Snapshots

Choke On It!

When he’s not attacking cultural pollution, he’s promotingIndian culture. Or so he says. Maharashtra’s morally-inclined minister, and Snapshots regular, Pramod Navalkar, has now decided that ayurveda should be accepted as a mainstream school of medicine. At a function organised in Pune recently to felicitate the ayurveda expert Balaji Tambe, the minister praised him, but added one more reason to the cause of propagating ancient Indian medicine — Balasaheb Thackeray, naturally!

As Tambe is the ayurvedic healer of the Shiv Sena head honcho, Navalkar thought it fit to make the audience realise what the traditional form of medicine had done for the faithful Shiv Sainiks. “Tambe, through his practice of ayurveda, has kept the windpipe of Balasaheb unchoked and hence the great form of medicine has done a lot for all of us, for we breathe through the same windpipe,” gushed Navalkar. Surely not a sentiment shared by the many cricket-lovers in the country.

MTV, Kya?

GOOD to know that there is someone somewhere who can cause MTV motor-mouth Cyrus Broacha toshut up. On a recent campus trip to Pune’s Fergusson College, Broacha and the “peeti kya” Coca-Cola girl Maria Goretti were not too happy with the response to their snap-happy routine of questions-and-answers. A particularly docile girl who was cornered by the VJ, refused to smile, look into the camera, or respond to any remark.“Do you recognise me?” asked Broacha, refusing to give up. “Yes,” came the shy answer. “I’ve seen you on TV.”

“OK, what’s my name?” he asked.

“Marc Robinson,” replied the foxed kid, referring to a rival channel’s veejay-cum-model, before making a quick getaway.

Needless to say, for once, even Broacha was at a loss for words. Kya?

The other Mamatadi

She’s the other Mamatadi, the one who doesn’t breathe fire into mikes. Mamata Shankar, the woman cast opposite Mithun Chakraborty in Mrigaya, and a staple of Mrinal Sen movies back in the days when he made films, wants to trade her dancing shoes for Hindi films, at least for some time. But Udayand Amala Shankar’s daughter has little time off from running a dance institute in Calcutta, as well as looking after her husband and two children. But she would love to act in Hindi cinema, if she were offered a suitable’ role. On the dance front, her ballet troupe is certainly going places. “People in Greece and the West Indies related to our style of dance dramas, because out there, free movement is the key,” she gushes.

Not so slick Willie

He’s better known as the sometime tenant of a Nizamuddin home in the Capital where he crafted his City Of Djinns. But William Dalrymple, itinerant travel writer and friend of Arundhati Roy, was in Gujarat recently. South Gujarat, to be precise. The writer of the more recent In The Court Of The Fish-Eyed Goddess was on his way to the Dangs, on his second visit to the State — he visited Vadodara during the 1989 general elections while writing a piece on former maharajas contesting the polls. He’s yet to form an opinion about the state and its people, hesays, but confesses to having been “definitely moved” by the developments in the Dangs. “In the pluralistic society that is India — and which is its strength — such attacks will only fragment the nation,” he says.

Dalrymple should know, for he has spent six years in New Delhi, and visits it every few months. It used to be a good place to stay, but pollution has robbed the city of its charm, he feels. So what’s the deal on Dangs? Well, says the seasoned author, he’s been commissioned to write an article for a British broadsheet. And whatever happened to the books? “Books are sheer hard work; journalism less difficult; and producing documentaries the easiest thing to do. But the money is in inverse proportion.”

— By Kaveree Bamzai in New Delhi; Shaan Chavan, Davinder Kumar, Rachna Bisht Rawat in Pune, and Milind Ghatwai in Surat