Author: The Metrognome

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Kharcha paani

Mumbai greenest in the country

Mumbai has most numbers of green building projects in the country, with over 229 million square free of green building space.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

As cities become more congested and more polluted, and as old buildings give rise to swanky office complexes and residential towers that consume a lot of resources, every real estate developer worth his salt is asking to incorporate ‘green’ elements in their projects.

Cynics argue that developers do this not out of a sense of obligation to the environment but because they earn several benefits for coming up with green projects. The reasons notwithstanding, the country is seeing a rise in the numbers of green building projects, and a majority of them are in Mumbai.

On Saturday, July 20, the  Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) announced that Mumbai has the largest stake in green building projects in the country. The IGBC and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) spearheaded the Green Building movement in India a few years ago. Since then, the movement has apparently gained momentum, with the country showing over 2,110 registered green building projects amounting to over 1.51 billion square feet of green building footprint. This has put India in the top 5 countries in terms of the world’s green building map.

Green Building seminarSaid Gurmit Singh Arora, Vice Chairman, CII (IGBC Mumbai chapter), “Today, Mumbai has over 295 registered green building projects, amounting to over 229 million square free of green building space, thus leading the green building movement in the country. As these numbers steadily grow, the State can reap significant ecological and economic benefits.

“Most importantly, these buildings can demonstrate energy savings to the tune of 40 to 50 per cent and water savings to the tune of 20 to 30 per cent, apart from other intangible benefits.”

The IGBC is also set to release the report on ‘Environment Guidelines for Public Buildings’ as Phase I and the same guidelines would later be released for private buildings under Phase II. In the context of green buildings, it must be noted that the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India, accords faster clearances for green buildings rated by IGBC. Additionally, the construction costs of a green building are 3 to 4 per cent higher than a conventional building, but the incremental cost gets paid back within three to four years with a substantial reduction in operational costs.

Arora added that since 75 per cent of buildings that would exist in 2030 are yet to be built, there exists a huge opportunity in design and construction of green buildings, “which not only addresses ecological issues and concerns, but also makes good business sense.”

(Pictures courtesy www.indianrealestatemarket.com, CII)

Categories
Wellness

Tame your bad breath

Bad breath can happen to anybody, so use a few tips and tricks to ensure you don’t suffer from it.
by Beverley Lewis

Ever been in a situation, when you were trying to talk to someone and they were trying to avoid you by looking in another direction and wrinkling their noses, all because you have the breath of a dragon that lunched on an entire pod of garlic? Let’s face it, bad breath is very undesirable, uncomfortable, and can certainly ruin our day. But fortunately, these fixes will help tame your bad breath or halitosis.

rinse mouth with waterHydrate. A dry mouth is a haven for bacteria that causes bad breath. So, swish water around in your mouth. Water will temporarily dislodge bacteria and make your breath a bit more palatable. At the end of a leisurely lunch or romantic dinner, munch the sprig of parsley that’s left on your plate. Parsley is rich in chlorophyll, a known breath deodoriser with germ-fighting qualities.

Oranges will kill it. If you can get your hands on an orange, peel and eat it. The citric acid it contains will stimulate your salivary glands and encourage the flow of breath-freshening saliva. If there are no oranges in sight, eat whatever is available, except known breath-foulers like garlic, onions or a stinky cheese. Eating encourages the flow of saliva, which helps remove the unpleasant, odour-causing material on the back of your tongue.

Scrape the tongue. Vigorously scrape your tongue over your teeth. Your tongue can become coated with bacteria that ferment proteins, producing gases that smell bad. Scraping your tongue can dislodge these bacteria so you can rinse them away. If you have a metal or plastic spoon, use it as a tongue scraper. To scrape safely, place the spoon on the back of your tongue and drag it forward. Repeat four or five times. Scrape the sides of the tongue as well, with the same back-to-front motion. Don’t push the spoon too far back, however, you may activate your gag reflex.

Raid the pantry. Cloves are rich in eugenol, a potent antibacterial. Simply pop one into your mouth and dent it with your teeth. The pungent aromatic oil may burn slightly, so keep clovesthat spicy nub moving. Continue to bite until the essence permeates your mouth, then spit it out. Don’t use clove oil or powdered cloves; they’re too strong and can cause burns.

Seed it. Chew on fennel, cardamom, or anise seeds. Anise is known to kill the bacteria that grow on the tongue. The others can help mask the odour of halitosis or bad breath. Or you can suck on a stick of cinnamon. Like cloves, cinnamon is effective as an antiseptic.

Some more tips and tricks:
– Use a toothpaste that contains tea-tree oil, a natural disinfectant.
– Use an oral irrigator, which is a handheld device that rapidly pulses a small jet of water into your mouth, to flush out the bad bacteria, which can go deeper than a brush or floss stringtoothbrush can reach.
– Carry a toothbrush with you and brush immediately after every meal. With prompt brushing, you thwart the development of plaque, the soft, sticky film that coats the teeth and gums.
– To keep your toothbrush free of stink-triggering bacteria, store it, head down, in a lidded plastic tumbler of hydrogen peroxide. Rinse the brush well before you use it.
– If you wear dentures, it’s possible that they are absorbing the bad odours in your mouth. Always soak them overnight in an antiseptic solution, unless your dentist has advised you otherwise.
– Don’t skip meals. When you don’t eat for a long period of time, your mouth can get very dry. It becomes a perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
Some things can sour your breath even if there are no bacteria in the neighbourhood. These include cigarettes, alcohol, onions, garlic and especially strong cheeses like Camembert, Roquefort, and blue cheese. In situations where sweet breath is a must, use the commonsense approach—just say no.

With inputs from Devki Wakefield, Holistic Practitioner, Westchester, New York.

Categories
Chapter One

Odd man out

What makes one person different from several others? A story about making a difference to one’s life by being different.
Shifaby Shifa Maitra

Yeah, that’s me. The odd man out. Maybe it’s because I don’t wear a watch. I don’t and most people don’t get it when I say I don’t like being bound by time. Am not yet Rajnikant who said in a recent film that he does not wear a watch because he decides what the time it is! I genuinely don’t like being enslaved and people find that odd.

Went to a school reunion last Saturday and had such a great time. People my age, who had grown so bloody old, kept wondering why. Unlike the stuffy boring uncles they’d become, I was still a dude. A dude at 36 who still had dreams to fulfill. Well, these guys had a lot too, I must say. Someone mentioned ulcers, a pent house, a BMW, divorce, one guy even had a farm house. Another one had a blind child. Each one of them had a ‘can I kill that lucky bugger’ look on their face. What did I have, they asked. Freedom, two cats, a book that’s going to be a bestseller, money in the bank from the last crappy TV show I wrote, and stories to tell. That’s it?, someone asked. I like to travel light, I offered. No car? No sir, and a carbon print that I am proud of. Okay, I must admit that at times I do exaggerate my point of view just to see the look on someone’s face when I tell them that I love eating raw eggs, or that I cycle to work.

I know a whole lot of people who disapprove of the way I live. Largely, because they are just plain jealous. I don’t chase trains, buses, deadlines and stock tips. Agreed, I don’t have a huge bank balance or a hot babe on my arm, but guess what – that’s not what I want. All right, I know you think I am a loser. I will prove to you that I am not, maybe you are, but that’s for you to decide. Sure I wasn’t like this, all through school and college; actually till I was about 23 I was as clingy, insecure, unsure and unhappy as you. It’s nothing personal, maybe not you but the guy sitting next to you.

Since we are friends I can be honest with you now – I had issues. I felt like I was the chosen one…chosen by the bad luck guys. I was the only child of clingy parents, I was fat, I studied guy travelling alonein a sidey school, my parents were always broke, I stammered.

I got laid, I got drunk, I got stoned…and just felt worse. I think the turning point is when I got jealous of a guy at work who spoke wrong English. I mean that guy was competition to me?!

I walked out of the ad agency and never went back. Instead I went home, packed a few things, withdrew all the money I had, bought a note book and pens and took a train. For one year I travelled and wrote. It was the best year of my life. I learnt so much about myself. About my biases, my conditioning, my narrow-minded way of thinking. Ugh, I really didn’t like this guy, so how could I expect anyone else to like me?

So I worked on myself and decided I would be the guy i liked. To hell with what anyone else thought…

Shifa Maitra is a creative consultant with Balaji Motion Pictures. Reading scripts is what she does for a living and writing is what she does in life.

(Pictures courtesy Torrie Smilie, fineartamerica.com, www.roughguides.com)

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Enough said

Petty speeches and hard talks

This week saw some low-level political discourse at one end of the spectrum, and an illuminating talk on the other.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Look at the irony. Tomatoes and potatoes are selling at astronomical prices, but politicians are going cheap – for just Rs 5.

Truly gone are the days of Gandhi and Nehru, when their mere words stirred the masses into action. Today, politicians are catering to the lowest common denominator, with crude and crafty speeches laced with ideas that should not enter a decent person’s thoughts, let alone creep into his public speech.

This freedom of expression cannot be used to borderline vulgarity, to say the unthinkable. Where are the leaders who unite the masses narendra modithrough stirring speeches and debates? Instead, we’re left with people who will say and do anything to make the news, who firmly believe in the adage that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. When was the last time we heard a really profound speech from a politician?

In the backdrop of these political shenanigans, last week there was a talk by noted academic Dr Vasudha Pande at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). The very focus of her talk should get the Uttarakhand Government focussing on what the erstwhile kings of the region did to harness their resources – terraced cultivation to save agricultural land and crops.

Dr  Pande is currently a Fellow, NMML, researching the environmental history of Uttarakhand. I quoting this abstract from her talk at the NMML:

“Katyuris are the much celebrated kings of Uttarakhand. The narrative of the Katyuri state marks the shift from pre-history to history – with copper plates, inscriptions, architectural works and folklore. Despite the great interest expressed in the Katyuri state system, little attention is paid to the most momentous contribution of the Katyuris—the shift to settled, terraced cultivation and the emergence of petty peasant production.

uttarakhand“Since Uttarakhand as defined today as a specific construct, the presentation will not restrict itself to this geographical unit. It will explore regions contiguous with present day Uttarakhand –Nepal in the east, Tarai in the south, Tibet in the north and Himachal in the west. Articulated in terms of river valley systems it will extend from the Karnali in the east to Kali, to Ganga, to Yamuna up to Sutlej in the west. By spreading the net wide, we hope to document the gradual, piecemeal change in terms of resource utilisation by hunter gatherers, fishing communities, pastoral groups, and those practicing trans-humance in this part of the Himalayan mountains.

Katyuri period, roughly defined from the 9th-14th CE as a momentous conjuncture which successfully stitched together the various food production systems then prevalent in the Central Himalayas. This brought about an increase in population and productivity. The emergence of agriculture is transformative and the result of many cumulative changes in production strategies, technology, demography, and adaptation to specific niches. How did this happen, what precipitated this transition? The Himalayas provide a wide variety of habitats across different altitudinal zones, what kinds of adaptive strategies did humans adopt in this landscape? How did these then interact with each other?”

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

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, ibnlive.in.com, www.images22.com)

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Swaad 'Anu'saar

Ramzaan feasting in Mumbai

We list five go-to joints for amazing Ramzaan food and drink – and the journey starts from Mohammad Ali Road.
by Anurita Gupta

anurita guptaThis entire holy month is supremely special for one and all irrespective of religion and culture. This is also because, along with the whole month of fasting, there is the feasting to look forward to!

In Mumbai, the mecca of Ramzan food ought to be this wonderful street that stretches between Nagpada Junction and Minara Masjid right under the famous JJ flyover – Mohammad Ali Road. The moment you think of this street, you start imagining skewers of assorted kebabs in a cloud of charred aroma, complemented by the ‘desi ghee ki khushboo’ coming from the big metal kadhais frying up fluffy malpuas and jalebis.

If you are a true foodie, you will not resist visiting Mohammad Ali Road at least once during Ramzaan, when this place wears a beautiful hue of green sparkle, thanks to the bright lights adorning the area. From seekh paranthas, kheeri kaleji to phirnis and mawa jalebi, you are sure to enjoy a feast but you have to be sure to visit the right places for a complete gastronomical experience.

JJ Jalebi Corner: Just when you take a few steps into Mohammad Ali road, there is the famous JJ Jalebi store jalebisdoling out the most divine jalebis, that look a bit different from the regular orange ones. These are unique Ramzani sweet meats called mawa jalebi. They are darker, fluffier and a bit more chewy than the regular ones, but supremely delicious.

One look at them and you know why they are sold out first at this popular eatery that was named by the owner, Haji Chhote, after the famous JJ flyover in the independence year of 1947. This place also serves brilliant malpuas with the option of single and double egg. The difference is in the size and the fluff. You can enjoy them with freshly-made rabri as well. The specialty of JJ Jalebi Corner is that all its sweets are made in desi ghee with a special ingredient, ‘chiraunji’ in their batter, which adds the much-needed crunch amongst everything sweet. Enjoy it before your fast begins so the calories last you the day, but if you are not fasting, like me, then a single egg malpua and a little bit of jalebi should suffice.

Al Rehmani Restaurant: Situated diagonally opposite JJ Hospital, this restaurant wears a bit of a dingy look but if you can go past that, you shall discover a treasure trove of gastronomy in the form of daal gosht, mutton biryani and the most succulent and delicious roasted chicken leg.

The mutton masala and chicken kadhai are not for the faint hearted, as you would find lots of oil on the surface but that is because there is clearly no compromise on the taste of the food you get here. A unique dish on offer here is the deep fried seekh parantha that is served with mint leaves and green chutney, something I seriously  recommend. With its super efficient service, Al Rehmani is easy on the pocket yet great on the taste (minus the excessive oil and the ambience).

idris cold drinksIdris Cold Drinks: After much eating comes a time when you crave something to drink. Idris Cold Drinks at Pakmodia Street, Bhendi Bazaar is worth a try. Known for home made sherbets, this place has some unique flavours on offer. Started in 1987, this joint specialised in the masala drink ‘Rimzim’, which is ‘Jaljeera’ for the North Indian in me. The young owner proudly recommends their Variyali (saunf or fennel) drink but I would honestly steer clear of it!

However, their milk shakes are a different story. You can try the traditional kesar elaichi and the modern butterscotch flavours. Also, their ‘Idris special’ is a rose sherbet made from rose petals – it’s surprisingly refreshing! What’s unique is that this place sells syrups they make themselves, and their drinks have a hint of soda too. Idris Cold Drinks is worth a try on the Mohammad Ali gastronomic journey.

Surti 12 Handi: Right after Mohammad Ali Road, there is Bohri Mohalla’s pride and joy, Surti 12 (Baarah) Handi that serves up the most amazing nihari. Traditionally known for an astonishingly unique bhel that is a concoction of meats and gravies that come from 12 handis and served with khamiri roti (sour dough bread), this joint is now run by the grandson of Hafiz Ismail, Naeem Surti, who has been forced to cater to the changing times where people do not prefer to mix their meats.

Although the 12 handis have now been reduced to 9, the style of cooking still remains the same. There are swarms of people standing outside in the evening waiting to lap up the out-of-the-ordinary feast as the mohalla exults in the aromas of various meats. For the month of Ramzaan their specialty is the nalli nihari (beef bone marrow in gravy) which is served with goat and cow trotters and other special meats as well. Really heavy on the heart but brilliantly comforting for the soul, one has to visit this place for its share of history, too.

Tawakkal Sweets: For everything malai, there is Tawakkal Sweets, at Bohri Mohalla. Their most popular ones are mango and balck currant malai flavours. As usual, this place sees a tawakkal sweetslot of rush with people usually taking parcels for everything, from malai to huge jalebi packets.

I personally love their phirnis. Soft and creamy, they have the most delicate flavour. Their blueberry malai is another favourite.  You can get your hands on their heavenly gulab jamoons and other traditional bohri sweet meats as well, such as Aflatoon, puff sweet samosa and malai puff.  Their khaja barfi is also very popular.

With that I conclude the culinary journey of the most delectable Ramzaan food and drink, hoping that you would surely visit these places irrespective of the traffic snarls and the rain. Happy feasting!

Anurita Gupta is a media professional who is passionate about two things – food and radio. Her love for all things food makes her a foodie with a cause.

(Pictures courtesy www.buzzintown.com , www.finelychopped.net, www.team-bhp.com)

Categories
Cinema@100

Dilip Kumar was a pickle, too

Today’s film stars endorse several products at once. But dig through advertisement archives and you’ll find the most unexpected faces.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Advertisements and endorsements are part of a larger game involving a celebrity’s popularity and general attractiveness. The more popular the star, the higher the number of endorsements.

If you thought yesteryear actors didn’t endorse brands, you thought wrong. A lot of Hindi cinema’s popular, and sometimes, unexpected faces endorsed a range of products, from hair cream and cigarettes, from beauty soaps to even pickles! While Ashok Kumar endorsed a suitings brand, perpetually-in-the-dumps Nirupa Roy was once a face for a beauty soap.

But enough talk. Enjoy our slideshow of 15 vintage Bollywood endorsements.

 

(Pictures courtesy satyamshot.wordpress.com, www.facebook.com, post.jagran.com, orkut-html.blogspot.com, memsaabstory.com, cineplot.com, assambiskoot.com)

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