Life itself: Rishi Kapoor (1952-2020) embodied romance and an irrepressible spirit

His output was unwaveringly steady and dependable, the shield of trust that came free with a movie ticket.

Rishi Kapoor, third-generation movie star, unofficial record keeper of Hindi film history, and widely acknowledged bon vivant, died on Thursday in Mumbai. He was 67. He is survived by his wife Neetu, his son Ranbir, and his daughter Ridhima and her family.

Kapoor was battling cancer, and had spent close to a year in New York City in treatment. He returned to Mumbai in September. He had been admitted to a hospital in Mumbai with breathing problems a few days ago.

Rishi Kapoor in Bobby (1973). | RK Films.

According to a statement issued by the family, “Our dear Rishi Kapoor passed away peacefully at 8:45am IST in hospital today after a two-year battle with leukemia. The doctors and medical staff at the hospital said he kept them entertained to the last. He remained jovial and determined to live to the fullest right through two years of treatment across two continents. Family, friends, food and films remained his focus and everyone who met him during this time was amazed at how he did not let his illness get the better of him.”

Kapoor had shot some portions of his comeback film, the comedy Sharmaji Namkeen, in Delhi in February. He was also on track to star in the Hindi remake of the Hollywood comedy The Intern.

His death has robbed show business of a seasoned entertainer. A member of the Hindi film industry’s most storied clan, Kapoor first appeared before the camera as a child in the 1950s. After he started his career in earnest as an adult in the 1970s, his choice of roles spanned romances, comedies, socially themed dramas, thrillers, historicals and melodramas. His films often had impassioned declarations of love, innocence, humour, chart-topping songs, trendy dancing and colourful costumes (most notably a series of bright jerseys).

Whatever the quality or outcome of the project, Kapoor’s output was unwaveringly steady and dependable, the shield of trust that came free with a movie ticket.

Given his spontaneity and ease before the camera, could he have stretched himself further, experimented a bit more? This true believer in mainstream Hindi cinema’s biggest pursuit – a positive commercial outcome – might have punched below his weight, but even in his most trite movies, he was a twinkly-eyed charmer, doing what was required without betraying too much effort.

Rishi Kapoor in Kabhi Kabhie (1976). Courtesy Yash Raj Films.

Some of this professionalism was learnt on the job and some of it was inherited. Like the doctor’s child who is familiar with medical jargon and the policeman’s kids who can distinguish between “handcuff” and “handkerchief”, Rishi Kapoor understood the pleasures, peculiarities and pitfalls of show business very early.

He was born on September 4, 1952, in Mumbai, the third of the five children of Raj and Krishna Kapoor. The family was already heaving with legends. Rishi Kapoor’s grandfather, Prithviraj Kapoor, had been a renowned stage and film performer since the late 1920s. His father Raj Kapoor directed, produced and starred in his own films, and had already rolled out one of his finest works, Awara , the year before Rishi Kapoor was born.

Raj Kapoor’s brothers, Shashi and Shammi, were leading men, and their wives were actresses (Shashi was married to Jennifer Kendal and Shammi to Geeta Bali). Rishi Kapoor’s uncles – Prem Nath, Rajendra Nath and Narendra Nath – were all actors. Rishi Kapoor’s mother, Krishna, was Prem Nath’s sister. Another of their sisters was the wife of screen villain Prem Chopra.

Rishi Kapoor’s brothers Randhir and Rajiv became actors too. Rishi would marry his co-star, Neetu Singh, and his son Ranbir would follow in his parents’ footsteps. So would some of his nieces and nephews, with Kareena Kapoor continuing to rule the roost.

“Acting was in my blood and there was simply no escaping it,” Kapoor wrote in his autobiography Khullam Khulla. The memoir, co-written with Meena Iyer, benefits from Kapoor’s refreshing honesty and prodigious memory. “My childhood was a dream, like an unending mela,” he wrote. “People from the film fraternity constantly streamed in and out of our home… The Kapoors have always been proud of our profession; nobody has ever been apologetic about belonging to the entertainment industry.”

As a child, he was frequently taken to the sets. Along with his siblings Randhir and Ritu, he was featured in the song Pyar Hua Ikraar from Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420 in 1955. Rishi Kapoor also appeared in a couple of plays as a child.

His first full-scale role was in his father’s Mera Naam Joker in 1970. When filming began in 1968, Rishi Kapoor was 16, and was recruited to play the younger version of Raj Kapoor’s character Raju, a circus clown. As a schoolboy, the tubby Raju has a crush on his svelte teacher Mary (Simi Garewal). Rishi Kapoor’s performance won him the National Film Award for Best Child Artist.

Rishi Kapoor in Mera Nama Joker (1970). Courtesy RK Films.

The sparkling eyes, robust complexion, ready smile and selfless romantic disposition were already on display in Mera Naam Joker. In the coming years, Kapoor sealed his reputation as the ideal lover boy, resulting in such popular romances as Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977), Laila Majnu (1976), Sargam (1979) and Prem Rog (1982).

“Rishi Kapoor comes across as the nice boy who wasn’t just led by his raging hormones but loved with his soul as well,” Madhu Jain wrote in the biography The Kapoors. “He danced like a dream, effortlessly. The star-crossed or tragic lover label fit him well, especially in films like Laila Majnu. He also came at a time when screen romance was about love, not obsession… He symbolised a sense of masti and youthful energy, not to forget those magic dancing feet.”

Rishi Kapoor hit the ground running with his debut as a leading man in 1973. Raj Kapoor made Bobby, a story of star-crossed lovers, as a way to recoup from the financial debacle of Mera Naam Joker. Rishi Kapoor, now slimmer but still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, played Raj Nath, who falls in love with the Goan Catholic Bobby Braganza (Dimple Kapadia in her screen debut).

Rishi Kapoor in Bobby (1973). Courtesy RK Films.

Although Bobby was a box-office scorcher, Rishi Kapoor was soon exposed to one of the axioms of showbiz – you win some and then you lose some.

“I didn’t have to struggle for fame and fortune,” he said in Khullam Khulla. “But not even my extraordinary family legacy could prevent me from the realities of life.”

Bobby was immediately followed by the flop Zehreela Insan (1975). Rafoo Chakkar (1975), which was based on the Hollywood cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot, fared better although, as Kapoor wryly remarked, “…since I was made up like a girl for the major part of the film, I could not be endorsed as a bona fide heart-throb”.

The success of Khel Khel Mein in 1975 wasn’t just a much-needed breather. The romantic thriller cemented the pairing between Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh. She was a former child actor who was among the early candidates for the lead role in Bobby. Their shared delayed-1960s sartorial style – bell-bottoms, floral-patterned shirts, mini-skirts, floppy hair, oversized sunglasses – made them “fashion templates for teenagers before the MTV era”, Madhu Jain observed.

(Source: Scroll)

The story behind Irrfan Khan's moving speech in Ang Lee’s ‘Life of Pi’

Edited excerpts from Aseem Chhabra’s ‘Irrfan Khan’ reveal the actor’s contributions to the Oscar-winning movie.

After Delhi-based actor Suraj Sharma was cast to play the 16-year-old Indian boy (Suraj was 19 when the film was released) from the nearly 3,000 auditions, Ang and his casting agents started to look for an actor to play the adult Pi. Irrfan’s name was on top of the list. For one thing, he was taller than Suraj, and that made sense to Ang. The director had already seen Irrfan in Slumdog Millionaire, The Namesake (2006) and A Mighty Heart (2007).

Irrfan in Life of Pi (2012) | Fox 2000 Pictures

‘There were only a couple of actors to choose from in India and he was the top choice,’ Ang says. ‘Obviously I wanted to make an international film, but I also chose him for his good acting. It wasn’t like I had a list of five people to choose from. And his height was working.’ Ang cast another fine Indian actor, Adil Hussain, as younger Pi’s father. Tabu played Pi’s mother. Although the two played mother and son in the film, Tabu and Irrfan did not share any screen time.

Ang says that Life of Pi was ‘unfilmable’ for several reasons, but especially because it challenges the notion of narration. Irrfan’s Pi starts the film with a voiceover, giving the narrative a first person feeling. But much of the narration is also in third person, as we see the actual action taking place with the younger Pi and his lifeboat mate, Richard Parker, the CGI-created tiger. And Irrfan’s toughest task was to wrap up the movie emotionally, Ang adds.

The story that Pi narrates actually forms two narratives—and it is for the audience to believe in one of the two stories. ‘Irrfan had to emotionally develop his character and also grasp, both the philosophical way of the narration and also the trickster kind of a narrator,’ Ang says. And he adds, ‘I told Irrfan that Pi is bullshitting. Because it is tricky to believe in either of the stories. And the question that is asked—‘Which story do you prefer, not like?’—also makes one think.

Irrfan also had to match the innocence of the younger Pi, played by Suraj Sharma, and develop the cynical tone of an adult. ‘People might believe this way or that way,’ Ang says. ‘It has to be right on the edge where it would work for everybody. You can have two versions of the story and they all can debate, make sense. That was the most difficult task, other than creating a tiger in the ocean digitally.’

When the film’s shoot started, Irrfan went to Taiwan. But then Ang and his crew went off to shoot in India and returned to Taiwan to recreate the scenes of the lifeboat lost on the sea. Irrfan returned to Taiwan many months later to shoot the interior Montreal scenes. And later, the crew travelled to Montreal to wrap up the exterior scenes of the film. ‘He had not seen what we had shot and he would not see it until a year later when the film was finished, because a lot of it was going to be digital,’ Ang says. ‘And even I didn’t know how the digital scenes would shape up. I was just guessing. I told him what I had in my mind. I described the story, the pictures, how we were planning to shoot the rest of the film.’

Then came the key scene when Irrfan’s Pi talked about the lifeboat landing on the stranded beach and an emaciated Richard Parker walking away without looking back to say goodbye to his boat mate.

Scene from "LIFE OF PI"

"I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye"

We love and will miss you #IrrfanKhan. #ripirfankhan 🙏💔 pic.twitter.com/BFz0kRGhis

— Devil V!SHAL (@VishalRC007) April 29, 2020

‘I was certain he was going to look back at me, flatten his ears to his head, growl,’ Irrfan’s Pi says in a voiceover, a long monologue, as he narrates his story to a writer, portraying Yann Martel, and played by the British actor Rafe Spall. ‘That he would bring our relationship to an end in some way. But he just stared ahead into the jungle. (By now the camera is on Irrfan’s face.) And then Richard Parker, my fierce companion, the terrible one who kept me alive, disappeared forever from my life.’ Then he adds, ‘I wept like a child. Not because I was overwhelmed having survived, although I was. I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. It broke my heart.’

It is an emotionally devastating speech and Irrfan actually broke down, crying with tears rolling down his eyes, and it happened twice. Ang says he did not demand the tears from Irrfan. He simply explained the emotions, the background and how he felt thinking about the scene. ‘With actors I just want to see the results,’ he says. ‘I don’t care how they pull it off. What experience they use, they can keep that to themselves. But that was the effect I wanted, what the speech meant to me.’

Despite Irrfan’s fine acting, Ang Lee had to struggle with one concern—that the Indian actor mumbles while saying long dialogues. But Irrfan is not alone, he says, adding, ‘There are other great actors, Robert De Niro for instance, who mumble. It’s not that I couldn’t loop the voice. But it was a long dialogue so I just wanted to make sure that it was clear. He had to be understandable.’

There was also the concern about Irrfan’s English accent. As the film progresses, Pi matures from the teenager on the lifeboat to an adult living in Montreal and how he speaks English also changes. The film’s production team got a Montreal English accent coach for Irrfan. But despite the coaching, Irrfan’s dialogues—emotionally moving as they are—sound like they are being spoken by a man who does not speak English with ease.

At least one admirer of Irrfan was honest enough to say so.

‘I was delighted he (Irrfan) got roles in Hollywood films,’ Naseeruddin Shah says. But Naseer is known to be opinionated, calling a spade a spade. ‘Only in Life of Pi I didn’t care for his performance because he tried to put on a Canadian accent and it didn’t work. Angrezi woh itni achee nahi bolta ke accent badal sake. (He does not speak English well enough to change his accent.) That’s what I told him and he accepted it.’

But Ang Lee will always be grateful to Irrfan for what he did in the film. ‘I thank him for that. It’s very inspiring for a lot of people around the world. His speech was a dream for a filmmaker. He should have been nominated. He should have gotten an award for that speech.’

(Source: Scroll)

At least 53 journalists in Mumbai test positive for coronavirus

All the media persons found infected with coronavirus will be kept in isolation and a process was underway to find out suitable places to the purpose, BMC spokesperson Vijay Khabale said.

At least 53 media persons from Mumbai have tested positive for coronavirus, a city civic official said on Monday. These journalists will be kept in isolation and quarantined wards of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

The BMC had taken the swab sample of 171 Mumbai biased journalists for COVID-19 tests at a health check-up camp. Out of 171, the 53 journalists swab samples came out positive for coronavirus while rest were negative. Out of the 53 journalists, most of them are photographers, camera persons with television channels and reporters who were on the field since the outbreak of coronavirus. 

A medic works on a sample for COVID-19 Rapid Test at a camp during the nationwide lockdown imposed in a bid to contain the spread of coronavirus. (Photo | PTI)

The BMC officer said that most of the coronavirus positive journalists were asymptomatic. "No journalist is critical. The symptoms in the journalist are very normal but they have to be kept in isolation or quarantined. All journalists are asked whether they want to stay in the at home in isolation or BMC provided quarantined facility centre. We are keeping them in a suburban hotel," said Vishnu Sonawane, president of journalist Association in BMC. 

One of the television journalists said that they have been asking their office to allow them to work from home but office instead of working from field and hospitals where are positive patients are reported. "We demanded the safety kids like mass loss and other equipment but we had given normal three-layer surgery mask, not other facilities. We were exposed to who this coronavirus outbreak very closely. We had no option but to work for the office and continue to do reporting from the field," he said requesting anonymity. 

BJP former member of parliament Kirit Somaiya has written a letter to Union Minister Dr Harshvardhan, BMC commissioner Praveen Pardeshi Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope and TV channels owner asking to take care of these reporters and their families.

NCP leader and member of parliament Supriya Sule had also raised this journalist exposing two vulnerable situations. She had demanded the Rs 50 lakh insurance cover to all journalist who is working during this pandemic situations.

(Source: TNIE)

Coronavirus: The race to stop the virus spread in Asia's 'biggest slum'

On 23 March, a 56-year-old man living in a vast, labyrinthine slum in the western Indian city of Mumbai went to see a doctor. He was feeling feverish and had a bad cough.

The garment trader lived in Dharavi where more than half-a-million people are spread over 2.5 grubby sq km, which is less than a square mile. (Imagine a population larger than Manchester living in an area smaller than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.) The slum was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire film and city planners from all over the world have studied its throbbing economy and society.

The local doctor examined the man and he left with a prescription for cough syrup and paracetamol. Three days later, the man turned up at the private Sion Hospital close to home. His fever had climbed and the cough was getting worse. He said he had no travel history, so doctors gave him more cough syrup and sent him home once again.

More than 650,000 people live in 50 acres of space in Dharavi. Getty Images

On 29 March, the man returned to the hospital with signs of respiratory distress. Doctors admitted him, and promptly sent swabs for the Covid-19 test.

Three days later, the results arrived - he had tested positive. His condition deteriorated sharply and doctors tried to move him to a bigger hospital already treating Covid-19 patients.

It was too late: he died that evening.

That garment trader was the first Covid-19 patient from Dharavi. People living in this packed-to-the gills slum city suffer from all the common diseases afflicting Mumbai, one of the world's most densely-populated cities, from diarrhoea to malaria.

But an outbreak of coronavirus in a place where social distancing is an oxymoron could easily turn into a grave public health emergency and overwhelm the city's stretched public health system.

Nobody realises this more than the officials racing to track and contain the infection.

Patient No 1 of Dharavi lived with his eight-member family - his wife, four daughters, and two sons - in a poky 420 sq ft one-room apartment in a low-rise slum tenement ringed by squalid shanties.

Dharavi has been under a lockdown since 24 March. Getty Images

"When we asked his family, they told us the man had no recent travel history and only went to the local mosque," Kiran Dighavkar, an assistant municipal commissioner in charge of the area, told me.

But there was a twist in the tale.

The man owned another apartment in the same complex. There he hosted five people who had reportedly arrived from Delhi after attending a conference in early March organised by Tablighi Jamaat, a religious movement that has followers in more than eight countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and the US.

Hundreds of people who attended the religious event in the capital set off several Covid-19 clusters across the country and are now linked to some 650 cases across 14 states.

The police believe the five men lived in the Dharavi apartment for two days - between 19 and 21 March- before they left for Kerala. "We are trying to trace these people," said Mr Dighavkar.

"We have to find out the source of infection. How did this man get the infection and from whom? And we have to contain this infection by taking aggressive steps," he said.

The family of the deceased trader insists he didn't have a passport, something that the police are sceptical of. So they are trying to dig out his mobile phone records to find out more about his movements.

Some 2,500 residents have been put under quarantine in more than 300 slum apartments

For the moment, the race is to ensure that the infection is contained. So 308 apartments and 80 shops in nine six-storey buildings in the complex where the trader lived have been completely sealed. Some 2,500 residents have been put under home quarantine. Food rations are being supplied. Health workers have disinfected the apartments with household bleach. Swabs of eight 'high-risk' occupants of the building - the trader's family and an acquaintance in the building - were sent for testing.

More than 130 residents above the age of 60 and another 35 who are suffering from unrelated respiratory diseases are being closely watched for Covid 19 symptoms.

Fearing an outbreak, authorities have taken over the 50-bed Sion Hospital, and quickly set up a 300-bed quarantine facility in a neighbouring sports complex. Protective gear has been given to doctors and nurses at the hospital.

Yet all this may not be enough to prevent an outbreak.

On Thursday, a 35-year-old doctor working with a private hospital and living in the slum tested positive for the virus. Municipality workers scrambled to isolate and seal 300 people living in the doctor's building. They have also identified 13 high-risk contacts in the building and sent their swabs for testing. The doctor told officials that two nurses in his hospital had tested positive for the virus. And at the weekend, a 30-year-old woman inside the same building complex as the trader, a 60-year-old man, who owns a metal fabrication shop and a 21-year-old male lab technician, tested positive.

"We are still able to try to contain the infection of the gated slum colonies. But there are the slums outside, and if we get cases there, we can't isolate them at home, and have to send even the high-risk cases to the sports complex quarantine centre," says Mr Dighavkar.

Mumbai (Dharavi in foreground in the picture) is one the most densely-populated cities in the world . Getty Images

If that happens, the struggle to contain the infection will turn into a messy battle. The local hospital and makeshift quarantine will be easily overrun by cases.

Testing will have to be stepped up and results will have to arrive in time. After the first two cases - the trader and the doctor - 21 samples were collected from the slum. After more than 48 hours, the results of only seven have come in. The state-run hospital where the testing is being done says it is swamped by samples. Another 23 samples were picked up after the two new cases and sent to the lab on Saturday. It is not clear when the results will arrive.

"We are losing time because of the delay in results. It also delays shifting people who test positive into isolation," Virendra Mohite, the medical officer, who is leading the health teams in the slum, told me.

These are some of the real challenges to contain a massive outbreak of a disease in a unique, otherwise self-contained slum, which is home to fishermen, potters, furniture makers, garment makers, tailors, accountants, waste recyclers and even some of Mumbai's edgiest rappers. Dharavi, writer Annie Zaidi once observed, is a place full of "stories of desperation and grit, initiative and very, very hard work."

Now it faces its most daunting challenge of preventing a cataclysmic wave of contagion.

(Source: BBC)

Social distancing is a privilege of the middle class. For India's slum dwellers, it will be impossible

For two days, Jeetender Mahender, a 36-year-old Dalit sanitation worker, has not dared to leave his family's shanty in the Valmiki slum of northern Mumbai, India, except to go to the toilet.

His situation is desperate. The tiny home has no running water or toilet, his family is low on food -- and when he doesn't go to work, he doesn't get paid.

Mahender is trying to comply with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 21-day nationwide lockdown, intended to help stop coronavirus spreading further among the country's 1.3 billion people. India has recorded 1,024 cases and 27 deaths.

"Social distancing is not just for the sick, but for each and every person, including you and even your family," Modi said in a nationwide address last week.

Indian migrant workers wait to board buses to return to their home villages as a nationwide lockdown continues on March 28, 2020, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India.

That might work for India's middle and upper classes, who can hunker down in their condos and houses, preen their terrace gardens, eat from their well-stocked pantries and even work from home, using modern technology.

But the chaos unfolding across India in recent days has spelled out that for the 74 million people -- one sixth of the urban population -- who live cheek by jowl in the country's slums, social distancing is going to be physically and economically impossible.

"The lanes are so narrow that when we cross each other, we cannot do it without our shoulders rubbing against the other person," said Mahender. "We all go outdoors to a common toilet and there are 20 families that live just near my small house.

"We practically all live together. If one of us falls sick, we all will."

At least one person in a Mumbai slum has already tested positive for the novel coronavirus. As panic grows among India's most vulnerable, thousands of migrant workers are trying to flee the slums for their rural homes, by bus and even by foot, sparking fears they will import the virus to the countryside.

In a radio address Sunday, acknowledging the chaos the lockdown had brought India's poor, Modi asked the nation for forgiveness. But he also urged listeners to understand there was no other option.

1 toilet for 1,440 people

Water is one of the biggest reasons India's poor need to leave home every day.

Indian migrant workers stuck in the national capital try to board buses to return to their home villages.

Sia, a slum dweller and migrant construction worker in Gurugram, near New Delhi, wakes up at 5 a.m. and defies Modi's call to stay indoors. The reason? She needs to walk 100 meters (328 feet) to a water tank that serves her slum of 70 migrant construction workers.

She is not the only one. Most women from the construction site slum wash together there every morning and collect water for the day. With no showers or bathrooms in their homes, this communal tap is their only water source.

The government's Clean India Mission, launched in 2014 to improve infrastructure and eliminate open defecation, claims that 100% of Indian households now have access to toilets.

But Puneet Srivastava, manager of policy at NGO WaterAid India, said the focus of the Clean India Mission has largely been on building household toilets, and a considerable number of slum-like regions have not been included.

In Dharavi in Mumbai, for example, there is only one toilet per 1,440 residents, according to a recent CFS study -- and 78% of community toilets in Mumbai's slums lack a water supply, according to 2019 Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation survey.

Migrant workers and their family members walk along a highway in a desperate bid to return to their village.

On Sunday, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra said: "There is 100% toilet coverage in India, whether people have access to personal toilets in slums or not doesn't matter. They can use communal toilets."

Sania Ashraf, an epidemiologist who works on water, sanitation, hygiene and respiratory illness, said the Clean India Mission had increased private toilets as well as community or pay-per-use public toilet coverage -- but during a pandemic, having access to a shared toilet means little if it is not clean.

Furthermore, poor ventilation can trap contaminated aerosols and "facilitate transmission of the virus," said Ashraf.

That is especially worrying in light of evidence that patients shed the virus through feces, raising the possibility of transmission in communal toilets and places where there is still open defecation.

Workers at risk

The next reason slum-dwellers cannot isolate is simple: they need to work.

Daily wage migrant workers generally live hand-to-mouth, earning between 138-449 Indian rupees ($1.84-$5.97) per day, according to the International Labour Organization.

"They belong to the unorganized sector, they don't get paid the day they don't go to work," says economist Arun Kumar. "It's not just the past few days since the lockdown started, but the momentum towards it has been building up for the past 20 days.

"Supply chains have shut down. Employment is lost. They have no money to purchase essentials. And unlike the rich, they cannot afford to stock up. They buy on a daily basis but now the shelves are empty."

Sonia Manikraj, a 21-year-old teacher who lives in the Dharavi slum, said: "I have to step out to buy food and since grocery shops here are open only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the roads are quite narrow, there is always a crowd."

Consequently, workers are faced with an agonizing dilemma: go out to work and risk infection, or stay home and face extreme hunger.

Some workers have no choice. Cleaners, for example, are considered to provide an essential service, and are therefore exempted from the lockdown.

"They are required to go to work every day," said Milind Ranade, the founder of Kachra Vahatuk Shramik Sangh, a Mumbai-based organization focused on labor issues. "Some even collect hospital waste and then come back and live in these crowded chawls (slums)."

They are not given any protective gear, such as masks or gloves, said Ranade, and there has not been an awareness campaign to educate them of the dangers of coronavirus transmission.

"What will happen when they fall sick?" Ranade added.

The government's $22.5 billion economic stimulus package includes medical insurance cover of 5 million rupees ($66,451) per person for front-line workers such as nurses, doctors, paramedics and cleaners in government hospitals.

"It may cover the sanitation worker but what about all the others who live around him in the slum and who are equally at risk of contracting the disease from him?" said Raju Kagada, a union leader of sanitation workers in Mumbai.

Kumar said more vigorous coronavirus testing would help. As of March 29, India had conducted 34,931 tests, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research -- or 19 tests per million people. Kumar said testing at a private hospital or lab in India costs 4,500 rupees ($60), while free tests in government hospitals are very limited.

Mahender is a cleaner for a residential community in Mumbai, earning 5,000 rupees ($66) a month, which he uses to support his wife, three children and his 78-year-old father. If he needs medical care, it will not be covered by the stimulus package provisions.

"My phone has been ringing nonstop and the residents of the building where I clean have been calling me back to work," he said. "But I have to go into the building, outside each person's house and collect their trash.

"I have not been given a mask or gloves, not even a soap to wash my hands before my meals. I know if I don't go today, they will hire someone else?"

Migrants who want to go home

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of India's 45 million economic migrant workers began long, arduous journeys back to their rural villages. With India's rail network temporarily shut, many had no choice but to try walking hundreds of miles home.

There was little reason to stay. Most had lost their jobs in the cities due to the lockdown, and the slums have the potential to feed the spread of the virus.

Researchers from the Center For Sustainability said last week that while the reproductive ratio (R naught) for Covid-19 -- the disease caused by the coronavirus -- globally is between two and three, in India's slums it could be 20% higher due to the dense living conditions.

As the slum exodus began, on Saturday the state governments of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana arranged for hundreds of buses to ferry migrants home, causing chaotic scenes as thousands descended upon stations trying to claw their way onto buses.

On Sunday, however, Modi urged all states to seal their borders to stop the virus being imported into rural areas. Officials are now scrambling to find millions of migrant workers who had already returned to small towns and villages across the country, in order to quarantine them for 14 days.

Sia, who lives on the construction site in Gurugram, wasn't able to catch a bus. Her options of escaping the slum during the coronavirus outbreak are looking bleak.

"Since our work has stopped, I haven't been paid for 20 days. I get paid $5 a day, the little money I earn helps my family survive," she said.

"As everything is shutting down, I believe we have no option but to live in this poverty and filth in the city."

(Source: CNN)

How Mumbai’s masalawaalis make a single spice from 30 ingredients

Bottle masala is impossible to find in stores.

FIRST CAME THE BURNING EYES. Then the uncontrollable sneezing.

I was seven years old and watching three sari-clad ladies, each holding a tall, wooden pestle, adroitly throw their sticks into the center of a deep wooden vat. It was filled with dried chilies, which explained the pungent aroma in the air. Thump-thump-thump. The ladies’ synchronized pounding created a hypnotic beat.

What I witnessed that summer day in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, was the annual tradition of hand-making bottle masala—a fragrant, reddish-brown spice blend named for the darkly colored bottles it’s stored in. Crafted from 20 to more than 30 ingredients, the one-of-a-kind mix is synonymous with the East Indian community—descendants of people indigenous to the North Konkan region on India’s west coast who converted to Christianity. This minority was officially recognized as “East Indians” by the government in 1887.

Where does that nice smoky flavor come from? JUDE ALBUQUERQUE

“When the British took over Bombay, the city’s native Catholic population took up the moniker East Indian to differentiate us from the other Christians who had moved to the city,” explains Reena Pereira-Almeida, creator of the East India Memory Co., a project that documents the group’s history and culture. “Over time, our cuisine, language, clothing, music, etc. came to reflect a mixture of Maharashtrian, Portuguese, and British influences.”

The rusty-hued bottle masala exemplifies this unique amalgamation. Chef Michael Swamy traces its origins back to goda masala, a roughly 20-ingredient mélange made by Maharashtrians using the same hand-pounding procedure that so enthralled my younger self. “Dry blending of spices is a very Maharashtrian thing,” he says.

But this artisanal practice is slowly dwindling. Few families have the space for hired masalawaalis to pound out bottle masala now that Mumbai is a megacity. Instead, they are choosing the convenience of having their mixes made in mills, and some households have filed away their family recipe, reducing the wild, family-by-family diversity of masalas out there. Still, for East Indian home cooks, bottle masala remains at the heart of their kitchen’s spice collection.

The vessels that give the mix its name are often leftover beer bottles.

“It has an earthy, smoky flavor—very subtle,” says Verna Texeira, a Brooklyn resident who was raised in Bombay. “It’s also very versatile—used with meat, vegetables, or fish—and changes the taste of the dish according to what you are cooking.” In The East Indian Cookery Book, first published in 1981 by The Bombay East Indian Association, bottle masala is listed in 34 recipes, including dishes such as duck moile and prawn lonvas, which are celebrated within the community. It’s also the first recipe in Swamy’s tome, The East Indian Kitchen, in which he shares two versions of the blend.

“East Indian food is a mish-mash,” says Swamy. “You have the Indian side, which is very pure and holistic and includes no meat. Then the Portuguese came and introduced meat eating, like pork, and even bread.”

Sarpatel, made with cubed pork and bottle masala, perfectly represents this fusion. Due to the limited availability of the community’s spice blends, though, and scarcity of East Indian restaurants, the cuisine is a mystery to most of Mumbai. Swamy partly blames its underrepresentation on anecdotal evidence that East Indians are “secretive” and notorious for guarding their recipes.

“I got a lot of whiplash from my aunts for sharing our recipes publicly in my book,” he says. Verna’s mother, Georgina Texeira, admits she’s possessive about the bottle masala recipe she inherited from her grandmother. “I have shared it only with close family and friends,” she says.

In some villages, these okhli were built into the floor. JUDE ALBUQUERQUE

This helps make bottle masala, and East Indian cuisine, special: Each family’s recipe differs depending on the area and sub-group they belong to. “The taste and color of the bottle masala will be different for each home and from village to village,” explains my father, who grew up in the former East Indian stronghold of Mumbai’s Pali Village. Some families use a combination of chilies. Others favor the Kashmiri chili, which lends the mix its trademark maroon hue. Common additions include turmeric, black peppercorns, fenugreek seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, wheat, nutmeg, cumin, mugwort … the list goes on.

Like my father, Texeira remembers the masalawaalis going house to house in her hamlet of Kalina to register families interested in having bottle masala or other spice blends made during the warm summer months. She also looked forward to the impending visit from the masalawallah (spice man). Like Santa Claus, he carried a large bag and delivered the pylee—all the spices each family required.

While this home-delivery service no longer exists, Texeira and others visit Mumbai’s larger markets to procure ingredients. Verna, whose mother has been making bottle masala for 30 years, fondly remembers this annual shopping spree and the two- or three-day process of sun drying the spices.

Thump. Thump. Thump. JUDE ALBUQUERQUE

“All the verandahs in the village would have the spices laid out on bedsheets or steel thalis,” she explains. “In the afternoons, my mother would send me to the terrace upstairs to turn the chilies in the sun. It was such a beautiful, sensory experience seeing the yellow turmeric, the round coriander seeds, the red crinkled chilies … ”

Marise Ann Lawrence likens the atmosphere of the masalawaallis’ arrival to a party. As the spice ladies removed the denkhas (stalks) from the chilies, or tossed ingredients in an earthenware dish over a wood fire, they’d chat with her aunts and mother and exchange family stories. “It wasn’t just about the work,” she says.

Depending on the quantity made, the procedure could take a day or a whole week. “It was like a picnic,” adds Texeira. “You’d have to provide them with tea, sugar, milk, and oil, and in the afternoon, they would cook their meal.” My father remembers the spice ladies preparing a dish with dried Bombay ducks, a fish found in the Arabian Sea, which they would char in the wood fire’s embers and smash together with raw onion to make a chutney.

Just as larger families band together for masala-making season, East Indians, as a minority group, unite for community celebrations, religious feasts, and weddings, says Pereira-Almeida, who grew up in India and now lives in Australia. 

“Those who have settled in other countries come together for occasions like Christmas and Easter,” she adds, referencing the sizeable East Indian diaspora. And traditional East Indian specialties, including those made with bottle masala, always play a starring role at these events.

Mixing and sifting. JUDE ALBUQUERQUE

Once the toasted spices cooled, the masalawaalis would start hand pounding. Standing around a chalice-like okhli—built into the floors of homes in some villages—they established their catchy rhythm, taking turns slamming the spices. “It is pound, sift, repeat. Pound, sift, repeat,” says Lawrence of the three- to four-hour operation.

“I remember their bangles clinking as they worked,” says Verna. Decades later, she remains fascinated by the ladies’ strength.

As mounds of vibrantly colored spices piled up, the masalawaalis gently combined the powders with deft circular hand movements. They then filled narrow-necked beer or whiskey bottles, patiently pushing down the masala with a wooden stick and sealing it with a cork and piece of cloth secured with string.

While many East Indians are nostalgic about the hand-pounding process, most find that making bottle masala—including sourcing and roasting the spices—is too much work, even though the mills have sped up the job. Still, a stubborn few do it themselves to ensure quality, and Swamy believes the traditional method releases the spices’ essential oils slowly, giving the blend a mellow flavor, while mechanical methods leave a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Laid-out ingredients can be a colorful sight. JUDE ALBUQUERQUE

The old-school procedure may soon be relegated to memories, but the love affair with bottle masala continues for this community dispersed around the world. “Other communities say everything we cook is always with bottle masala, that we can’t survive without it,” says Texeira. It’s not much of an exaggeration: On her yearly visits to see Verna in Brooklyn, she always has a packet or two of bottle masala stashed in her suitcase.

“If I call my Mom and ask her what to do if I’m stuck with adding flavor to a dish, she will say just put bottle masala,” says Verna, laughing.

(Source: Gastro Obscura)