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Guest writer

Mumbai SAys ‘I do’

India is increasingly wanting to get married in South Africa – and Mumbai wants to get married there the most.
by Richard Holt

We probably receive about 10 to 15 Indian enquiries for South African weddings per year, and the majority of these would be from Mumbai. However, not all these are from Indians living in India, but from Indian couples living around the world. The enquiries include multicultural weddings, where one of the couple is Indian.  They can be for either smaller intimate celebrations (with the couple only, or a few close relatives) that combine the wedding with a honeymoon in SA, or for larger grandiose destination weddings. Our largest in the latter category has been for 180 guests from all over the world.

All of our Indian couples definitely have an ‘international’ presence – most of them now reside outside of India, but insist on bringing some part of India into the celebration. Very often, couples are looking for something more exotic, adventurous and different than a traditional home-based wedding, although whilst getting married abroad, they still tend to incorporate traditional elements into their wedding celebrations.

Many factors can affect people’s desire for a destination wedding and sometimes, family dynamics can play a big part. We find that generally, our destination wedding couples are a little bit older and they pay for the wedding themselves, rather than relying on family. This gives them more flexibility of choice. In addition, because there is such a large Indian population in South Africa, there are also large Indian influences on the culture there too. For example, Indian couples who don’t want to venture too far from tradition can easily acquire Indian-influenced food choices or fuse their food with South African elements.

The growth of multiculturalism is a big influence on weddings, where couples from different countries and cultures choose a different destination to accommodate both parties’ backgrounds. This reason alone is responsible for a large proportion of our destination weddings, and we have married off several Indians who are getting married to people from different countries and religions. Combining the wedding and honeymoon celebrations also plays a big factor, and in this regard, southern Africa offers huge advantages.

There is no doubt that culturally, Indians negotiate much more than other cultures around pricing and specific details in the wedding planning process. There seems to be a real focus on attention to detail and being involved at all levels of the process. Incorporating Indian wedding trends is also very important for Indian couples.

Richard Holt is Group CEO of Concepts Collection, one of the leading wedding planners in South Africa. The firm has managed over 400 weddings in SA.

(Featured image courtesy taugamelodge.co.za)

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Wellness

Coming soon: A park for birds

Ex-Mayor Dr Shubha Raul has planned a birds-only park in Dahisar. No humans will be allowed entry into the park.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Given her background as a doctor of Ayurveda, and her fruitful stint as the city’s mayor from 2007 to 2009, Dr Shubha Raul is also lucky to be councillor of R North ward that has large pockets of greenery and naturally-occurring dense foliage. Combining her acumen as a doctor and the fact that there wasn’t a single bird park in the city, Dr Raul proposed a bird park on a plot of land in Dahisar, and the BMC agreed to her plan.

If all goes as per plan, the city will have its first birds-only park within a year.

Speaking to The Metrognome, Dr Raul explained how she hit upon the idea. “We developed the Geetanjali Garden in Dahisar, and there is a small plot of land behind it, measuring about 4,000 square metres. I noticed that it was lush with trees and bushes, and that a lot of birds would come there to build nests.” Luckily, the plot of land also got merged with the rest of the garden a few months ago, so Dr Raul decided to build a bird park on the green bit of land. “It seemed like a good idea because the vegetation required for the birds was already there. The place also has a sturdy compound wall, and we would close access to it.”

Explaining the need for such a park, she says, “It is a scientific fact that the chirping of birds has a calming effect on humans, especially those suffering from cardiac problems. Besides, we need to create as many green pockets for birds in the city as we possibly can, and you would be amazed at the sheer variety of birds one can spot over here. The birds are already familiar with the place, and we will be adding bamboo plants and other trees that provide the maximum shade and cover.”

Interestingly, people cannot access the park, but they can watch the birds from the perimeter of the park. “We will put up stout grilles over the existing compound wall, so that nobody can climb over the wall and disturb the birds. There will be a security man’s cabin; one guard will be appointed to see that nobody tries to break in even at night. Besides this, there will be secluded cage for birds that fall ill or are injured, where a vet can give them medical attention, and a designated water space.”

She has already got Rs 40 lakh sanctioned for the project, and the park will be readied in a phased manner. “Not much construction is required, apart from setting up the grilles. I am taking the opinion of experts from the BNHS as to the best way to prepare the park so that maximum numbers of birds can come there. These experts will also advise us on on how to provide nests for birds, and which kinds of trees and small potted plants to provide.” At the entrance, she says, will be a plaque explaining the concept of the park and its need, apart from a statue of a bird to signify that a bird park is in existence at the spot. Which bird will be put up there in statue form? “I’d like a flamingo,” Dr Raul grins.

(Featured image courtesy Clement Francis. Dr Raul picture courtesy article.wn.com)

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Guest writer

Shiv Sena at the crossroads

Prakash Bal Joshi analyses Bal Thackeray’s recent speech, and if Uddhav and Raj will combine forces for the next elections.

For the first time in the last 46 years, Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray addressed the Shiv Sena rally at Shivaji Park through a pre-recorded video of his speech, indicating clear sings of ageing. His absence may have disappointed the Sainiks, but his speech, which lacked the usual Tiger roar, touched an emotional cord. Not only Sainiks present at Shivaji Park, but also those who heard him speak were moved. It was one of the most effective speeches he has ever delivered.

A cartoonist who mesmerised generation after generation, and kept addressing them from Shivaji Park without fail, the Shiv Sena chief today stands at a crossroads. He clearly indicated who the heir apparent is, and made an emotive appeal to his followers to take care of his son and acting president of Shiv Sena, Uddhav, and his grandson Aditya, who leads the youth brigade of the party. He made the appeal with folded hands, and showed how deeply wounded he was due to split in the party when Raj Thackeray left the Sena camp a few years ago.

It was not a speech but a dialogue in his typically aggressive, derisive and most graphic style – as if he is talking to his followers in person. Anybody who listened to him was convinced that the Sena is currently down but not out –  there is still hope if his supporters keep their faith in the organisation and the leadership of his son, who is leading it from the front.

The demographic profile of Mumbai has changed drastically during the last four decades, but Thackeray is not willing give up his Marathi domination over the metropolis. He lashed out against his pet object – NCP president Sharad Pawar – for eulogising the multilingual culture of Mumbai, warning him that the Sena will not allow political power to slip out of Marathi hands in the state capital. His next target was the Gandhi family leading the Congress Party – Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka, Robert and their political advisor Ahmed Patel.

Though it was basically an emotional appeal where Thackeray Sr talked about becoming an 85-year-old and described his physical condition, he also talked about some hard facts of politics. He reiterated that the Sena would continue its Sons of the Soil agenda, but at the same time, it will pursue politics of hard Hindutva – a strategy which helped catapult the party to power in Maharashtra in 1995.

He touched the most crucial and dominating issue of corruption by attacking Sharad Pawar on Lavasa, lambasting the Manmohan Singh government for Coalgate and other scams, and describing the situation by talking of India as a ‘country of cheats’. In his inimitable style, he also criticised people for ‘taking notes for giving votes’ and later joining anti-corruption agitations.

Thackeray has been adjusting his strategy from time to time to take note of the changing socio-political climate in the State, though his focus always remained the Marathi manoos and militant Hindutva. His concern appears to be an anxiety about whether Uddhav would be equally quick and sharp to navigate the Sena, since he is now almost out of action due to his age.

The coming elections will be test by fire for Uddhav’s leadership, who proved his mettle by reasserting the Sena’s position in the last Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, where his detractors tried their best to upstage him. Will he be able to capture power with the help of the BJP, which is facing its own crisis of leadership?

Aspirations and needs of the Marathi manoos in Mumbai have drastically changed since Thackeray launched the Shiv Sena way back in the late 1960s. Much will depend on how Uddhav fine-tunes the Sena apparatus before the coming elections. He may well have to compete with, as well as compromise with his cousin Raj, if he wants to take Balasaheb’s legacy forward.

Prakash Bal Joshi is a senior political journalist, who last worked with The Times of India, Mumbai. He is also an acclaimed artist and painter.

 

 

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Deal with it

Free up your Sunday – don’t do those chores

Instead, use this handy site to delegate shopping tasks, daily chores and home maintenance that you would normally need to do yourself.
by The Diarist | thediarist@themetrognome.in

You live in a city that sucks the life out of you. After working all week, your day of rest is actually taken up by tasks that you couldn’t attend to before – you have to pay the bills, you have to stock up your refrigerator for the coming week, you have to clean up the house – and before you know it, your body’s screaming for a pause but you still have a hundred more things to do.

And yet another weekend goes by. Before you know it.

That was what prompted Debadutta Upadhyaya (38) to start www.timesaverz.com, a one-stop chore-delegating service that helps harried homemakers and working professionals assign tasks to certified service providers, and thus free up their own schedules. Debadutta, co-founder and CEO of the company, comes with a formidable background in conceptualising and executing ideas from scratch, as also a long and successful association with sales. The company’s services are now being offered in Mumbai, a city that she feels, “experiences a bigger paucity of time than other cities.”

We chatted with Debadutta to know more about how her business can benefit Mumbai.

What prompted you to start Timesaverz.com?

As a homemaker and a professional, I always used to find myself pressed for time, juggling the two roles. I found it difficult to outsource some of the repetitive chores that could be handled by someone else, due to a lack of certified service providers. When we looked around, we found out that there are many like us who are in the same boat and would love to have certified help coming their way. That gave birth to the concept of timesaverz.com.

Starting with services that are the usual time-consuming suspects, the vision behind the company is to offer a helping hand for every job that an average homemaker can outsource to enjoy multiple benefits. We are hoping to enhance people’s multi-tasking ability without compromising on quality or service.

Please describe your professional background prior to starting Timesaverz?

I have behind me 16 years of experience at senior level positions in the media and communications space, shaping up many winning teams and businesses. A gold medalist in English literature and Mass Communication, my forte lies in building things from scratch and evolving them into category leaders.

Before setting off on an entrepreneurial journey, I was leading Vdopia, a leading video ad network’s APAC business. During my stint, Vdopia emerged to be a market leader in the video advertising space in India and also expanded operations into SEA and ME. Prior to that, I was heading sales and sales strategy function for Yahoo! India during which my team displaced the incumbent to secure the No 1 Internet Display Player position in 2007. I have been a proud recipient of the Yahoo! Ratna Award in 2006 and was honoured with the Indira Super Achievers’ Award in 2011.

What kind of market research did you have to undertake before going ahead with this project? 

We interviewed quite a number of working professionals with nuclear families, young working couples, working couples with old parents at home, and realised that the average time spent by them over weekends trying to attend to mundane household chores is, on an average, four to six hours. This leaves them very little time to relax and rejuvenate before the new week sets in. Each of them loved the idea of a certified help that they can rely on to free up their time from regular household chores.

How do you think your site would stand out amongst others, like chachii.com, which are already operational in the city? What is your USP?

Our USP is that we are a one-stop destination for most of your needs, be it daily chores, shopping or household maintenance. We act as a single service provider, so customers don’t have to go over six maintenance contracts with six different vendors for multiple requirements at home.

Which are the key areas that Mumbaikars require the most help with?

Our research shows that Mumbaikars need the most help with household essentials purchase, followed by household maintenance tasks.

How can a person use your site?

Users can choose between long term Timesaverz maintenance contracts, to one-time ‘Get Help’ options to get services on the household maintenance front. We have a well-stocked store for household essentials purchase, wherein users can buy things at the click of a button and decide the delivery time as per their convenience.

What is the size of your workforce? 

We have a small team of seven, but we have an extended network of service providers and partners across the city.

Can people reach you by telephone?

We have a helpline number +919022711888 which people can call on in case they want to request service over the phone.

(Featured image courtesy pastalavista.blogspot.com) 

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Wellness

Mallkhamb is great for you

Cheap, multi-effective and with amazing curative properties for the blind, mallkhamb is an all-body workout that heals the mind, too.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The evening is drawing to dusk, and Shivaji Park is beginning to slow down. Evening walkers are resting, talking, taking in the sight of other walkers stop as well. But in one corner of the park, a run-down building is buzzing with life. There are two wooden poles on which boys shimmy up and down. A few feet away, young girls snake up a stout rope suspended from the ceiling, holding the strangest of contortions for a few breathtaking seconds.

Away from the activity, Uday Deshpande, the chief mallkhamb coach at the Samarth Vyayam Mandir and the honorary general secretary of the Mallkhamb Federation of India, is at work in his tiny office. The Mandir was set up in 1929, and has trained scores of Indian and international sportspersons and yoga practitioners on its simple floors – teaching them mallkhamb, rope mallkhamb, kho kho and kabaddi as well.

But isn’t mallkhamb as difficult as it looks? “Of course it is,” Uday laughs (he’s been a practitioner since he was four!). “It’s simplicity lies in its degree of difficulty – it’s not just about climbing a pole and balancing on it. It takes every ounce of strength and concentration to perform the simplest of poses,” he explains.

The thing that ups the sport’s difficulty level is the fact that mallkhamb is an aerial sport. “A person’s fear complex increases the higher up he goes from the ground, and this is excellent for increasing focus,” Uday explains. “It takes a special ability to climb the pole against gravity or hold one’s body in a rope.”

Interestingly, the sport has several curative properties for the visually-challenged. “I teach at three blind schools in the city, and the results of mallkhamb on these children are fantastic. Since they are visually-impaired, they are conditioned to be careful, to not do anything without assistance. This makes them inactive and leads to a host of health issues.” He says that after practicing mallkhamb, which they can do without assistance, their concentration goes up, and their appetites improve.

“Several of my blind students later told me that they had started doing better in their studies after taking up mallkhamb,” Uday says. “Everybody should take it up – it costs next to nothing to set up (you just need to invest in a pole with a stand), and it offers a full-body workout like no other sport can. We prefer that people start learning it when they’re very young, but at our Mandir, we have even an 81-year-old man coming to learn!”

A heartening development is that slum children from Dadar and nearby areas are enthusiastic learners of the sport.

What’s so special, really?

Mallkhamb originated in Maharashtra in the 19th century, during the reign of the Peshwas. Interestingly, a mallkhamb contingent represented India in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, wowing Herr Hitler himself. Currently, 29 Indian states participate in mallkhamb competitions at the national level.

(Picture courtesy Samarth Vyayam Mandir)

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Guest writer

Piquance is a taste

…and so are ‘umami’ and ‘metallic’. But, says our writer, we Indians are only now learning to tell the difference.
by Rakshit Doshi

I never take recommendations for restaurants from everyone. Simply because I am convinced that people (those who don’t care about what they are eating) don’t understand the difference between good food and great food; although, they do pick out bad food very easily and that is mostly accurate.

It is actually unfair to ‘judge’ food because it is subjective. It is like music or painting where the creator has his thought process laid out on a canvas, but it would be nice if the consumer understood what he is listening to, looking at and in this case, eating.

I asked a few friends about what was great food, according to them. The responses, mainly, were skewed towards their personal favourite tastes. So a sweet-tooth buddy went, “I love that Gujrati daal, man… it has got such a nice flavour”. Nope, it is not the flavour he likes, it’s the sweet taste of jaggery.

So here is my attempt at making this a short lesson on how to stop simply eating your food and savouring it, understanding it and enjoying it better. If I were to compare food to music, I would say that this piece may give you enough knowledge to at least decide whether you prefer rock or pop music, rather than just saying, “I like Madonna!”

Tastes of India

Good food has three basic factors that are in harmony: taste, flavour and texture. While it is easy to understand texture, people often confuse ‘taste’ with ‘flavour’. To put it very simply, taste is what your tongue conveys and flavour is what your nose tells you. Try this sometime: pinch your nose and have a mint. You will have no idea what you are eating, because you are not getting the ‘flavour’ of mint.

Now, there are seven different tastes that have been classified so far. Four of these are the more common ones which we can pick up very easily, two of the remaining three, are very difficult to explain, and one of them is an absolute revelation. Until recently, I too had no idea that this last one is a ‘taste’.

The four common ones are, sweet (like sugar), sour (like lemon), salty (well, like salt) and bitter (like coffee or cocoa). The uncommon two are ‘umami’ and ‘metallic’. ‘Umami’ is what you usually get from say, cheese or soy sauce. It’s that slight salty bitterness which is very evident in our ‘Indian Chinese’ food because we use MSG a lot here, which produces a strong umami taste. ‘Metallic’ is probably like biting a coin. It is difficult to explain or to pick these out, but my wife did point out a little truth about ‘metallic’ taste: water tastes different when you have it out of a metal container than a glass container. Do you think so, too?

And the final ‘taste’ is one, which until recently, was not even classified as taste! I am sure we have all experienced the ‘coolness’ when we pop a mint or the ‘hotness’ of jalapeño and pepper pods. Yes, this is a taste and it is called, ‘piquance’!

What’s in a flavour?

Moving on to ‘flavour’: this doesn’t really have any specific definition. Flavour is what actually makes food complex and builds on the taste via the nose. Indians love flavour in everything, and why not? After all, we are the spice capital of the world! Our regional and traditional food thrives on the balance of flavour. The Indian dish will comprise of one or two main ingredients, but there will be forty different spices to build the flavour. Maybe it is also true with western cooking, but their hero is that one ingredient whereas for us the proportion of ginger and cardamom, even in our afternoon tea, makes all the difference.

I thank all my office buddies who come from various parts of the country and bring their ghar ka khaana along. A simple bhindi ki sabzi from say, a Punjabi home, may have a strong mustardy robust taste and flavour, but when you taste that same bhindi from a south Indian home, you know it has changed completely, simply because of that extra pinch of asafoetida (heeng) as opposed to the mustard in it.

There’s also a little something called texture: this is where good food can become great and great food can become mind-blowing. It is something chefs should play with a lot more. Texture really helps in breaking monotony, like having toasted bread with your pasta or risotto; the fried noodles on top of the hot and sour soup; the biscuit with your evening chai and the papad with your sambar-rice are all instances of textural complexity in food. My favourite textural symphony is a great ramekin of Crème brûlée. Cracking that sugar and hitting a fluffy cloud of cream is musical.

So there you have it, a small insight on tasting food with a little more interest than just saying achcha hai. Looking for these elements can be fun and a little like a treasure hunt. It is for me. What about you?

Rakshit writes for broadcast media to earn his bread and butter but he is also a foodie, who loves to make a fat club sandwich of it.

(Picture courtesy images.sciencedaily.com)

 

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