LOOTING THE LAND OF KINGS - Published in The Statesman, Oct 2009

Niki Seth-Smith visits Rohet Garh, one of Rajasthan's most prestigious heritage hotels.

Rajasthan's resilient identity is built on the shifting sands of relentless invasion. Historically the frontline of defence against the Afghans, Turks and Mughals - the Brits having cannily bought off the state's military muscle - now Rajasthan is facing a new kind of attack. Tourists to the area are increasingly demanding 'the real Rajasthan' – which for those with money to pay means nothing less than staying in the most exalted of the desert state's opulent forts and palaces. The ancestral owners, meanwhile, are compelled to welcome their effete yet formidable invaders, being badly in need of financial security in today's fast-moving India.

During a recent trip around Rajasthan, I became a foot soldier of this luxury tourist brigade. A week into the journey, I had already gorged myself in old harem quarters and hit the hay in converted palace stables on the well-trod trail from Jaipur to Jodhpur. The brochures had mentioned being 'welcomed by my hosts' but they had all apparently abandoned ship - for the capital, presumably, or for their still-unsullied Monsoon Palaces. I was not a little surprised, then, to meet Thakur Mavendra Singh taking tea on the fastidious lawns of Rohet Garh, one of Rajasthan's most sought-after heritage hotels.

The Singhs opened their home in 1990, retaining their expansive living quarters, having re-imagined the fort with the moneyed international traveller in mind. The twin walled enclosures now harbour gardens and a stately colonnaded swimming pool. The fort's distinctive frescoes are picked out in bisque, turquoise and sienna - answering the reduced palette of the surrounding desert. What impresses as much as the carved wooden ceilings and Mughal-era portraits is the sense of an aesthetic rooted in an intimate deference to time.

There should be a pause for reflection, however. What of the thirty-four guest rooms, free internet access and complimentary continental breakfast? What separates Rohet Garh from yet another Rajasthani hotel banging its heritage tabla with a special nod to the Americans and their nobility fixation?

The answer lies in the traditions not played out for the traveller's handy-cam. While Thakur Singh may sell extortionate gift shop goods, a percentage of these funds are channelled into local projects for the benefit of villages that would have once fallen within the Rohet fiefdom. As the family source all their staff from the locality, the garh also remains one of Rohet's primary employers. The Singhs have revised their ancestral duties to survive the latest wave of ferengis, furthering Rajasthan's long history of cultural assault and assimilation.

Such an elegant symbiosis between cosseted Western tourists and the Great Indian Desert way of life is bound to fissure at points. I was fortunate enough to sample the strange fruit born out of the cracks. Rohet Garh's village safari is hailed as exemplary in the heritage tourism industry. I and eight other guests signed up for the tour, which promised a visit to both a Brahmin settlement and a village belonging to the Bishnois, a tribe billed as 'the world's first environmentalists' due to their spiritual reverence of flora and fauna.

Meeting the Bishnois and learning of their twenty-nine ecological principles would have been unreservedly captivating, had it not been for the guide's distracting endorsement of the next stop on our agenda. He seemed to be saying that we would proceed to an opium tasting ceremony where we would all take opium. I was inclined to be happily intrigued but I could sense my American fellow guests tensing up in black anticipation of Lotus Eater dens and death in an Indian chokey. Preparing myself to laugh it off under the banner of 'cultural misunderstanding', I still managed to be taken aback on being ushered into a dimly lit hut full of opium addicts.

The line of Brahmins watched us enter with deep-set eyes, shadowed by uniformly flamingo-pink turbans. As we settled ourselves into an audience on the swept cow dung floor, water was poured into a tall metal instrument through what appeared to be two tea strainers, topped in the centre by a finger-sized Shiva icon. As the 'dope chai' dripped into the bowls below, our guide blithely regaled us on 'a day in the life' of these farmers: opium apparently acting as both morning set-me-up and post-toil relaxant. Meanwhile, the men under discussion eyed us with what may have been concealed embitterment, but was far likelier the single-minded anticipation of the addict.

After slurping up my palm-full of opium tea (the Americans declined with a 'no thank-you') I was conveyed back to camp to hazily muse on my stay. Perhaps Rohet Garh could be a little too authentic. Having expected a tranquil retreat, I wasn't entirely at ease with taking illegal substances or running into Thakur Singh every morning. Its hard to savour the plumpest lounge chair when the owner is wriggling on a bar stool. Yet, after weeks reclining in the palatial suites of the once-Maharajas, at Rohet I felt I'd finally landed. The coloniser is the colonised, as they say, and I don't think I could have learned this lesson more pleasurably than at Rohet Garh.

Entire issue of the Basingstoke Observer

I covered for the Chief Reporter of the Basingstoke Observer, and had to single-handedly produce all the news content and images for an issue of this weekly local paper. Read the issue, in digital form, here.

Read Kipling's Kim with video and pics

Go here to check out the 50 page + multimedia resource I created to accompany Kipling's classic adventure story 'Kim'.

Check out the Big Society debate I'm heading

Go here to read the ongoing debate on the Big Society that I'm heading at OpenDemocracy.org.

Theatre reviews for UKtheatre.net

Publishing these theatre reviews for UKtheatre.net, published in 2009, as the links have expired..

Direct from The Edinburgh Festival, The National Theatre of Scotland’s 365 – One Night to Learn a Lifetime is a brave, highly visual production on Britain’s care system, now playing at The Lyric Hammersmith



In 365 – One Night to Learn a Lifetime writer David Harrower and director Vicky Featherstone tackle the sensitive subject of Britain’s care system. The production traces a year in the life of a group of 16-year-olds who leave care for ‘practice-flats’, supposedly to prepare them for an independent, adult life. Featherstone took inspiration from a UNICEF report suggesting that Britain is at the bottom of 21 developed countries in its treatment of young people, and given such a starting impulse, 365 could have fallen foul of preachy moralising. Instead, the production injects life into the facts, giving us a glimpse into the lives of fourteen teenagers that is at turns harrowing and life-affirming, reaching beyond the hard realities of Britain’s care system to pay tribute to the human spirit.

Harrower has taken a risk by avoiding a clear narrative, letting the character’s lives interweave and speak on their own terms. These are stories of abuse, neglect and emotional damage, and the play’s lack of a clear structure reflects the uncertainty facing these teenagers. The script was developed largely during rehearsal, and the benefits of this collaborative process can be felt in the energy and confidence of the fifteen-strong cast. For many of the actors, 365 is their debut performance, and the occasional shaky moment and lack of any notable ‘shining light’ is overridden by a strong sense of cast togetherness.

The action largely takes place in an empty, one-room flat – a pared-down set that is used to masterful effect, providing a simple canvas for Steven Hogget’s excellent choreography. Expressive physicality takes pressure off the script, creating a great depth of meaning without the characters needing to be unrealistically eloquent or compromising the authenticity of their speech. The symbolism of floating is a strong underlying thread in the play, and some of the most emotionally charged scenes are conducted in silence with the actors elevating on wire, communicating a sense of alienation or struggle, mid-air, against an invisible presence.

It’s obvious that a great deal of research has gone into 365 – there’s a palpable awareness of responsibility towards the weighty subject matter, yet the production is never po-faced. Featherstone has done justice to a wry comic streak in Harrower’s script, and the various interwoven storylines create a momentum of their own that resists any over-arching moral or contrived sentiment. The Lyric has once again lived up to its reputation for taking chances in delivering brave, energetic theatre. Rather than resting on its merits as a ‘worthy’ production, 365 is an edgy, compelling look at the lives of Britain’s young people in care.

Richard III on the fringe


The Faction is known for flying in the face of fringe theatre tradition, using large casts to reinvent classical texts. Unfortunately their production of Richard III at The Brockley Jack seemed half-hearted in its attempt to revive and innovate, using the physicality of the cast to create some nice touches, but staying disappointingly on safe ground for much of the 2hr production.

The Faction had a hard task taking on Richard III. It’s easy for assassination after assassination to begin to drag if the production doesn’t pace itself well. During the first half the cast seem all too aware of this potential, with actors tending to trip over their tongues in order to plough through the machinations, plots and consequent murders in time for the shrewd, devious Richard to be crowned king. The hurried squabbling of nobles contrasts with the time taken in the tender portrait of Clarence before his death, giving the actors Tom Shaw (Tyrrel) and Gareth Fordred (Clarence) breathing space to create an engrossing, self-contained scene. It would have been nice to see more carefully poised moments like this. While the pace of the second half slowed to the play’s benefit, the initial galloping speed is detrimental to character development.

Mark Leipacher’s plays a suave, weasel-like Richard III, genuinely owning the part. The occasional shaky moment in the acting of lesser characters is forgivable, and The Brockley Jack’s small, in-the-round theatre gives the production an immediacy that keeps the audience glued to the unfolding plot. Whether it’s Margaret lurching into the audience, driven mad by loss of her Queendom, or Richard’s youngest nephew careering about the stage, unaware of his imminent death in the tower, the action is riveting for being often close enough to touch.

The Faction is known for the muscular physicality of their productions. While there were some striking standout moments in Richard III, the 25-strong cast could have been used to more consistently powerful effect. The pivotal ‘visitation’ in Act V is one such standout moment. The ghosts of all those killed by Richard are transformed into a moving mass of corpses heaving themselves across the stage to damn the tyrant before battle, while reaching out to bless his rival Richmond. Other instances of clever physicality, such as the decision to double up the bodies of Richard’s victims as thrones, are effective but perhaps a little predictable.

An accomplished, engaging production, The Faction’s Richard III falls short of true innovation, but certainly sets the heart racing and gives its audience a good flavour for Shakespeare’s “deformed, unfinish’d” anti-hero.

Security, by Zena Edwards



Zena Edwards’ one-woman show, Security – now playing at Battersea Arts Centre - uses poetry, music and theatre to craft a deeply personal work touching on issues of knife crime, the transition from youth into adulthood, and the multi-cultural melting pot of London street life.

The bare plotline of Security, written as well as acted by Edwards, may seem a little contrived. The play begins with teenage MC Ayleen recovering from her older brother’s murder in a misplaced gang attack. The death becomes central to the growth of her relationship with Palestinian Mahmoud, a resigned loner in his 50s whose experience of the fight for freedom in his home country is paralleled with the meaningless violence taking place on the streets of London.

Edwards, however, inhabits her characters with such force of conviction that what could have been a tired diatribe is transformed into a deeply felt and acutely observed testament to London street life. The format, being mostly composed of monologues, allows Edwards to invest real emotional depth into her characters – especially revealing in the case of Alyeen, who on the surface is an a-typical teenage MC “with attitude”. Edwards’ mastery over her characters’ physicality alone makes Security worth the watch. It’s nothing short of astounding to see Edwards move seamlessly from the teenager’s pout to take on the peculiar mannerisms of Mahmoud - with his foul-breathed dog and camera swinging over his pot-belly - or the 70-year old Jamaican veteran, who jauntily limps round the estate with his regular call of ‘Get a job!’.

While the streets around appear chaotic and randomly violent, Ayleen and Mahmoud seek security within themselves, and it is their fragile and at times strained relationship that binds together this play of many stories, songs and encounters. We see Ayleen through Mahmoud’s eyes as she desperately tries to follow her older brother’s advice to not get into trouble and ‘just be herself’. One of the most ingenious and moving scenes takes place when Mahmoud gives Ayleen a rose in the street. We see her outward response ‘What?! People will think you’re my boyfriend!” contrasted with her experience of greenness, growth and beauty while smelling the rose. Edward’s quick interchange between portraying Ayleen and acting out Mahmoud’s dogged protest that she take the rose and really ‘look’ at it, creates a scene in turns exquisitely comical and moving.

Security’s careful blending of theatre with spoken-word and music gives the play a strong sense of rhythm and pace. Edwards does the singing herself, and the songs are simple and often hauntingly beautiful – used to demarcate changes in character. If we were to imagine the play as a series of possessions, it is as if Edwards’ singing purifies herself in readiness for the next role. As a spoken-word poet, as well as a an actress and theatrical writer, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Security’s script should slip so naturally between naturalistic and poetic language, catching our attention and sustaining it with its variety and vitality. While Mahmoud’s poet-philosopher musings on the world slows the pace to a leisurely contemplation, Ayleen’s hectic, often outrageously funny MC-ing injects pure adrenaline into the play.

Seeing Security at Battersea Arts Centre is an intimate experience – the small stage gives this extraordinary one-woman show a special impact due to Edwards’ nearness to the audience and her ability to fully control the stage space. What we ultimately take away from this production is Edwards’ will to communicate her intense love and involvement in her characters. As writer and sole performer, she has produced a play with an admirable clarity of vision, that takes an unwavering and profoundly human look at some of the unseen and unheard men and women in our capital.

Feature for RussiaToday.com

Read the feature online, here

Canada to deport US ex-Sergeant who refused to fight in Iraq
Sergeant Hart defected from the Iraq war in 2004, and has been living in Canada for the past three years with his wife and son. Now Hart has been ordered to return to the US to face charges and imprisonment, despite opposition from the majority of the Canadian people.

Nine-year veteran Sergeant Patrick Hart made the life-changing decision to go AWOL from the US army after learning that his second deployment would be to Iraq. Fellow soldiers’ stories of atrocities committed by the US army had warned him off fighting in the country. He says that, as a family man, he was concerned that Iraq would leave him scarred by his experiences.

“One of my buddies is telling me that he has a six-year-old daughter,” Hart says. “But now he sees the faces of these Iraqi kids he’s run over every night before he goes to bed… …So I’m thinking - if I go there, will I get mentally screwed up like those guys? Am I going to be able to interact with my son properly?”

Hart is now living with his six-year-old son Rian and wife Jill in Toronto, after the family came to join him in 2005. Jill is an Office Manager for a nightclub in Toronto, while Rian is just about to complete his first semester at his local school.

However, despite the community in Toronto welcoming the Harts with open arms, on October 8th the family was ordered by the Canadian government to leave the country voluntarily, or be deported back to America on October 28th.

Canada officially opposed the Iraq war, and lobby groups such as The War Resisters Support Campaign feel their country is contradicting its position by deporting a resister of the conflict back to the US.
The government’s policy is also at loggerheads with the majority opinion of its people. According to an Angus Reid national poll conducted last June, 64% of Canadians want to grant permanent resident status to US war resisters.
Major figures in favour of the deportation policy include Crown lawyer Stephen Gold. Gold worked on Jeremy Hinzman’s case last September, where he argued that Hinzman - and other US war resisters like him - were owed nothing by the Canadian government. “The applicant (Hinzman) is going back to face the consequences of his own actions”, Gold stated. “That cannot be laid at the feet of the Canadian government.
Hart’s wife Jill expresses her thanks to The War Resisters Support Campaign for rallying against figures like Gold, and to the Canadian people for giving their support: “We have had three wonderful years in Canada, as a family.  We owe Canadians an enormous amount of gratitude for welcoming us and allowing us to stay for the past three years.”
The harshest punishment for deserting the US army is five years imprisonment. Patrick Hart is hoping for greater leniency from the military tribunal, but is ready to accept any verdict.
“For anyone thinking I’ve taken the easy route, it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination”, Hart says. “But it is what it is, and I’ll stand by what I’ve done.”

Music reviews published on Hybridlab.org

Links to a bunch of music reviews I wrote for Hybridlab.org have expired, so here's a selection of the work...

We Yes You No, Music Review

We Yes You No are a wide-eyed baby of the No Wave tradition, umbilical cord still attached. It is hard to fathom that the band are in fact a four-piece. We Yes You No look beyond the poverty of conventional instrumentation, createing a surprisingly rich, deep and intricately woven soundscape that is all their own.

The track ‘Dream in Motion’ is exemplary of We Yes You No’s avant-garde tendencies. ‘Dream in Motion’ circles around a musical motif with the line ‘I love you just the way you are’, taking the fragment through a process of rhythmical distortion and morphing - think John Cage and the minimalist scene. Surprisingly, ‘Dream in Motion’ has a joyously harmonic chorus, making the track both musically challenging and blissful on the ears. Another beauty of a tune, ‘Obsessed’, uses dissonant keyboard riffs to create an eerie ambience offset by interludes of chaotic sound, almost white noise.

We Yes You No take their music seriously, but this is not to say that they can’t do tongue-in-cheek. The message behind ‘Apocalypse Pocket Edition’ (‘the end is nigh my friend’) may be dour but it is delivered with such saccharine vocals that the song mocks its own nihilism. There is a flavour of whimsical romanticism to We Yes You No, especially notable in their lyrical opulence -‘It’s the ice rink that she rules, no matter that it should have been the desert pool’. Like Mercury Rev and the blue-sky sound of Joy Zipper, We Yes You No are about more than beating out a tune or even making a statement. Their sound is concerned with invoking atmosphere.

We Yes You No are pulling at the edges, corners and windows of the music scene. With the spookily evocative bent of Blonde Redhead and the kitsch flavour that we have come to except from Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips, We Yes You No are a razor-sharp act with enviable musical integrity.

www.myspace.com/weyesyouno

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Bev Lee Harling, Featured Artist




Bev Lee Harling is an unstoppable force of musical activity. Her soulful intimate vocal style, song writing prowess, and diverse instrumental talents have left her in demand from all corners of the industry.

Classically trained as a violinist, Bev switched direction mid way through her studies to jazz voice. Since embarking on her career, she has graced a colourful array of bands and projects, playing fiddle for an Argentinian Tango group, singing in a jazz septet, holding the occasional rooftop concert and even receiving a track commission in October last year from Myla, a sexy lingerie brand patronised by Kate Moss and her ilk. Bev is touring, as we speak, with darlings of the goth-alternative scene, The Medieval Baebes.

Clearly, there are many doors open to this exceptional musician. Bevs’ career roots itself in her self-penned music where her expressive, velvety voice really comes into its own. Jazz, blues and global influences are woven together with a subtle fluency that enlivens the soul and tweaks at the heartstrings. In 2006 she released a five-track EP, Impossible Human, and has since collaborated with the eccentric Rogall and The Electric Circus Sideshow as well as Berlin-based band Ye Solar.

The musical world is certainly reaping the benefits of Bev’s multi-tasking talents. Her parents once described their daughter as a ‘rudderless boat’. I wouldn’t be so sure about ‘rudderless’. Bev Lee Harling’s sound certainly leads the listener into deep waters, doing so with strength and fervent direction.

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New Black Light Machine, Featured Band

Mates from college, New Black Light Machine began in 2006 as a three-piece and completed their line up last March with Matthew Lane on keys. The band describe their playing style as ‘fast and loose’ and gigs focus on intense energy above technical perfection. ‘We’d rather play a good song loosely than a bad song tight’ remarks vocalist Russell McNally. It’s Russell that provides a raw edge to the band’s live performances, delivering his self-penned harrowing lyrics with a monotone intensity that recalls Mark E. Smith of The Fall.

New Black Light Machine are a daring outfit with direction. So where are they hoping to take their sound? The band have established a definitive face on the East London circuit and are now in a position to break out into the wider London-based scene. We wish them luck in their bid to conquer the capital. New Black Machine may not deliver air-brushed music but their fast and loose approach is getting them the attention they deserve.

www.myspace/newblacklightmachine