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Yossi Ghinsberg: 1, Amazon rainforest: 0

The fantastic story of how an Israeli traveler struggled against all odds alone in the Amazon and came back alive.
by Subhasis Chatterjee

There exists a man in the world, who gamely stuck on in the Amazon even after losing three companions, alone, hungry, without the means to light a fire and with no way to get in touch with the rest of the world.

That man is Israeli traveler Yossi Ghinsberg.

I met Yossi in a tech conclave at Kolkata recently, where he was invited as a motivational speaker. He described in graphic detail his doomed Amazon expedition of 1981, a story so unique and fantastic; it forces you to suspend disbelief. He spent three long weeks in extreme pain and starvation, survived venomous snakes and a near-drowning and even an encounter with a puma. His unbelievable story has now been made into a documentary, popular in near about 160 countries.

He says it was his continuous struggle to find a retreat that led to his eventual rescue. Today, he has gone back to the place that made a man out of the naïve 22-year-old youth, back to Madidi National Park – the largest biodiversity conserve for the Amazons. His thoughts on using unconventional thinking and living through unexpected circumstances have been documented in his new book, Laws of the Jungle – Jaguars Don’t Need Self Help Books.

But let’s hear his story.

Looking for romance in the jungle

YossiAs a young 22-year old man just out of the military service in the Israeli Navy, Yossi was idealistic and naïve. “I wanted to be like the heroes of the books I read. That’s why I wanted to go to the jungle. I wasn’t interested in the adrenaline rush of danger, I was more interested in the romance,” he explains.

His ventures took him to Bolivia, where he met a Swiss explorer called Markus Stamm. “It happened almost like a novel,” Yossi says, explaining that he met Marcus on an outing at a lake. “There was also Karl Ruprechter, an overwhelming Austrian who was overwhelming. He was knowledgeable about jungle adventures and told me about this incredible journey he was going to undertake through the rainforest to discover a hidden clan. I was hooked,” he says.

As they started for the Amazon, there were four of them- Yossi, an American named Kevin Gale, Karl and Marcus. The group pledged to stay united despite their distinct personalities, but a clash was inevitable. The situation took a turn for the worse after the group travelled through the jungle for a couple of weeks. Yossi recalls, “The environment was harsh. There were tensions, the food was basic – we shot and ate monkeys, among other things. I was cursing myself for my stupidity and wanted to go back, but I stuck on.”

The group ultimately broke due to disagreements. Earlier, they have built a raft to travel down the Amazon river, but Karl thought they should continue on foot as it was too dangerous to sail. “But then Kevin proposed that he and I could carry on in the raft on our own. I was shocked, but I agreed. But later, we failed to control the raft as it rushed towards a giant waterfall. Kevin somehow managed to scramble towards the shore, but I fell into the waterfall.”

He adds, “There were moments of great despair, but falling down the waterfall wasn’t one of them. That was just like a roller coaster ride that lasted for about 20 minutes. I just kept my head above the water. And though I was initially excited to be alive when I reached the shore, the feeling of despair soon gripped me again.”

Yossi felt he would reunite with Kevin after a few hours, but there was no sign of him. “That was the toughest moment – the realisation that I was totally alone,” he remembers.

Hair-raising adventures

Yossi survived a late-night encounter with a puma by setting alight a bug repellent. Then he kept himself alive by eating leaves and eggs scrounged from the chicken homes in the jungle. “I strolled on for several days, thinking I was near San Jose,” he says. “I discovered my own power and then I didn’t even want to be rescued anymore. It was intoxicating.”

But fate was not done with him yet. He nearly drowned in a horrible flood and sank in a bog twice. By the end of the third week, he was completely exhausted and could walk no more on his bad foot. There was no food left. And then a miracle happened –Kevin arrived with a rescue team!

It turned out that Kevin had looked for him everywhere; but there was no news of Karl and Marcus – they probably perished in the jungle. But Yossi was found and he soon returned to the outside world, a changed man – born an American Catholic, he married an Israeli girl and became a Jew.

His ordeal in the jungle changed his life forever in many ways, and made him a humble person. “I now consider the smallest things in the world to be very special. I don’t ascribe much significance to the things I have now. That feeling of touching death has never left me,” he says.

(Pictures courtesy Yossi Ghinsberg)

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Finding the new ‘Normal’

Arathi Menon was divorced at 35, and wrote about the experience in a humorous book which dispels the ‘taboo’ from divorce.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

Mumbai-based, Bangalore-bred Arathi Menon doesn’t strike one as lady who would write about her bad experiences. Everything about her spells ‘happy’, from the pixie haircut to the cute elephant earrings matching her red dress. Her debut novel Leaving Home With Half A Fridge’ has received uniformly positive reviews and it was launched recently at a Kemps Corner bookstore with much ceremony.

Arathi Menon Armed with a post-graduate degree in Journalism, 38-year old Arathi started as a copywriter in advertising. Her last job was in corporate communications at The Times of India. The only child of her parents, Arathi found her way into writing through short stories and poetry. But during the trying times of her divorce, she realised that there was little literature on the sensitive subject. “I did not find any books that could help me through it. I had to figure out a lot of things on my own. I simply wanted someone to say that divorce is not all that melodramatic as our society and television makes it to be,” she says softly. “Sometimes bitterness happens in real life and though all of us feel sad, how is one to deal with it in a normal way?”

“So after I reached my ‘happy place’, I decided that I wanted the society to know that divorce is kind-of the new Normal,” she declares.

Writing the book

Two years after her divorce, she started off with a column for LiveMint.com. Readers’ feedback helped her realise that she should write a book on her divorce. She saw that if ever another person needed to talk or read about this ‘social taboo’, Leaving Home With Half A Fridge would be of tremendous help.

“I made sure that the content was not duplicated so the book got more structured. It starts off when I was contemplating getting a divorce and moves on to when I find a lawyer, then a place of my own. It talks about the many emotions a divorce puts you through like dating again after marriage, with all its complications,” she explains. “And then the point where I am happy, whether alone or with someone.”

She laughingly says, “People don’t realise the pain a divorced person goes through and one should spare them a moral judgement on the topic.” Her writing Arathi Menon book Coverhandles the sensitive topic with a feather’s caress and that is what readers are currently hooked on to. “I didn’t want to write any nasty things about my ex, because he is a nice person and though things didn’t work between us, he was not the villain,” she emphasises. “It was always about if you ever get stuck in such a situation, how you can move from the point of divorce to the point of happiness.”

Being a not-psycho 

Talking about the quirky title, she says, “If you go to any house, there is one fridge, one television, one washing machine, one microwave. So when you are leaving it, you cannot take half of these things, can you? While a divorce is emotional, it is also chokingly practical. You look at bed sheets and you wonder how many to leave behind and how many to take…So I just kept everything behind!” But she acknowledges that she wrote the book in a healthy frame of mind. “I had fought my demons and two years later, I decided that the book is for someone who might be going through the same nonsense.”

The author admits to being quite honest in the book. “I have spoken about how I stalked my ex or did mean things to his stuff, because I just wanted to say that it is normal to do something like this. No, I am not a psycho but I was not happy back then.”

In the process of writing the memoir, Arathi started writing a set number of words every day. “It is not a time thing, as initially I thought of writing from 10 am to 1 pm. But that didn’t happen, as I keep dreaming and the time would go. So now I write regularly.”

She posts a fantasy story on her blog Nothing Beastly About It, every Wednesday. Arathi reveals, “As publishing takes a lot of time, instead of waiting for this book to come out – I just started writing my second book. So I am done with that and I am working on my third book now. As most of my topics are dark, I wanted a ‘happy’ space which is where my blog comes in the picture.”

What inspires her? She says, “If you want to be an artist, there is nothing like inspiration. It is simply hard work. You get up every day and you sit at your table and you do your work. I think anybody who says ‘I wait for inspiration’ is lazy. It doesn’t work for me!”

She believes working in advertising has made her more professional, while being artistic was intrinsic, and that being in Mumbai has given her a sense of freedom. “I loved Bombay the minute I set my foot here. The city allows you to be anything you want.” She credits her editor Pranav Kumar Singh for handling the book with sensitivity and kindness. The author finds Akhil Sharma’s Family Life to be her recent favourite book and counts Flannery O’Connor and Alice Munro as her much-loved authors.

As I skim through her book before buying it, I chance upon the last chapter titled ’12 steps to a divorcee’s tango’ – and I realise that Arathi is not just the survivor who told her tale, but the one who danced and happily sang the sad, but true note.

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Talking translations

Writer and translator Mira Desai talks about venturing into translating regional writing quite by accident, and her important new work.
by Mamta D | @silverlightgal on Twitter

In May 2015, Harper Perennial  brought out a new book Hon’ble Minister Jagubhai originally written in Gujarati by Pravinsinh Chavda and translated into English by Mira Desai. While many Gujarati readers have read the varied works of Pravinsinh Chavda, this is the first time that English-speaking readers will read his novel. This has been made possible because of the diligent efforts of Mira Desai. Translation, especially of a regional Indian language, is a long and cumbersome process.

Mira has not just successfully translated but has also had her translations featured in national and international publications such as 91st Meridian, Indian Literature, Pratilipi, Muse India, Calque and The Brooklyn Rail. Besides working on translations, she has also written fiction and has contributed to a number of journals. She resides in Mumbai.

Here, we talk to Mira about translation, her new book, and more.

How does the translation process work? How do you usually begin?

After I’ve selected the text – which is a process in itself—I begin with a paper and pen draft.  There is something liberating about writing on paper, it lets you explore alternatives and mark sections in a way that a cursor on a screen cannot. The next stage is the typed version, where I edit and move words around as I type. I then send the prints to the author or poet for their comments. I’ve found poets quite liberal in the freedom they grant you. Story authors tend to be particular and it is not uncommon for them to change words around, or even change line by line! So this is a test of patience at times.

For how long have you been doing translations?

I don’t have a formal Arts education—my degrees are in pharmacy and marketing. I began translating quite by accident. In 2003, a fracture forced me to rest for a month. Those were the days of boring dial-up Internet. So on a whim I began translating. Dipak Doshi, the editor of the literary magazine Navneet Samarpan, was generous with the author’s address—and that’s how it started.

I believed, quite erroneously, that if I had a collection of short stories I would be able to interest a good publisher. 12 stories and many standard rejection slips later, I gave up. For a year or so I fumed, not knowing what to do. Then a chance search on Google led me to Indian Literature, the journal of Sahitya Academy—they were prompt to accept. I decided I would address magazines, not book publishers. Calque was the first online journal to accept these stories, and Brandon Holmquest, the editor, was patient with his suggestions. Pratilipi, MuseIndia followed, and in due course the crème – 91st Meridian, Words without Borders, Massachusetts Review and others.

So far I’ve translated short stories, a book of verse and now, this novel.

What made you choose Pravinsinh Chavda’s novel, Hon’ble Minister Jagubhai?

I’ve worked extensively on his short stories—I like his concise style. Yet he is comfortable using fantasy to take a leap into the unknown—all his stories have this off-the-page element. After working on his stories, translating his novel was the logical next step.

What’s the most difficult and the most exhilirating aspect of working on a translation?

The most exciting part is getting close to the original and having experts say it reads like it is written in English. The most difficult part is capturing the nuances of culture and manner- things that would be assumed as ‘known’ by someone reading the work in the original language. At times, editors want introductory essays, and that gets daunting if one hasn’t written any essays after high school!

Your bio says you have also written your own works, besides translations. Are they in English or Gujarati?

My own writing, all in English, grows out of weekly practice exercises at the Internet Writing Workshop—IWW. My stories and creative non fiction essays have been published in print and online. I keep my journal in Gujarati, though.

Mira’s book Hon’ble Minister Jagubhai is available on Amazon in print.

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How the mobile phone ring tone was born

Ralph Simon, creator of the mobile phone ring tone, talks about how he discovered the idea of a tune for every call.
by Subhasis Chatterjee

Ralph Simon joined the party at 9 pm on a winter evening in Kolkata and started tapping his feet to a live tune of ‘Dhum Pichak Dhum’, the hot number by Palash Sen’s band, Euphoria. Then he smiled and whispered in my ears, “Not a bad ring tone!’

Ralph SimonRalph, now 65, is known as the ‘father of the mobile phone ring tone’. The man himself is witty, intelligent and very humble. I met him as part of a recent tech enclave, where, fortunately, none of his speeches were interrupted by a ringing phone! To make his speeches interesting, the Englishman frequently used Bengali words. Naturally, the crowd was totally under his spell.

Discovering the ring tone

Ralph’s first professional association with music began in the 1970s, when he co-founded the Zomba Group of music companies (now a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment) with Clive Calder. “In the mid-90s, I became Executive Vice President of Blue Note Records and Capitol Records. After this, I started EMI Music’s global New Media division in Hollywood,” he remembers. He unveiled his first ring tone company Yourmobile (later renamed Moviso) simultaneously in Europe, America, Africa and Australia in 1997.

In 1998, Ralph had predicted that mobile phones would become the most indispensable social and voice networking and music companions for consumers. But it was a year before that he made an interesting discovery of his own.

“I was attending an important meeting at Nokia meeting and I was waiting for a car to take me to the venue. Just then, a Finnish youth passed by and there was an interesting melody coming from his phone. It wasn’t a standard Nokia tune. When I asked him what it was, he said that his phone’s alarm was very shrill, so he was trying to make the sound less shrill,” the CEO of London-based Mobilium Global says.

“That was during the late 90s,” he added. “Finland was then the world leader in mobile phone technology and I had been invited to make a presentation on digital audio postcards, an IT invention that allowed an attachment containing music, scrolling text and the jerky video of those days to be tagged together to an email. Back in those days, it was a big thing.”

But for the Englishman, that chance conversation with the Finnish youth gave him the best idea he’d ever had. “It was a turning point in mobile entertainment. Since we already had our technology, why couldn’t we take it further by having music ring when one’s phone rang? We could even enable our favourite songs as our ringtones,” he said. Ralph took the first available flight back to the US the very next day and started working on the idea.

Copyrights and legal tangles

But copyright issues were a problem. Music companies, for whom the sale of ringtone rights is a lucrative source of revenue today, would not give in.

The same week, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning of Napster (a peer-to-peer file sharing service used mostly for sharing audio files) were on the cover of Time. “Music companies suspected that they were pirates and weren’t interested in giving us licenses either. Only Michael Jackson’s company, which owned rights to Bryan Adams, Norah Jones and the Beatles, agreed,” Ralph remembers.

The first two tunes he used on getting a license were the Pink Panther theme and the Bond theme from Dr No. While Mobilium Global had to wade through lawsuits and financial settlements to get the music rights, the flip side of the struggle was that its traffic grew from 15,000 to 200,000 a day within a week.

Before shifting to Silicon Valley, Ralph ran a music company that had signed metal band Iron Maiden just when they were starting out. Then there was Will Smith. “He may be a famous actor today but when we gave him a break he was a hip-hop rapper called The Fresh Prince. It was that identity which earned him his first acting assignment on the TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

Mobile Entertainment magazine named Ralph as one of the world’s Top 50 executives in mobile entertainment in 2005, 2006, and 2008. In 2007, he received its special award for Outstanding Contribution to the Global Mobile Entertainment Industry. Ralph is also the founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Mobile Entertainment Forum- Americas and he still has his ear to the ground to try and catch the tune of the next digital revolution. “I’ll keep my eyes and ears open…I have got to see what’s coming next!” he exclaims.

(Pictures courtesy Ralph Simon)

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A sweet little cheese story

You’ve eaten ghar ka makhan, but have you tasted handmade cheese yet? Enter Mausam Jotwani and her awesome cheesy tales.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

Imagine an alternate universe where Willy Wonka was not a chocolatier, but a cheese maker in the concrete jungle of Mumbai. With no space for a factory, he decided to convert his refridgerator into a temperature and humidity-controlled cave to get through his cheesy ways. Now also imagine Mr Wonka to be a 28-year old woman, and you have Mausam Jotwani, an urban cheese maker with the brand ‘Eleftheria Cheese.’

Mausam JotwaniAn HR professional at CapGemini, Mausam doesn’t remember the last time she had processed cheese sprinkled on her pizza because she makes her own cheese and sells it too. Her fresh, spreadable cheese also known as Fromage blanc is what finds its way to a crusty baguette. “It all started when I had gone to Germany as a teenager. I was studying the German language and that is the first time I had artisan cheese,” she says. Unlike the Amuls and the Brittanias, her palate was exposed to a gamut of handcrafted cheese which were fresh and interesting.

Her tryst with Germany continued through her work commitments. She continues, “Every time I would try different varieties of cheese and sourdough breads there. I was actually, quite amazed with the explosion of flavours. I never thought cheese could taste so good and that’s how I got very interested in it.”

The journey

She remembers how in 2011, when she was completing her masters in HR in the United Kingdom, cheese became a part of her daily diet. “Just like we have vegetables, I had it in my fridge all the time. Once I was back, I missed eating it. At that time, handmade cheese was not readily available. And because I had tasted the good stuff, I decided that if I can bake my own bread then why not make my own cheese?”

She read, googled, watched videos and graced her bookshelf with the Fundamentals of Cheese Science. The science and art behind creating cheese intrigued her and when her first batch flopped, she realised it was not that simple. She imported the ingredients and made another batch of fromage blanc. “I took it to my office and gave it to my colleague. And the next day, she had made a cheese cake out of it!” she exclaims. “I was like, is this my cheese? My colleague loved the consistency and texture and was willing to pay for the next batch.”

Amazed and stumped, Mausam loved the appreciation and the fact that somebody would pay for it excited her. Started as a hobby, soon the joy of creating and making cheese with her own hands from scratch prompted her to come up with Eleftheria.

Hobby to side-business

“Eleftheria actually, means ‘freedom’ in Greek. While brainstorming for the name, the thought process was to choose something that I would like even 10 years down the lane. The word ‘freedom’Cows Milk Fetta_Eleftheria Cheesepopped in my head as it gives me immense freedom to go out there, explore and experiment. It gives me freedom from the corporate world as well. And in the end, it is freedom from processed cheese,” she grins.

Mausam’s passion for cheese and learning new languages combines when she has to decide names for the different cheeses that she makes. “Recently I made this saffron-infused cheese and I call it Netania. You see the famous cheese names like Mozzarella, Brie, Gruyere and more can’t be used as they are protected. So unless I use the milk from the same breed of cows and buffaloes they use, I can’t term them so. This gives me the pleasure to invent and christen my cheese creations, which I love.”

Her struggles

A mini cheese appreciation club – that’s what she calls the feedback session from her friends. “Making cheese is not about just reading a recipe and reproducing it. It is about the raw material, mainly milk, that goes into it. One has to understand how milk reacts at different temperatures, which cultures go into it, how do these cultures behave, what role does temperature and acidity play and more such small details,” she explains.

With the weather in Mumbai acting up, she had to constantly reassess and modify the recipes. “Also good quality milk is of paramount importance, because your cheese is as good as your milk. How you actually separate the milk solids and what you do with these solids, gives each cheese its own character.” Hence, feta tastes different than a parmesan and cheddar. Today, she sources her milk from a farm in Igatpuri and maintains high quality standards.

Another battle on her home front was convincing her parents. “I was working seven days a week and they thought I had gone mental. So it was a task to make them realise that the cheese we were eating was not actual cheese, but a homogenised version with 51 per cent milk and rest all preservatives and emulsifiers. And the reason my cheese tasted different was due to the freshness.”

IMG_8798Luckily, they sensed her passion. So when she is out on exhibitions, her brother helps while her bhabhi is the official taster. Mausam also has a mentor who guides and fine tunes her recipes. “He is a pioneer in the cheese making industry. He started 20 to 25 years ago, when people didn’t know what mozzarella was. I have been fortunate enough as it has been a constant learning process, under his tutelage.”

Her dream

“With Eleftheria, I want to give an Indian touch to cheese. I wish to make a fresh, handcrafted cheese with locally sourced ingredients that is inspired by Mumbai and India.” So while paneer is Indian cheese, she would love if someone visiting Mumbai would make a point to try and take back Eleftheria cheese for being tasty.

With plans only for quality stuff and iconic cheese, Mausam hopes that cheese finds a way to be a staple part of the Indian diet. “It is not only a concentrated source of protein, but also elevates the mood just like good chocolate. It is a healthy choice for breakfast, too.”

She leaves us with this anecdote: “Cheese is milk’s sleep into immortality.”

To order your own handcrafted artisan cheese, follow Eleftheria Cheese on Facebook or visit their website www.eleftheriacheese.com

(Pictures courtesy Mausam Jotwani)

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His first best dance experience

Choreographer Longinus Fernandes talks about directing the dances for The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which is earning rave reviews.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Longinus FernandesC​horeographer Longinus Fernandes is excited and happy – and with good reason, because his work in the just-released The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is being appreciated in all quarters. After working with the likes of Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and John Madden (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and doing the choreography for a Chinese film My Amazing Trip To India, Longinus is really upbeat about his latest Hollywood outing.

In the sequel to John Madden’sThe Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Longinus has brought his unique style and fabulous moves for a special wedding sequence in the film. “What makes it so special is that I got to work with some of the best actors in the world, like Richard Gere, Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, Lillette Dubey, and Dev Patel and got them to dance to the beats of the Hindi film song ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’,” Longinus grins.

He explains how he became a part of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. “Since I had done the choreography for Slumdog Millionaire, Eat Pray Love, Bollywood Hero and a couple of ad films for the India Take One Production house, I suppose they (the makers) were very comfortable with my working style. I personally feel blessed to be repeated for their projects again and again. I must mention Tabrez Noorani for being instrumental in shaping my career internationally. He actually makes it a point that I get on board for everything that demands choreography and this is what happened when the planning of this venture began. To my luck, I happened to be in Mumbai when they called me for a meeting and after that there was no turning back.”

The brief Longinus got from John Madden was a straightforward one. “All he said was, ‘This is a wedding sequence. There will be a few awkward jigs initially but ultimately I want it to look stunning.’ He said he was sure I would do my best to make it look special. I replied, ‘You got it,’” he says, adding that working with John Madden was simply fantastic.

​

Creating a dance sequence is always a job by itself, especially when the choreographer has to work with various artists and numerous back up dancers. The entire cast and were so busy with their respective schedules that Longinus and his associates had to wait three weeks before they could see everybody together. “I had stand-ins for everybody and staged the act to perfection and displayed it to John, who loved it so much that he decided to extend the sound track by a minute. He made it a point to be present for almost every rehearsal and ensured that every artist would be present as well.”

​Longinus says he loved catching up with Dev Patel, who he knows since their time together on Slumdog Millionaire. “He has improved tremendously. When I first met him, he was so shy and now Longinus Fernandes and Dev Patelhe is so outspoken. I was very happy to watch the effort he took to get all the moves right…he has a peculiar style, which will surely catch on sooner or later. Tina Desai just loves dancing and enjoys every bit of it. She is also blessed with a wonderful body that compliments her dance moves.” But the biggest surprise was Richard Gere, who was very punctual and diligent with rehearsals.

He suggested the song ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ which Madden immediately liked, but took some time to get approvals for. “Honestly, working with him (Madden) has been a wonderful experience. Despite a challenging shoot, especially in the cold weather, he made sure everyone was very well taken care of with heaters, bonfires and hot coffee. The shoot went off very well under him,” Longinus says, adding that the unit was “stunned with how exuberantly Judi Dench and Maggie Smith danced.”

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