Month: April 2013

Categories
Places

So, I took Richard Parker for a walk

Spend a weekend in Bangkok and avoid the usual tourist activities – take a tiger for a walk, for instance.
by Salil Jayakar

For a first-time visitor, Bangkok, much like Mumbai, can shock and delight in equal measure. There’s more to the city than sex-on-the-streets (well, not literally), ping-pong clubs and ‘happy ending’ massage parlours.

If you thought ‘queuing up’ for what seems like eternity is an India-only problem, think again. At Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, long lines can sap the life out of you. I spent at least an hour for my visa on arrival and then another hour just to get a local SIM at the airport. Yes, call it being stupid but getting the SIM at the airport means you’re less likely to be conned.

Local transport in Bangkok is fairly manageable thanks to the Bangkok Mass Transit System (BTS), the world-famous tuk tuks, cabs (air-conditioned, thank you very much!) and motorbike taxis that zip you in and out of traffic. The Airport Express connects well to the BTS and all you need to do is find the nearest station to where you’re staying. If you want to experience the fun (in more ways than one) and gritty side of the city, I’d totally recommend the Sukhumvit (Bangkok’s longest road) area around Nana or Asok BTS and the Si Lom area.

Stay safe

Since my first solo backpacking holiday in 2011, I’ve been hooked on to staying at budget hostels that offer clean and safe accommodation, and the opportunity to meet fellow travellers. In Bangkok, I stayed at the delightful Che Qinn on Sukhumvit’s Soi 4 which made BBC Travel’s ‘Bangkok’s hippest hostels’ 2012 list. While I didn’t spend much time there, my Swedish roommate’s incredulous “You’re in Bangkok for the weekend?” comment did leave a smile on my face. Yes, we’re Indian and we do it different!

Sukhumvit and Si Lom, with their street shops, malls, massage parlours, cafés and clubs, international hotels and banks, are a heady mix of the best and worst (possibly) of Bangkok. Don’t hesitate to bite into chicken or lamb skewers (see pic on left) from the street-cart vendors. The pad thai is lip-smacking, finger-licking delicious served with oodles of noodles, shrimp and love. And for just about 30-40 baht (approx Rs 80), it’s a steal!

As you manoeuvre through the crowds, you’ll have all sorts of wares thrust under your nose and even a photo album of boys and girls you can pick and choose for that famous Thai massage. And please try not to stare (that annoying Indian habit) when you see old Caucasian men with young Thai girls and boys. It’s rude! Unlike some other major cities of the world, Bangkok doesn’t have a dark underbelly. It’s in your face, and what you see is what you get.

Temple run

Take time out to visit Bangkok’s temples. Dedicated to Lord Buddha, some will give you the much-needed peace of mind in a crowded, noisy city. I made my way to The Grand Palace, the official residence of the King of Thailand but the long entry line (once again) deterred me. And as sexy as my shorts were, I wouldn’t be allowed entry as you can’t show off your legs and arms – for men and women, covered knees and no sleeveless tops or tees!

Take a detour and head to Wat Pho, home of the Reclining Buddha (see pic below, right), which at 150 feet in length is one of the largest in the world. Wat Phra Kaeo (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and Wat Benchamabophit (The Marble Temple) are a must-visit too. The Ratchanatdaram Woravihara (Loha Prasat) is the only existing building in the world which has a metal roof. Made from iron, the roof has 37 spires that signify the 37 enlightenment virtues of Buddhism, and it is also home to the Buddha’s relics.

Mind you, there’s not much to do in these temples than marvel at the scale and complexity of the craftsmanship. My personal favourite was Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) which is a cruise away, down the Cho Phraya River. Wat Arun has a 70-metre high spire that can be climbed up from steep stairways (see pic on left). Not recommended for the weak-legged or those with a fear of heights. From the top, you have a stunning view of Bangkok across the river. Interestingly, the spire is decorated with millions of pieces of coloured glass and porcelain.

Tiger talk

Much like its roads, the waterways at Damnoen Saduak floating market a little outside of Bangkok are overcrowded with boats as they navigate the narrow canals. The market has nothing unique to offer, so give it a miss and head onwards to Kanchanaburi, home to Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua or the Tiger Temple. Here, tigers (about a 100) roam freely (well, almost) and tourists not only get a chance to walk them but also to feed them, play with them and exercise them. All for a price, of course! 

The tigers are full grown adults and it’s a bit intimidating at first to be near these magnificent and ferocious creatures. But their keepers and monks have a firm hand on them and you can safely approach the animals. The floating market + Tiger Temple route is a day trip offered by most local travel agencies.

Weekend fun

Over the weekend, head to Chatuchak market (see pic on left) and shop till you drop. From cheap designer imitations to vintage leather bags, clothes and shoes, to food, drinks and more clothes – name it, Chatuchak has it! Not done? Head to Patpong’s legendary night bazaar at Si Lom Soi 4 and buy some more designer fakes that you fancy.

Wrap up the day with a night out at one of Bangkok’s many clubs and bars. My pick? The Sky Bar at the The Dome at the Lebua Hotel! Perched on the 64th floor, it offers a stunning view of Bangkok at night… begin with dinner at Sirocco and then nurse your tipple as you relax at a dizzying height!

There’s much you can and cannot do over a three-nights, four-day trip to Bangkok. But wherever you go in the city and whatever you do, don’t forget to drive a hard bargain – be it with the tuk tuk drivers or the street vendors. It’s the only way “they be happy” to make you happy.

(Pictures courtesy Salil Jayakar)

Categories
Wellness

Eat and drink smart this summer

A celebrity nutritionist gives diet tips for the hottest months of the year. Follow his guide for a happy summer.
by Sandeep Sachdev, celebrity nutritionist, Fitness First India

The summer season hurts us in more ways than one. Apart from cloying heat and profuse sweating, the summer saps us of our strength and makes us lethargic.

Plus, we do ourselves no favours by eating and drinking the wrong things in this season. While soft drinks and ice creams normally trump healthy food and drinks, we must ensure that we eat and drink the right things to stay fit and beat the heat.

The problem of effective nutrition is compounded for those who work out and exercise heavily. What should one eat post a workout? What is the best food to eat right after exercise? How much water is too much for the body?

But it’s quite simple, really. Just follow my diet chart for the summer and you’ll be fit all through this season. Start with these fruits:

Watermelon, orange, sweet-lime: They have high water content, and they help prevent dehydration.

Apple: Helps boost immunity to combat weather changes.

Banana, guava: Help improve digestion.

Blueberries: They are low in calories and high in antioxidants.     

Mangoes: These luscious fruits are rich in Vitamin C and beta carotene.

Papaya: This fruit is good for digestion.

Litchi: Rich in vitamin C, this fruit has a good cooling property.

 

Also try these vegetables:

Cucumber: For its high water content, it is ideal for summers.

Sprouts: They are high in fiber.

Spinach: It is a great source of magnesium and folic acid.

And some general tips:

– Keep yourself hydrated and have fruits that are high in water content. Fruits such as apple, pear, pineapple, mango, watermelon, melon or strawberries and raspberries are rich in water and less sweet.

– I can’t stress this enough: avoid oily and spicy food.

– Have fresh juices and avoid preserved fruit juices and aerated drinks.

– Make a smoothie with fruits or yoghurt to cool the system.

What did you think of Sandeep Sachdev’s summer diet chart? Share your food and drink tips for the summer in the comments section below.

(Pictures courtesy Fitness First India, journalweek.com, www.facebook.com)

Categories
Big story

Have you got counterfeit currency?

Mumbai Police bust major currency counterfeiting operation, but about Rs 1,25,000 in fake notes is already out in the market. If you have a fake note, do alert the cops.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The counterfeit currency racket in the country is still going strong, going by the latest arrests of four men from different parts of Mumbai, who were involved in printing and circulating fake notes of Rs 100 denomination. The police fear that at least Rs 1,25,000 worth of fake Rs 100 notes are currently in the market (see below for serial numbers). Interestingly, it was a group of vegetable vendors in Mankhurd who put the cops on to the track of the gang.

A few days days ago, a 19-year-old vegetable vendor at the PMGP colony, Zainab Sheikh, thought that the Rs 100 note that a customer had just given him in payment for one kilogram of chillies, looked suspicious. He asked a woman vendor next to him, from whom the same man had purchased other vegetables, to show him the money the man had paid. When the woman, Rajashree Bankur and Zainab compared the two Rs 100 notes, they found that their serial numbers were identical.

The two quickly asked other vendors at the market if the man had purchased vegetables from any of them, and all of them pulled out the money the man had paid them. Seeing that the man was still in the vicinity, they quickly grabbed him and after a heated altercation, marched him to the PMGP beat chowky.

Based on what the man, Birudev Salgar, told them, the police alerted other police stations about a gang involved in printing and distributing counterfeit currency notes. In a week, four others were rounded up from Vasai, Ghatkopar and Mumbra. One of them was found to have Rs 49,400 worth of fake notes at his residence.

Do you have fake money in your possession?

Based on the gang’s confession, the police suspect that despite the haul they have already apprehended, about Rs 1,25,000 in fake currency is afloat in the market. If you think you have a fake note or if a note(s) in your possession bears the serial number(s) listed below, do contact the nearest police station. The fake notes bear these serial numbers:

3GB 629121    7HA 008134    9QH 920124    3 FM 592462    7RH 025509     JEL 559238    0AL 090801    3QR 078477    1SC 348244    4LL 042058    4LL 042681

3KQ 562018    6DF 017545    JBE 847389      4LL 207150     3FF 786329      5GH 415791    0LL 744211     3GP 283156

(Picture courtesy  Reuters. Image used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Overdose

Back to cool

Jatin Sharma yearns for a simpler time when our society was seriously cool, in every way that the word implied.

‘Cool’. This word has managed to grab the youth. Everyone wants to be ‘cool’. If someone commits a mistake; he is ‘cool’ about it. If something bad has happened to someone; he has to be ‘cool’ about it.

Premarital sex? It’s ‘cool’ to believe in it.

Live in relationship? It’s ‘cool’ to experiment.

Abuse an elder? ‘Cool’ if it was his fault.

But this ‘coolness’ makes me think. Are we ‘cooler’ than we should be?

Being cool is often described as being modern, something that a rebel does. But it may become problematic if we equate being cool with being desensitised, dead inside.

It is probably a reflection of the times we live in that we are cool with everything – an earthquake that shakes the neighbouring State to its foundations, a person on the street who met with an accident while we watched the car that struck him zoom away, a person who announces on a social media site that he is about to kill himself, a long relationship breaking up; with everything that should normally cause us to be really disturbed, but which doesn’t affect us for more than a minute.

Earlier, the incident of a bomb blast anywhere in the country would shake us up, but now we sit in front of our TV sets with our dinner and watch the visuals of carnage play on loop. We are also ‘cool’ with journalists jeopardising sensitive operations, and we don’t directly protest their actions, choosing instead to make fun of that journalist on social media.

I wonder – has our quest for ‘cool’ killed off every last human emotion in us? Recently, a ‘cool’ person that I know had to say this of the second big Delhi gangrape after Nirbhaya, that has had the country talking about the safety of little girls – “Rapes just keep happening, and the people are now bored. Woh Nirbhaya ke time pe ho gaya, now it’s boring to do that activism again.”

Because of this ‘coolness’, we are a generation without a spine or feeling. All we do is talk a lot about what others should do. Heck, we speak about stopping corruption but it is so ‘cool’ to be able to arrange liquor on a dry day. Even as we become smarter and acquire the latest gadgets the moment they hit the market, our sensitivity to others is dulled by our total indifference and lack of awareness.

I loved the fact that the earlier generation of parents were so ‘uncool’, their children would tremble if they did something wrong and automatically toed the line. But parents nowadays, probably in a futile attempt to reach out to an increasingly remote generation of ‘cool’ kids, are also trying to be cool, even doling out money to their children to buy exam papers.

I miss the time when our society was seriously cool – people stood up against wrongs and told it like it is. Our country had some absolutely cool freedom fighters and revolutionaries who would devote everything for a cause. We have now forgotten that helping others is cool, studying sincerely is cool, getting a job on merit is cool, respecting all elders is cool, and being able to tell the difference between right and wrong, whatever the compulsion, is very cool – everything, in fact, that constitutes humanity.

For now, I’m trying to make my peace with a distorted definition of ‘cool’ – where getting away with a crime is cool, where doing drugs is cool (but getting caught is not), hitting a person because he/she didn’t agree with us is cool, where being a total pig is cool as long as you have a sense of humour about it.

(Picture courtesy xn--80aqafcrtq.cc)

Categories
Enough said

No nation for poor mothers

A recent report indicates that despite the best healthcare services, mothers from marginalised sections of society receive very little attention.
by Humra Quraishi

Earlier this month, the Population Foundation of India, an NGO working in the field of  heath and population, organised a consultation on Maternal Health on April 3 and 4, 2013  with support from the United Nations Population Fund, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Maternal Health Taskforce of the Harvard School of Public Health.

I quote Poonam Mutterja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India  on the current scenario:  “We all know that maternal mortality has declined significantly over the last decade. InIndia, the figures dropped from 301 per 100,000 births in 2003 to 212 in 2009. Yet, these reductions have not reached the most marginalised and disadvantaged communities and groups in society; tribal communities, schedule castes, and those belonging to the poorest quintile.”

According to the National Family Health Survey 2005-2006, scheduled tribe mothers are least likely to have received any antenatal care or care from a doctor. Moreover, only 23 per cent of mothers in the lowest wealth quintile received antenatal care from a doctor as against 86 per cent of mothers in the highest wealth quintile.

Mutterja continues, “I refer to the case of the 26 maternal deaths that took place at Barwani district hospital in Madhya Pradesh over a period of eight months in 2010. 21 of these 26 women belonged to scheduled tribes. The Population Foundation of India, which is the secretariat for community monitoring conducted an enquiry at the government’s request, and found that each of the 26 maternal deaths was avoidable.”

The Foundation has also released some more findings on maternal health:

– India’s current MMR (Maternal Mortality Rate) levels still remain unacceptably high and by many estimates account for nearly one-quarter of all such deaths worldwide.  Expressed in sheer numbers between 78,000-100,000 women die annually in India as a result of childbirth and pregnancy.

– Moreover, for each woman who dies, another estimated 20 more suffer from infection, injury and disability connected to pregnancy and childbirth.

– Only 50 per cent of women in India receive three or more antenatal check-ups, leaving the other half deprived of adequate care (DLHS-3, 2007-08).  The situation is worse when we look at data by caste/tribe.

– The likelihood of having received any antenatal care and care from a doctor is lowest for scheduled tribe mothers (25 per cent) and highest for mothers who do not belong to a scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, or other backward class.

– Among mothers in households with the lowest wealth quintile, 59 per cent received antenatal care and only 23 per cent received antenatal care from a doctor. By contrast, among mothers in households in the highest wealth quintile, 97 per cent received antenatal care and 86 per cent received antenatal care from doctors.

– In India, the unmet need for contraceptives remains high, it is over 30 per cent in Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, and over 20 per cent in Orissa and Uttarakhand. This unmet need reflects the gap between a woman’s desired fertility and her access to family planning services.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy abcnews.go.com)

Categories
Hum log

Mumbai artist to exhibit at Izmir

Artist, writer and former journalist Prakash Bal Joshi flies to Izmir, Turkey, tomorrow to participate in an international art festival.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Noted self-taught artist Prakash Bal Joshi flies to Izmir, Turkey  tomorrow to showcase his work at the biennial international art festival to be held there. The 60-something Joshi, a Mulund resident, was chosen to participate with 49 other artists out of a total 2,500 in the festival that will be organised by the local university as well as the National Museum of Art, and will see the exhibition of select artists’ works as well as debates and discussions on art.

Joshi is no stranger to international showings – he has previously shown at Europe’s biggest art festival at Basel in ‘Art Basel, Switzerland’ in 2012 as well as done a solo showing at Colorida Art Gallery at Lisbon, Portugal, in 2010 and the Las Vegas International Exhibition of select artists in 2010, among others. He has also exhibited widely all across in India.

A former journalist with leading newspapers (he retired a few years ago from The Times of India, Mumbai), Joshi tells us that working with newspapers “widened his perspective”. He says, “I was good at Maths and Science as a student, but I had a strange pull towards Arts. I finally chose the Science stream, but I would put down my thoughts and draw small illustrations as well, just as a hobby.” Joshi is also one of the torchbearers of what he calls the ‘golden period of Indian journalism’ – the Emergency. “As reporters, we had unbelievable freedom to research stories and go to their absolute depths. This grounding helped me later as well, when I started painting as a hobby.

 

“Also, when we worked in newspapers, our written articles would go to the editing desk and come back only after an hour or more. In the mean time, I would sit and sketch.” To this day, however, he confesses that the biggest challenge for him lies not in completing a painting to his complete satisfaction, but to empty his mind completely before he picks up the brush.

The ‘natural’ connect

Joshi confesses to a mysterious connect with rivers and nature, something which probably stems from his childhood tryst with swimming in a river and almost being drowned. He is known to use rivers as a visual metaphor to portray the flow of life, and his dismay at the loss of many rivers to the ravages of time. “I am sometimes asked about painting in a noisy city like Mumbai. But I am fascinated by the city’s crowds and its travel patterns as well.

For the last 15 years, Joshi has actively pursued his passion for painting, despite the demands of a high-pressure job. “I made the switch to canvas several years ago, and I have followed a set routine despite my job – I would come home every evening, zone out completely, then paint for two hours,” he says. He has set up a small studio in his house, and credits his family with astonishing levels of patience with his work. “Those around you begin by not understanding what you are up to, but they develop with you,” he says. “As an artist, you take it for granted that most people may not understand your work, so you reconcile yourself to working without waiting for acceptance.”

He is now waiting to experiment with oil pastels next, a medium he has never worked with before.

(Pictures courtesy Prakash Bal Joshi) 

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