Launchpad: What's new in your world

Your mini-magazine at the front with everything you need this month, including festive buys, playing with The Beatles, the hidden Sherlock Holmes, Durga Puja and Lewis Hamilton’s cricket skills...

Framed
A new exhibition of images celebrating India is something to look forward to this month.
- Bibek Bhattacharya

India as a subject of photography is about as old as the art form itself. The sheer detail and unexpected images that the country throws up is breathtaking in its scope. Adman and photographer Sanjay Das has tapped into this rich mine of images and has come up with some great photographs from Ladakh, Benares and other parts of the country in the exhibit titled “Close Up India”. It is a pretty wide range, from nature scenes to studies of people and everyday objects.

Das has been an advertising professional for almost two decades and has turned to professional photography relatively recently, showing his images at the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi in 2007 and at the Singapore Art Fair in 2008. An ardent traveller, he says his endeavour as a photographer is to capture the warmth, spirit and soul of the country.

“Close Up India” will be exhibited at the Open Palm Court, India Habitat Centre, 13th to 23rd September 2009 (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.). Contact: www.sanjaydas.in

Music

Meet...The Beatles!
Thirty-nine years after their break-up, enduring music and canny marketing ensures that it will be a Mop-Top deluge this September.
- Bibek Bhattacharya

It’s a phenomenon that takes hold of the popular imagination once every decade—Beatlemania. Well, no one can any longer pretend that this is 1964, but every ten years the Beatles are back on everyone’s playlist. Not only does it speak volumes for the quality of the band’s music, it also makes for great business.

The last such shake-up was in the mid-Nineties, when the band released Live at the BBC, Anthology I, II, III and the Anthology Book over a space of three years. It coincided perfectly with the blossoming Britpop movement in England, reinforced the band’s cultural clout and they earned a few hundred million dollars. This decade, there has been the Broadway show Love in 2006, the chart-topping compilation 1 in 2000 and the outpouring of grief surrounding the death of George Harrison in 2001, but come September 2009, and it will be raining Fab Four!

First off, the much-awaited Beatles: Rock Band role-playing game. To be released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, it’ll finally allow gamers to play with the band, as band members. A massive business push, as always, and to many Beatles’ fans, it’ll also be a dream come true. Coming your way on 9.9.09, it’ll have you chanting “Number 9, Number 9,” with a glazed look in your eyes.

Of much greater musical importance is the release of properly re-mastered versions of the band’s back catalogue— which includes all their studio albums from Please Please Me to Let it Be as well as the extended EP Magical Mystery Tour and the compilations Past Masters Vols. I and II. The Beatles are probably the last major rock act that has resisted either re-mastering or the digitising of its catalogue, probably with an eye towards future earnings. Well, now that the CD is dying a slow death and music becomes more fragmented, The Beatles have suddenly decided to release re-mastered stereo versions of the albums. On the face of it, the timing looks a little ridiculous.

But those who’ve heard Love will realise that it’s a big deal. Re-mastering is the aural equivalent of the haze clearing after rain. Buried nuances and melodic lines jump out at you from songs you thought you knew so well. On top of that, the magic of stereo ensures that the sound spectrum is better divided and is coming at you from all sides.

Beatles records on cassettes and CDs were always loud, that is, the difference between the loudest and the quietest bits were reduced in the mix. The re-issues promise to restore the sound of the original vinyls, which will ensure greater dynamic contrast, and deeper grooves.

The music of the band’s 1965-1970 output is so rich—there’s just so much to hear in every track—that it seems almost criminal that they did not do this earlier. Paul McCartney’s galloping, inventive bass playing, and George Harrison’s neat, thoughtful little guitar lines are some of the great joys of pop music, and finally, they can be heard in all their glory. Oh, and the bands’ company Apple Corps will rake in a cool few millions. Beatle-music is recession-proof, so here’s to a great autumn of all things Fab.

Influences
The books that shaped my life
Pushpanjali Sharma, Brand Director, Bentley and Lamborghini, was irrevocably affected by Shakespeare.

Joan of Arc, Mark Twain
I will forever be inspired by the story of this peasant girl who followed her dreams against all odds. Conviction, self-belief and the courage to follow one’s heart is what epitomised Joan’s life. Joan believed she was guided by the divine, and like her, I, too, feel that all of us have angels guiding us. We just need the courage and the belief to do what we truly want to do.

Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
I first read this in high school, and was deeply moved by the fate of Marcus Brutus. Brutus was an “honourable man” who consciously strove to do what he believed to be righteous. While his intentions were pure, his one misguided choice brought about his fall from grace. The importance of the grave impact one wrong choice can have on our lives is what I took away from this book. It’s our choices that mould our destiny, and not vice versa.

Iacocca, Lee Iacocca & William Novak
Lee Iacocca, “the father of the Mustang”, rose spectacularly through the ranks of Ford Motor Company to become its President, only to be toppled eight years later in a power play. This book is a first-hand account of the goings on in Ford and other global companies. While the book underlined several warnings, it was also a messenger of hope. Diligence, quality and smart work (as opposed to hard work) always win in the long run.

Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again”. I still get goose bumps thinking about that opening line. The story is an exploration of relationships, as well as a discovery of one’s relationship with self. So much of what happens in life is the result of our perception.

Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield
The story brings to life spiritual ideologies rooted in ancient tradition. I recommend it to all those who believe there’s more to life than what meets the eye. Also to those who do not believe.
- As told to Anumeha Chaturvedi

Book Review
The curious case of 221B

Pastiches of the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, are about as old as Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories themselves. Homages and deconstructions have veered from the irreverent (a bumbling detective called Hemlock Jones) to the spectacular (The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes). It is, therefore, a pleasant surprise to come across a book by an Indian writer, which actually manages to hold its own with all the Holmes-influenced literature that preceded it.

First time novelist Partha Basu bases this book on John Watson’s private notebooks, which find their way to a young man, Jit, in the 1970s, along with letters by the daughter of Holmes’s long-suffering landlady, Mrs Hudson. The two sets of documents reveal a more human Holmes with fallible powers of deductions, as well as some “cases” which Watson had either never published, or had not told the true story. Thus “A Scandal in Bohemia” becomes “Blunder in Bohemia”, and “The Speckled Band” becomes “The Serpentine Affair”. One story’s a tour de force—The “Missing Courier”, a brilliantly original Holmes story crafted from a single stray line in one of the original stories. Basu is evidently a fan, with a great ear for language. A must-read.
- Bibek Bhattacharya