybreak attacked the palace of Manipur, in present day Kangla Fort. Defeated, they retreated but Manipuri forces surrounded the British Residency and five British representatives — Quinton, Frank Grimwood, the Political Agent in Manipur, and three other officers — emerged from the Residency under a flag of truce. A durbar was held with the king at Kangla Fort.
The British representatives were asked to surrender their arms. Upon their refusal, the officers were arrested and tried in the royal military court. The five were executed in Kangla Fort for their crime against the monarch. In the second phase of the war, the British invaded Manipur with three columns from the west, north and east. The Manipuris were defeated at the decisive Battle of Khongjom and in April, the British captured the palace of Manipur at Kangla Fort.
Maharaja Kulachandra and his brothers were deported to the British penal colony in the Andaman Islands. Queen Victoria tried to save Tikendrajit. She thought hanging him “would create very bad feeling in Manipur and in all India.”The Viceroy threatened to resign and refused to comply. He proceeded with the death sentence of Tikendrajit. The Crown Prince was hanged to death in August 1891. The deposed Surchandra died in British custody in Calcutta later that year.
The House of Parliament in Westminster debated the future status of Manipur. The British Raj declared that Manipur state was forfeited to the Crown, but decided to regrant it to a scion of another branch of the dynasty. Eight-year-old Churachand, great grandson of Maharaja Narasingh, was installed as the new king of Manipur in September 1891 by Political Agent Henry St. P. Maxwell. The Anglo-Manipuri War was hotly debated by the international community and remained for months on the front pages of newspapers in Great Britain, the US, and the crown colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.
Representatives of Great Britain had, in an act of defiance of the British Empire, been beheaded by the public executioner in the presence of a big crowd. The imperial British could not accept the capital punishment meted to their five officers by a small kingdom. They termed it as “treachery” and “rebellion”, and as an act of barbarism. The New York Times opined that the conflict was a serious and threatening blow to British prestige, for instead of being the result of a casual riot, the murder of the English representatives was a quasijudicial act on the part of the native government.
International opinion also held Quinton guilty of attempting to capture Tikendrajit and for attacking a sovereign state without a proclamation of war. The international community censured the subsequent execution: “They were soldiers, but they were taken from their prison, led to a scaffold and there hanged like ordinary murderers.”
Coming after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, native Indian newspapers condemned it as British colonialism, declaring the war as part of the general uprising against foreign rule in India.
Somi Roy is a film and media curator, cultural conservationist, and the translator of the works of his mother M.K. Binodini Devi. His latest translation, ‘The Princess and the Political Agent’, Binodini’s historical novel set in the years and events around 1891, is published by Penguin Random House India. Wangam Somorjit is a historian and the author of ‘The Chronology of Meetei Monarchs’ (2010) and ‘Manipur: The Forgotten Nation of Southeast Asia’ (2016). He lives in Imphal.
This article was first published in The Daily Guardian.
The Princess and the Political Agent || Binodini (Author), L. Somi Roy (Translator)
The cover art of Binodini’s “The Princess and the Political Agent” by Shruti Mahajan of Penguin Random House India features, bloody and broken, the leogryphs called the Kangla Sha that stand today in Kangla Fort in Imphal. In the back, a little anachronistically, is painted the palace in Manipur, built for Binodini’s father Maharaja Churachand, himself a major presence in his daughter’s historical novel. It represents the new order in Manipur under the eponymous Political Agent after the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891. The beasts themselves represent the destruction of the sovereignty of Manipur in the fort where the Princess spent her childhood and youth – and the setting of Binodini’s tales of love, rivalries, and intrigues. Here is the little-known story of these chimerical beasts of Kangla Fort.
Somi Roy, translator.
Today, one hundred and seventy-six years ago, on the 24th of July, 1844, Maharaja Narasingh of Manipur inaugurated the two giant leogryphs that stood guard at Kangla Fort in the heart of Imphal. About fifty years later, they were destroyed by British cannon fire.
Known as the Kangla Sha, the pair of mythical lionesque beasts was made of brick and stood eighteen feet tall. They guarded the entrance to the fort’s inner citadel called the Uttra. The citadel was the innermost enclosure housing the royal residences in the heart of the Kangla, the double moated palace fort of the kings of Manipur. The Meiteis called these guardian beasts Nongsha, literally Heavenly Beasts, retronymically translated as lions which they resembled. They became known as Kangla Sha after the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891.
The first pair of these leogryphs was constructed by Maharaja Chourjit in 1804. They were Manipuri adaptations of the splendid Burmese mythical beasts called chinthe that guard the entrance of the pagodas of Burma. Ties between Manipur and the glorious and more powerful Burmese kingdoms of Ava, Shan and Mon Burmese – matrimonial alliances, wars, tributes and so on – were well established by the middle of the 18th century. As one of several Manipuri princes who stayed with the Burmese king in the 1760s, Chourjit would have seen the Burmese chinthe in front of their pagodas.
The powerful court of Ava had made remonstrance with the kings of Manipur for profusely gilding and decorating their palaces with royal Burmese emblems and multistage roof buildings. It was looked upon as evidence of the rise of the kings of Manipur. So in 1819 the Burmese invaded Manipur, destroyed the Kangla Fort, and occupied the kingdom for the next seven years.
Kangla Fort was not only the abode of the kings of Manipur but also the symbol of their ancestral roots back to Pakhangba, founder of the Ningthouja dynasty that still exists today. The citadel’s hall was also sometimes referred as the House of Pakhangba, as he was crowned here as the first Meitei king in 33 CE according to the Court Chronicles of Manipur.
For nearly 20 years after Manipur was regained from the Burmese, Kangla remained an abandoned old palace. The monarch after the Burmese expulsion, Maharaja Gambhir Singh, reigned from his capital at Langthabal, eight kilometres from Imphal down the Burma Road. At this time, Manipur was acknowledged as an independent power by the Burmese and the British in the Treaty of Yandabo of 1826. In 1844, Gambhir Singh’s cousin and comrade-at-arms in repelling the Burmese, Regent Narasingh became the king of Manipur and moved the capital back to Kangla. He reconstructed the pair of leogryphs in front of the citadel in Kangla upon the ruins of the old foundation of the previous leogryphs of 1804. The court chronicle of Manipur records that the construction of the two new leogryphs began on June 2, 1844. The Maharaja inaugurated the statues, dedicating them to the royal deity Shri Shri Govindajee on July 24, 1844.
No pictorial representations of the first leogryphs of 1804 exist nor do we know what happened to them after the Burmese destroyed Kangla Fort in 1819. The leogryphs rebuilt in 1844 stood guard at the foot of the citadel, facing west towards the fort’s main entrance, the western gate of the Kangla Fort. They were made of brick, and painted white. They crouched upon their hind legs and stood upright on their forelegs. The tails curled back towards their spines. Their mouths opened wide. The two bifurcated horns, adorning their heads unlike the leogryphs of East and Southeast Asia, were derived from the sangai or the brow-antlered deer (Rucervus eldii eldii) of Manipur. The chimerical beasts bear similarity to the antlered dragon boats of Manipur and to the coat-of-arms of Gambhir Singh engraved above his footprints on the stone he erected at Kohima (now in Nagaland) in commemoration of his victory over the northern tribes in 1833. Therefore, we can surmise that the Manipuri adaptation of the Burmese chinthe was already an addition to the religious and state iconography even before the leogryphs raised by Narasingh.
Leogryph used in the 1833 as commemorative stone in Kohima
The leogryphs built in 1844 were destroyed in 1891 after the Anglo-Manipuri War that year. In the events leading up to the outbreak of the war in March, five British representatives had been taken prisoner by the king of Manipur, tried in military court, and executed for their crime for invading the palace of Manipur. The execution of the British men took place in front of these leogryphs and their blood was smeared over the mouths of the two statues. In this, Manipuris saw the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy in Manipur that white men’s heads would fall in front of the beasts. After British retaliation in battle, the Manipuris were defeated and the British occupied Kangla Fort in April 1891.
On June 20, 1891, the Kangla leogryphs were destroyed by cannon fire upon the order of General H. Collett, the commander of the British army, as retribution, symbolic political vengeance, and display of imperial power and dominance.
The British occupied Kangla Fort as a British reserve until their departure in 1947. When young prince Churachand was installed as the new king by the British in 1891, a new palace of Manipur, commonly known as Chonga Bon, was constructed in 1908 about two kilometres away. The fort remained closed to the Manipuri public. Newly independent India succeeded to the Kangla and the fort was occupied by the Indian paramilitary forces. Manipur acceded to the Indian Union in 1949 and in 2004 Kangla Fort was returned to the people of Manipur after a series of public agitations. In 2007 two replicas of Kangla Sha were reconstructed on the original site where they had stood before being destroyed by the British on July 20, 1891.
Wangam Somorjit is the author of The Chronology of Meitei Monarchs (2010), the first edited version of the Court Chronicle of Manipur with corresponding CE dates; and Manipur: The Forgotten Nation of South-East Asia (2016), an anthology of publications from different countries of the region.
The Princess and the Political Agent || Binodini Devi (Author), L. Somi Roy (Translator)
I think of the stories I heard growing up. Of women with shadowy faces and daggers glinting in their hands. Women who wear their saris like fisherfolk, who knock down doors and slash into enemies with knives and swords and spells. The Sisterhood of the Golden Lotus.
Gul has spent her life running. She has a star-shaped birthmark on her arm, and in the kingdom of Ambar, girls with such birthmarks have been disappearing for years. In fact, it is this very mark that caused her parents’ murder at the hand of King Lohar’s ruthless soldiers and forced her into hiding in order to protect her own life.
But a group of rebel women called the ‘Sisters of the Golden Lotus’ rescue her, take her in, and train her in warrior magic. Here are some quotes from Tanaz Bhathena’s book that tells us more about the Sisters of the Golden Lotus
Who are they?
“No one is quite sure if the Sisters are legends or common brigands, and no one ever quite remembers what they look like. Appearing and disappearing from villages and towns with a stealth that rivals King Lo- har’s Sky Warriors, the Sisters have no permanent home, successfully melding into their surroundings like color-changing lizards.”
*
Introducing themselves
“People who do not know us think we are ordinary Ambari women. Seamstresses. Midwives. Farmers. Mothers. Daughters. People like your zamindar will offer us food and shelter in exchange for a walk through the fields or a night in their beds.” Juhi’s eyes harden. “Of course, deceptive appearances are a must in our line of work.” She holds up a hand. There, right in the center of her palm, I see a golden tattoo shaped like a lotus.”
*
They have birthmarks.
“To my surprise, Kali lifts her sari petticoat up to the knee. Amira turns around, pushing down the shoulder of her blouse. The woman holds up the lantern to each exposed body part, one after the other.
Each girl has a birthmark. A brown one in the shape of a diamond right next to the dagger strapped to Kali’s calf; a black one in the shape of a falling star on Amira’s shoulder blade.”
*
But not all of them
“Do the Sisters . . . do you all have birthmarks?”
Juhi lowers her hand. “No. Only Amira and Kali. But I don’t limit the Sisterhood to marked girls. There are other women as well who need saving, who need to escape their pasts.”
*
Their current home
“The Sisters live on the street behind the temple—in a two-story building that once housed the village orphanage. Some of the novices mock the villagers for not guessing that it no longer functions as one, for never questioning why we don’t take in boys.”
*
Mealtimes with the Sisters
“I’m unable to keep the envy out of my voice. At mealtimes, some of the Sisters occasionally boast about their exploits. Magically tying up zamindars who deceive farmers into signing over their land—and not releasing the former until the land is restored. Rescuing girls who get harassed by men in marketplaces. Standing up to women who beat their daughters-in-law.”
*
Why are they called Sisters of the Golden Lotus?
“Yes. Amira told me that she and Kali would feel like thorns in my side. Kali countered that they were like the gold lotuses of Javeribad, the kind that bloomed in the mud. That’s how we came up with the name.”
*
Hunted by the Sky || Tanaz Bhathena
Inspired by medieval India, Hunted by the Sky is the first in a stunning fantasy duology by Tanaz Bhathena, exploring identity, class struggles and high-stakes romance against a breathtaking magical backdrop.
An Extraordinary Life showcases Manohar Parrikar’s rise in politics from the son of a grocery store owner in a nondescript town, a sanghachalak in Mapusa town, an Opposition MLA and leader, to a chief minister (on multiple occasions) and, finally, to a defence minister.
Over the last two decades, the exploits of one man, an IIT-Bombay alumnus, changed the way mainstream India looked at Goa and the political goings-on in the country’s smallest state.
In An Extraordinary Life, Sadguru Patil and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar explore daily battles of a gifted individual are brought to the fore as he encounters love and vices.
Alongside his public feats and persona, Parrikar was also an intriguing man with some personality quirks that contributed to his political career. We take a look at some of these below:
Finding a way out
‘Falling into trouble isn’t rare when one is young. But even at the age of eight, Manohar had the temperament to find a way out of it.
Avdhoot was nine, a year older than Manohar, when the latter fell into a deep, dry rainwater ditch near their ancestral house in Parra village. The gutter was deep enough to make Manohar’s efforts to climb out of it futile. Like in many rural homes at the time, the Parrikar household also reared a few head of cattle.
‘Manohar told me to fetch at least five bundles of straw. They weren’t too heavy, so I brought them one by one and, on his direction, threw them into the gutter. He piled them one on top of the other and managed to climb out,’ Avdhoot recalled.’
IIT-Bombay
‘A year after the release of the Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha–starrer Bombay to Goa, seventeen-year-old Parrikar left Goa to go to Bombay in 1973. And just like Bachchan was a superstarwaiting-in-the-wings in the S. Ramanathan film, IIT-Bombay gaveParrikar the fertile breeding ground for his personality to blossom and allowed him to come into his own.
As far as Parrikar was concerned, he was to give IIT-Bombay the privilege of having on its rolls the first IITian chief minister in India, and his hostel-mates the pleasure of better meals at the mess at that time.’
Resourcefulness and Keen Eye
‘Even his mother was often stumped by Manohar’s resourcefulness. Radhabai once had enough of her son’s brattish behaviour. So she locked him up in a room one day.
According to Walavalkar, Manohar escaped by breaking the glass windowpanes. Another time Radhabai decided to teach her younger son a lesson once again. She decided to play dead to get Manohar worked up. Avdhoot, who was nearby, saw her lying still and not responding to his call. He called out to Manohar for help. ‘I thought Aai was dead and started crying. But Manohar was obviously smarter than me. He told me not to cry because he could see Aai’s stomach moving with her breath. Her plan to rattle him was foiled,’ Avdhoot said.’
Calligraphic Skills
‘Apart from his special talent at maths, he was regularly complimented by his teachers for his immaculate handwriting, something the media also noticed decades later when his handwritten noting related to the Rafale deal as the defence minister merited a news feature story in February 2019.
‘Cursive font. Sentences so perfectly stacked you wonder if a ruler was involved. No strikethroughs. No smudged ink. A written reply by Manohar Parrikar to India’s defence secretary in 2015, accessed by ANI, would put any schoolteacher’s pet to shame,’ stated an India Today online story headlined ‘Rafale Row Rages.’
Appetite for Reading
‘When he was in school, he loved reading storybooks, instead of ‘boring’ school texts.
‘Often he would pretend that he was reading a textbook when our parents were around, but cached inside was a storybook. Once, a relative got suspicious because Manohar had been going hard at this coursebook for hours and yanked it from his hands. The hidden storybook fell out too,’ said Avdhoot.
Manohar also developed another habit early on. A habit that would hold him in good stead in his later years. Reading newspapers. So obsessed was he with reading newspapers that his parents started worrying about it.’
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An Extraordinary Life || Sadguru Patil, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
An Extraordinary Life showcases Manohar Parrikar’s rise in politics from the son of a grocery store owner in a nondescript town, a sanghachalak in Mapusa town, an Opposition MLA and leader, to a chief minister (on multiple occasions) and, finally, to a defence minister.
Former Defence Minister and four-time Goa Chief Minister late Manohar Parrikar was one of the most reported personalities in India’s smallest state. But the privilege of researching for his biography ‘An Extraordinary Life: A biography of Manohar Parrikar’ gave us several fresh insights about his personality. And some lesser known nuggets too.
Listed below are ten lesser known facts about Parrikar. And no, this piece doesn’t mention his fetish for fish curry… For that nugget and more, read the book!
By Sadguru Patil and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
Lucky number 13
Shunned and feared by many, Parrikar, a passionate contrarian, considered ‘13’ as his lucky number. Born on December 13, the number, he would often say, brought him good luck in politics. The registration plate of his last official ride, a Hyundai Santa Fe, bore the number 1313. His mobile phone numbers ended in 1313 and 131213. In 2000, he formed a government and was sworn-in as Chief Minister of Goa for the first time with the help of 13-non BJP MLAs. In 2017, he cleverly manoeuvred his way to the top post yet again with the help of… you guessed it right: 13 BJP MLAs!
Never a full term
Despite being sworn-in as Chief Minister of Goa on four different occasions from 2000-02, 2002-2004, 2012-2014 and 2017-2019, Parrikar never completed a full five-year term in office. Anxious about a revolt brewing within his government, Parrikar got the state assembly dissolved in 2002. In 2004, he was ousted by a resurgent Congress. In 2014, he was handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to join the central cabinet as Defence Minister. And in 2019, he died in office, after just two years in office as CM.
Accidental electoral debut
This fact has managed to duck attention altogether. After his initial grooming in the RSS, Parrikar’s initial role in the BJP was that of an organizer, as one of the secretaries of the party’s state unit. In 1991, BJP leader late Pramod Mahajan entrusted him with the responsibility of selecting a candidate for the North Goa Lok Sabha seat in the general elections. Parrikar could not shortlist a single credible candidate for his party, because contesting a popular election on a BJP ticket at the time was considered synonymous with certain defeat, and a poor defeat at that. With no candidate available, Mahajan directed Parrikar to contest the election. Parrikar’s defeat in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls was the only electoral loss in his political career.
Bookworm
Parrikar was known to read just about everywhere. In the front seat of his official car, in hotel lobbies, at the airport and even on the seat of his loo. He devoured books like he customarily devoured his political opposition. In 2013, at a book release event, he confessed that his house had two toilets. “I am currently reading a book on the Mahabharata. It’s in one toilet. There’s another book in the other toilet,” Parrikar said then.
Music to the soul
Amid spasms of pain while undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer in New York, Parrikar looked to Hindustani classical singer Jitendra Abhisheki for solace. He loved to listen to Marathi bhavgeets (devotional songs) too. His favourite singers were Sudhir Phadke, Bharat Ratna Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Abhisheki and Rahul Deshpande. Phadke’s ‘Dehachi Tejori’ (God’s vault) and Veer Savarkar’s ‘Sagara Prana Talmala’ (O Ocean, my heart is restless) topped his list of favourite songs. In his later years, he liked listening to Rahul Deshpande, whose songs were downloaded to his Ipad.
Mercedes mania
As a young businessman, when his political journey was still some distance away, Parrikar ambition was to own a Mercedes car. Once he walked the political path however, he realised that owning a Mercedes would impair public perception of him. After all he was beginning to be known for his ‘common man’ identity. So he dropped the idea altogether.
Control-freak
Parrikar’s style of governance was marked by a chronic disregard for existing administrative systems, with excessive power wrested in his person. Ministers were mere puppets in his abrasive style of governance, as Parrikar, his few handpicked bureaucrats and upper caste coterie members pulled all the strings. There was a key reason why Parrikar kept stalling his departure to Delhi as a cabinet minister. Because Modi mirrored his traits, when it came to governance-style and control. “I was a king in Goa. In Delhi, I am just one of the many princes,” Parrikar lamented to his friends.
Tech travails
For an IIT alumnus, Parrikar shied away from using new technology for communication. Apart from using a mobile phone to make and receive calls, he had no other use for the instrument. According to those close to him, accessing emails reluctantly was as far as Parrikar would go, when it came to embracing technology.
Money management
For a man, who is often lauded for planning and vision, Parrikar was pretty much financially broke when he returned to Goa, soon after passing out of IIT-Bombay and marrying Medha. He was so short on money, that his mother, Radhabai, paid some of his insurance premiums for a while.
Swachch Goa
India woke up to the ‘virtues’ of co-branding Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary with a cleanliness gig, as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachch Bharat Mission in 2014. But the initiative was first launched by Parrikar as Chief Minister of Goa on October 2, 2002. He preferred to call it ‘Clean Offices Day’, when government servants were called to their respective offices on the national holiday and directed to spruce up the premises and immediate surroundings.
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An Extraordinary Life || Sadguru Patil, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
