Category: Diaries

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Diaries

‘Spin A Yarn on Twitter’ winners

Our first ‘Spin A Yarn on Twitter’ got a great response yesterday. We feature the two winners and their stories.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It started at 4 pm exactly. And later at 7 pm. Both went off so well, we were still grinning after it was over – which also had something to do with the fact that #SpinAYarn was the Number 1 trending topic in Mumbai yesterday.

We thank those who participated in our first ‘Spin A Yarn on Twitter’ contest and gave us 30 minutes of frantic fun, twice a day. We just gave participants an opening line; the rest of the story was built by the contestants. Ankita Chemburkar and Salil Jayakar won the contest.

Ankita Chemburkar, who works with Grey Worldwide as a content writer and social media copywriter, won for her hilarious poem on a girl who is on Twitter. Ankita (22) is a Lower Parel resident, who says this was the first Twitter contest she’s ever won. “The best thing about the contest was this it allowed complete creative freedom – something that rarely happens, even in the world of advertising. So I guess the awesome part of it all was being able to go completely ballistic with my imagination and my writing, even if they were in the forms of bad puns and rhymes,” she said.

“Usually, I love to write sarcastic and pun-filled stuff. I like to fabricate stories and the only emo bit of me comes out in my poems,” she says, adding that her secret dream is to “doodle on a historical monument. Like ALL over it. And no one would know it were me, making it the biggest graffiti vandalism there ever was.”

This is Ankita’s yarn, which started with the opening line, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ and went like this:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Entertaining & annoying ‘coz the woman loved her rhymes.

She found a place where she could rhyme away to glory. Little did we know the end to this tale would be so gory.

Shunned by Facebook friends, she was distraught and bitter. Then she found out she could rant away on Twitter.

She tweeted and tweeted; she punned & punned away. Thinking no one will hate her online presence from this day.

Her tweets were funny and cute, she tweeted on food. ‘I should’ve done this before, for it is so good!’

She put her puns in cute little doodles. Ignoring the “i-will-kill-you” expressions from her boss, @mooodles

Little did she know that this was where terror lurked. But she kept on punning, as long as she wasn’t shirked.

She gained popularity, her jokes were being retweeted. The frequency of her tweeting became quite heated(?) 😛

No more “U want to mek fraandsheep wit me” no more stalkers! No more “You’re hot care to show me your knockers?”

She was happy in her own place, tweeting as much as 80 times a day. After all, what was anyone else going to say?

Then came a day where it all came crashing down. She was being Unfollowed; her smile turned to a frown.

The numbers dwindled down, she wish she did paid Ads. Then she remembered it was Twitter & she became quite mad.

Everyone ridiculed her desperate attempts to be funny. Suddenly she wished she hadn’t been so… ‘punny’.

No one ‘#ff-ed’ her anymore, she became distraught. ‘But this is Twitter! How can this be?!’ she thought.

From a rising star to a loser, she did convert. Getting followed by creepy uncles and the occasional pervert.

Her life was caught in a whirlwind of tweets and follows. But her life and heart were truly empty & hollow.

She became quite demented, last time we heard. Even a simple chirp reminded her of the blue Twitter bird.

No one took notice as she stopped logging in online. Everyone went tweeting as usual as though all was fine.

That story is told till date about the girl obsessed with Twitter. The almost-celeb who then became a quitter.

Her defeat was in desperation, the downfall in wit. And that’s the story of a tweeter who became… just a twit.”

—————————————

Salil Jayakar was our other winner, and he won for his dreamy, nostalgic take on a boy who’s musing on the last two years of his life. He said, “The best thing about the contest was trying to pick up from where you started and make sense  of it in such a short time!” Salil is 31, and describes himself as a “Bandra boy, a Bombay boy who works as a communications professional…I’m just another less ordinary guy with extraordinary dreams.”

He adds, “I don’t write much lately. Earlier, it was mostly features. These days I blog every once in a while on whatever takes my fancy.” He counts travelling as one of his passions, which allows him to meet new people and soak in as many cultures as possible. “I’m also on a continued quest to go from #fat2fit.”

Salil’s yarn started with our opening line, ‘It hadn’t always been like this. Well, at least for the last two years,’ and went like this:

“He lived another life in another city, another place where he was but a stranger in a strange place.

He was the Bandra Boy, the Bombay Boy who became the London lad oh so easily.

A city he loved to call home. Because as they say, home is where the heart is. Oh yes, he was a romantic.

And Bombay? Where he was born? Where he loved and where he lost… he lost it all.

Looking back at those 2 years he realised how much he’d changed. How much he’d let go…

And letting go is never easy. Is it? Family. Friends. Lovers. Leaving is easy, letting go so difficult…

But that’s all done and dusted. London still beckoned but there were new borders to cross.

He worked hard, partied even harder. He had bills to pay, promises to keep and many miles to go, still…

He looked fwd to it now. His next holiday! Where would it take him? Who’d come along? Or go solo?

He didn’t care for fancy hotels and 5 stars, a mixed dorm in a decent hostel would do just fine!

Memories of last solo trip come flooding back… saudades as they say, that love and longing…

The incessant honking wakes him up. He’s #inthebus, alomost home. Time to get off. He’ll #SpinAYarn again, some other time.”

Look out for stories from our Special Mentions tomorrow.

 

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The wedding story makers

Mumbai is gradually replacing the old mausajis who take care of details at the wedding mandap, by smart, all-involved wedding planners.
by Ritika Bhandari

Part III of the Shaadi Mubarak Diaries

When Shama and Ramith Sharma decided to get married, little did they know what lay in store for them. From booking wedding venues to deciding on a decorator, to getting the innumerable licenses for the band, instead of enjoying the memorable occasion – everything had them screaming with stress.

Had the Sharmas watched the recent Bollywood hit Band Baaja Baaraat, they would have known better and hired a wedding planner. Neha Shroff of Momente Planners says, “With today’s hectic lifestyles, it becomes difficult to plan an entire wedding. To incorporate this changing schedule in your normal lifestyle is a task. So hiring a wedding planner works as the couple and their families can then handle the details.”

Introducing a wedding planner from the first stage of the marriage preparations helps in the long run-up to D-day. While the couple relaxes, the planners wear the anxious faces as they get involved in the minute details of the wedding rigmarole. Shroff says, “With a proper budget allocation, finalising the venues and the theme and design of the wedding becomes easier. Handling the caterers, decorators, florists, entertainers, the mehndi and makeup artists to the choreographer for the Sangeet, everything is handled by the wedding planner.”

Farida Venkat of Amante Wedding Planners says, “From A to Z, a wedding planner has his hands full with the invitation designs, gifts, menu selection to trousseau suggestions. We coordinate everything from the moment the baaraat arrives till the bride’s bidaai ceremony.” It also depends on the couple to see how involved they want the wedding planners to be.

Research analyst Neerja Shah hired a wedding planner to gift herself an entire new wardrobe. “I wanted my trousseau to be unique. And the shopping part of the preparations never tired me, so I shopped with the help of the personal stylist provided by my wedding planner.” Momente Planners provide jewellery services through their sister concern ‘Utsokt’, which specialises in creating one-of-a kind varmalas.

With destination weddings being the flavour of the season, a wedding planner definitely comes in handy. But the main niggling question is the increase in budget while hiring a planner. On this, Ruchita Parelkar of SR Event Planners says, “We believe hiring a planner is a cost-effective approach for a couple. If you have dreamed of a fairytale wedding, then we come in to bring your visualisation to life. We come to couples as their friends and provide them something different.”

So what requests do planners usually get? While Farida believes that every couple is a special one and complying with their demands helps to make their dream wedding possible, Ruchita says, “We have got requests like using only white candles on the wedding ground or getting a bridal outfit which is a combination of olive green, dark maroon and white!” She remembers having to outsource invisible chains from Dubai to hold tents, as the family didn’t want a shabby tent held up by ropes.

With the hectic lifestyle that symbolises Mumbai, couples need the relaxation and breathing space provided by wedding planners. Farida says, “Every person wants to be involved in their wedding preparations and chaos. So if you share this vision with a wedding planner, they will make sure that all the elements are encapsulated and you end up enjoying the wedding.”

‘Diaries’ is a series of stories on a single issue. The ‘Shaadi Mubarak’ Diaries aim to capture the essence of the wedding season in Mumbai. Part III is the concluding part of this series.

 

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Let them eat cake

Give a miss to the shaadi ka laddoo – bite into the trendiest cakes that Mumbai bakers have to offer.
by Ritika Bhandari

Part II of the ‘Shaadi Mubarak’ Diaries

When American cartoonist James Thurber said, “The most dangerous food is the wedding cake,” little did he know that a three-tier, rich plum cake is a delicacy not to be missed for the world. Borrowing from the traditional White Wedding concept of Christian weddings, today several Mumbai couples are opting to cut a beautifully-decorated cake to spread the sweetness of their wedding.

Every function, from a sangeet sandhya to a cocktail party, calls for a cake these days, and definitely, the D-day is when out comes a special, unique, satiny rich cake covered with fondants and marzipans. Aditi Limaye Kamat of The Cake Studio, Dadar, says, “Indian weddings have started to give a lot of importance to cakes. Earlier, we would get requests only for church weddings. But now it is definitely changing.”

Aditi is the co-owner of The Cake Studio along with cake decorator, Niketa Patil Rampal. “Niketa is the reason for our good looking and tasty cakes,” says Aditi. “Her chocolate cakes with truffles or cream icing are really famous, but the cakes with marzipan can be decorated more beautifully. We can create designs like flowers, couple figures and also add food colours like pink, blue, gold and silver.” Along with the cake’s looks, Aditi stresses on the taste as well, because the Big Fat Indian Wedding has to be a palate-pleaser.

22-year old Sonica Baptist runs Crimsons with her family. While her mother Marceline bakes the cakes, her elder sister Malaika juggles with the baking and decorating, with help from Sonica, who works as a graphic designer. Sonica says, “The tier form of designing is the most popular style for any wedding cake. The oldest way of enhancing the cake’s complete looks is with edible sugar work of drapes, flowers, ribbons and a centre piece of the couple.”

With the humongous crowd that one tries to accommodate at weddings, cakes start with three tiers and can go up to an eye-popping 10-tiers, too. “Also the flavour of the rich plum cake is substituted for a chocolate cake, vanilla cake or a red velvet cake among favourites,” Sonica tells us. “A wedding cake is a big deal and one should book it at least a month in advance to enjoy the culinary delights of their favourite baker.”

As with weddings, special requests are de rigueur and the decorator at The Cake Studio complies by matching the marzipan bride and groom’s outfit colours. Another customer favourite is topping the wedding cake with real flowers like orchids and anthurium. “The elegant look of a pastel-coloured marzipan on a gooey chocolate cake made on a bed of orchids, or topped with anthurium is our bestseller,” reveals Aditi.

Bride to-be Khushi Baldota says, “Tiered cakes are way too usual. I wish to have cupcakes as my wedding cake.” And with all the icing and frosting showered on cakes in Mumbai’s patisseries, one cannot blame her for diverging from the beaten path. Sonica says, “Cupcakes can be used, but they need to be arranged in a tier form. One can use the cupcakes as an element in the larger design of a cake, but the right essence of a wedding can only come through a cake.”

With couples marrying throughout the year, a wedding cake really has no season. So chocolate, strawberry, or rum and raisin, Indian couples love the fact that they can cut the cake and eat it too.

‘Diaries’ is a series of stories on a single issue. The ‘Shaadi Mubarak’ Diaries aim to capture the essence of the wedding season in Mumbai. Look out for Part III.

(Pictures courtesy The Cake Studio and Crimsons)

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Diaries

Of chemistry and flashbulbs

It’s not enough to change your FB status to ‘Engaged’; you need a perfect photo. Pre-wedding shoots are the answer.
by Ritika Bhandari

Part I of the Shaadi Mubarak series

As the cool November air brings with it the whiff of an upcoming wedding season, you will see the shaadi shenanigans begin in every household of your building society. Open the newspaper, and the pink-and-yellow advertisements scream Shaadi Utsav 2012. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to marry, and once the preparations for the final wedding day begin, there is little room left for the blissfully-engaged couple to enjoy a few quiet moments.

As photographer Raphael Das says, “A pre-wedding shoot gives the couple a collection of pictures, which they may not be able to capture at a later date. After the wedding, life gets busier. As time passes on, their first anniversary approaches and the couple realises that it doesn’t have a collection of its own pictures.  So people prefer to do a small shoot of very personal pictures.” Based in Malad, Das has done quite a few pre-wedding shoots already. He feels that a couple of hours spent together can become moments which shall be cherished for a long time.

While photographer Deepa Netto believes, “It’s (a pre-wedding shoot) the perfect chance to get some amazing casual portraits and the perfect excuse to get away from the wedding preparation chaos.”

The concept of pre-wedding shoots has its roots in the West, where couples send wedding invitation cards with a picturesque photograph of the soon to-be married duo. The colourful frames aim to reveal the chemistry in a jovial, tender and candid style. With locations that epitomise special moments, the idea of a pre-wedding shoot is now trending in Mumbai.

When 28-year old Dipshika Das, a software professional, decided to take the plunge with her lover Novin Vathipatikkal, she wanted him to feel special. “After five years of being together, I wanted the shoot to be something which was ‘not normal stuff’. So with nothing pre-decided, we took Deepa to Kharghar and got a collection of personal moments clicked,” says the happily-married Das.

Be it a couple living in our concrete jungle or another whose head-over-heels love story started with a glance at the Mumbai airport, the shoot not only ushers in a sense of hushed intimacy, but also prepares the bride and groom to face the arc lights at their wedding. Das reveals, “The shoot even works as an icebreaker with the photographer, and increases the comfort level of the individuals in front of the camera.”

Deepa, a Navi Mumbai resident, says that themes for the shoot are usually dependent on client ideas. “What I really look forward to is capturing the couple’s story with a fun element. Sometimes they can be absolutely goofy, while others tend to be romantic,” she says.

So where do our Starbucks-loving, new generation couples wish to be clicked? “It is mostly out of Mumbai, they like to drive down to Karjat. The Vasai fort and the Madh Island beach are also popular,” says Raphael, who refrains from pushing any themes for the shoot. He believes that the comfort level of the couple matters the most.

Deepa’s shoots have taken her to South Mumbai locales like the Gateway of India, Flora Fountain, Marine Drive, Colaba, Worli Seaface as also the Manori beaches and the rocky, quaint areas of National Park, Aarey Colony and Kanheri Caves.

For Ian Gallyot, the shoot with Raphael at Silver Beach in Juhu captured the spirit and essence of getting engaged to his wife, Melissa. He says, “We used his brilliant and wonderful snaps to make a coffee table book. Also, we designed our wedding invitations with our favourite photograph of us walking on the beach.”

So if you are bitten by the social media chromosome, share your chemistry with a pre-wedding shoot.  Or use your creativity to make a wedding website to invite your nearest and dearest.

After all, it is the photographer’s helpful remedy to the pre-wedding jitters of the flashbulb.

(Pictures courtesy Raphael Das, Chasing Dreams Photography)

Shaadi Mubarak is a series that captures the essence of weddings in Mumbai. Watch out for Part II.

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Diaries

Of 10 million invisible children

Unknown to mainstream society, an entire generation of construction workers’ children is growing up without an education or familial support.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Part III of the ‘Little People’ series

‘By 2025, more than half of India will be urbanised. Our fast growing cities are built by millions of poor migrant labourers who live on construction sites with their families and enjoy hardly any of the benefits of India’s growth. Since both parents work, very young children are placed in the care of older siblings, or left to fend for themselves in the midst of the hazards of building sites. More than 10 million children live this way.’

– from a booklet by Mumbai Mobile Creches

We know there are children in slums. We know that our domestic help has enrolled her children in a municipal school. We see the little servant kid in the next building every morning as she walks a grumpy child, not much younger than her, walk her ward to the bus stop. There are others who loll about outside shops, drinking in the sights and smells of the city and scarpering off when asked a lot of questions.

Some children are truly invisible. Like the ones that are born on construction sites. They get left behind in a quickly-built shanty a mere walk away from cement mixers that do their thing, and these little ones’ parents put in a day’s work loading and unloading trucks, or carrying bricks up several flights of just-hewn stairs. What do these children do? Do they go to school? Have they ever been inside one? Is there life an endless blur of play?

Far from the eyes of the city, in the several hundred construction sites dotting Mumbai, the children of construction workers grow up in shanties, grappling daily with abject poverty and the many illnesses that come with dire living conditions. Rootless, shifting from place to place with their parents as one site closes and another one starts, these children receive no formal education and often start working at a very young age.

Colaba-based NGO Mumbai Mobile Creches (MMC) is probably the only organisation currently working for this invisible class of children, giving them an education and the upbringing that can help absorb them in mainstream society. The NGO runs day-care centres on sites that have at least 25 children on the site, and these conduct training programmes for early childhood development. “At any point of time, we have 25 centres operational. Last year, we reached 4,000 children,” says Anita Veermani, Manager, Grants and Communications, MMC.

At each centre, children are provided with basic lessons and three meals a day, six days a week. “Our nutrition programme is comprehensive – we provide medicines, multivitamins, calcium supplements and we have regular doctors visits also,” Anita says, adding that unhygienic living conditions and no access to proper medical care results in the children having skin and eye infections, and a lot of them have lice. “The children are often malnourished, they have worms, they have cough and fever and also a host of injuries,” Anita says.

A staggering fact is that construction workers come to Mumbai from 17 Indian states and two other countries, and most of them stay on for a period of about five years. “We try our best to reach as many children as we can,” Anita says. “But it is more important to get the mothers involved, and a bigger challenge is getting teachers. About 40 per cent of our teachers are women from construction sites who signed up to teach the children,” she adds.

“It is not always possible for each child to enrol in a BMC school, though we have had success on that front as well. Some of our children have grown up and come back to associate with us. Others have taken up site-related skills, like painting.

These children are not exposed to mainstream society, so they remain excluded from the benefits that other children receive. These families keep moving about so much, that even after we have trained the child and brought him up to a certain grade, he may not be able to join a full time school. Our endeavour is to see that they move up the chain, that there is some stability in their lives,” Anita says.

What MMC has done so far:

4,785 children reached

92 PAN cards obtained for the community

6 bank accounts opened for the community

6,233 incidences of illness identified

5,871 vaccinations facilitated

Diaries is a weekly series of stories on one issue. ‘Little People’ is a series of three stories on the education of underprivileged children in Mumbai. 

 

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Teachers, anyone?

The Akanksha Foundation’s Chitra Pandit explains why free education in BMC and PMC schools doesn’t always attract quality teaching staff.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Part II of the ‘Little People’ series

A willing NGO and more than willing students need good teachers. Even a relatively well-known NGO like the Akanksha Foundation finds it difficult to get good teaching staff.

“Our biggest challenge lies in getting good teachers for our schools,” says Chitra Pandit, Director Marketing at the Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organisation that works in the field of education for children from low-income families. “We have 13 municipal schools between Mumbai and Pune. The model is this: the BMC (or PMC) provides the school building, the students’ uniforms, textbooks and school bags. We provide the rest.” The schools follow the SSC curriculum and have 30 students per class. The teaching is free.

She rues the fact that despite scores of willing parents – there have been instances where more than the stipulated number of 30 students to a class had to be crossed due to overwhelming demand – who want to send their children to their schools, quality teaching personnel are hard to find. “It is a fact that we don’t get the cream of the teaching talent available. The BMC insists that all teachers must have a B.Ed degree, at the very least. But then, those with B.Ed degrees want to teach in reputed private schools. So we have gone into non-B.Ed colleges to scout for potential teachers, assuring the BMC that we would get them to complete their B.Ed at a later stage.

We’ve advertised in mainline dailies, we’ve made our website stronger, we also send out mailers to our contacts and friends, asking them to recommend teachers or spread the word. We’ve actually started recruiting people who are graduates.”

Since no fees are charged but operational costs per school are quite high, the Foundation depends heavily on donors and sponsors. “However, we have not been able to get any new donors on board recently,” Chitra admits.

With the teachers that they do have, however, there are certain parameters that must be met. More parents from the poorer sections of society are insisting on sending their children to English-medium schools today. “Due to the lack of adequate teaching support at home, we have to make doubly sure that they study well in the classroom. They cannot afford private tuitions after school hours, so the teaching in school has to be perfect,” Chitra explains.

Chitra explains that apart from the challenge of dealing with children from underprivileged backgrounds – most of them are first generation learners with no exposure to the English language –the teachers also have to work harder at giving the proper amount of attention to each child, to address their concerns in a caring manner, and to be really patient with the students. The students’ parents belong to the service class – common occupations are domestic help, security guard, driver and vendor – and their incomes, like their own education levels, are generally low. “An inherent quality of patience is a must for the teacher, especially owing to the students’ backgrounds,” Chitra says, adding that the 200 teachers in their Mumbai and Pune centres and schools are tested extensively during their interview rounds.

“Most teachers are aware of the students’ backgrounds, but we also try to gauge their interest in teaching and handling a class right from the interview stage. We ask them to prepare a subject and do a quick demo in a class – this helps us understand their aptitude and preparedness,” she says. Selected candidates are trained in a two-week residential programme, where the Foundation works with them on various fronts. “The focus is on classroom management and academics, but the basic passion for teaching and the skill must be there,” Chitra says.

Diaries is a weekly series of stories on one issue. ‘Little People’ is a series of three stories on the education of underprivileged children in Mumbai. Look out for Part III tomorrow.

 

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