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Recipe for a new palate
Star plots for a rainy day
French honour for Metro Man
Newton scores over Einstein
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The urban lifestyle is seeing an expansion in the tribe of gourmets.
Adventure
cooking seems to be the latest fad of the upwardly elite. Not happy with
just eating out, the upper middle class is keen to try out exotic dishes at
home. This has led to the mushrooming of cooking classes across the
metros.
And the takers are not few. From bored housewives to those
passionate about cooking besides students aspiring to pursue culinary
sciences are crowding these classes.
"I have been taking classes for
many years. The profile of the people taking these classes has changed.
Earlier, whereas housewives were mostly my students, at present I see quite
a lot of youngsters and even men attending the classes," says master
chef Sanjeev Kapoor. Abantika Banerjee, an IIM graduate and personal
manager with a foreign bank in Kolkata, has been running her cooking
classes. "Ideally, I would have pursued hotel management but during my
student days, a job in a hotel was not seen as suitable for girls from
middle class background. Hence I had to opt for a more general stream. But
these classes give me scope to unwind and I feel thrilled to teach people
something so different from my academic subject," she says. According
to Aritra Maitra, a senior brand manager of an advertising agency in Mumbai,
says, "Cooking is very creative. After six days of the strenuous work,
I cook on Sundays as it offers me an escape into the creative zone."
Agrees chef Muthura Raza, who conducts his own classes in Bangalore,
"Even in the most time-tested recipes you can add your own punch and
give it a zing. Like simply adding a few mint leaves in the dal you can
change its flavour and charm all. The best thing about cooking is that it is
an art where recognition is instant." But if cooking is a matter of
knack, do classes help? "Even singing might be a hobby or a talent, but
one needs to be groomed. Same applies to cooking. In fact, an inexperienced
girl, with no idea of cooking, cannot be expected to take charge of the
kitchen the moment she is married. She has to learn it. And for those who
are experienced, attending these classes always helps to hone ones
skills," says Raza. Pritha Bhagat of New Delhi, who has attended quite
a few classes, chooses to disagree. "The recipes that they teach are
too complicated. We cannot try them at home. After all, from where can you
assimilate such exotic things like Tahini paste or white wine every other
day? Though I am a seasoned cook myself, I am quite often reluctant to try
the recipes because of the bother," she says. — TWF
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Many film stars and sportspersons have launched business ventures and gone in for parallel careers, writes Vimla Patil
Juhi
Chawla, Miss India 1984, has well nigh folded up her acting career — at least as a lead actor in Bollywood films. Today, she performs in author-backed roles in art-house cinema (e.g. My Brother Nikhil and Paheli) and is learning music as a serious career. She surprised a huge audience at a recent Filmfare show where she was the co-anchor with Karan Johar.
Juhi is also a partner with Shah Rukh Khan and director Aziz Mirza in a production company called Dreamz Unlimited. Juhi is not the only star to venture into business ventures and parallel careers to take care of her future needs. Today, almost all stars in Bollywood and those working in TV serials are concerned about their short careers in the film or TV industry and working hard to create alternative sources of income and career choices for life after 40.
The biggest stars to do this are of course Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. The Big B has his own company called Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited with son Abhishek and wife Jaya and Shah Rukh Khan has his Red Chillies Entertainment with wife Gauri. Their film Paheli has been nominated India’s official entry to the Oscars this year.
The Devgans, Ajay and Kajol, are into distribution and production with their company Devgan Enterprises. Their grandest distribution success Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, raked in the moolah for them. They produced films like Raju Chacha but drew negatives on this effort. Right now, as Kajol is entering the post-marriage-motherhood phase of her career, they are doing ad commercials galore to earn big money. Neelam Kothari, one-time actress, has quietly established herself as a jewellery designer with the backing of her jeweller father and has a busy hi-end salon in suburban Mumbai. Twinkle Khanna Kumar and her mother Dimple Kapadia started a hugely successful venture of manufacturing fancy candles of every type for upper class home. But more recently, Twinkle set up her lifestyle store called White Windows and went on to win the best store award from Elle Décor magazine. She has opened more branches of her business and secured some of the most prestigious interior décor orders from other countries and from Bollywood stars.
Restaurants and food businesses are an eternal favourite with celebrities. Sachin Tendulkar endorsed ‘Tendulkars’ to attract cricket loving fans to his restaurant. Dino Morea set up his own eateries called Crepe Stations in suburban Mumbai too. Suneil Shetty was born in a restaurant owner’s family. He inherited the skill of selling food and was trained in a hotel management college. But after his success as an actor, he has also joined hands with several business partners to set up a chain of clothes stores called Bollywood Dil Se in Dubai and other international cities to sell hi-end garments similar to those worn by stars from Bollywood films and created by a team of prominent designers like Manish Malhotra and Anna Singh. Suneil also runs a seaside leisure park in Mumbai and supervises several family restaurants and garment stores which he operates with support from his parents and wife. Shetty also runs an entertainment company called Popcorn Entertainment Ltd which takes Bollywood stars to several countries for live shows and individual performances during the festive and holiday season. In other cases, wives start up businesses with the star husband’s support. Sanjay Kapoor’s wife Maheep is a recognised diamond jewellery designer with Notandas Jewellers with the support of sis-in-law Sridevi Kapoor as her model. Anil Kapoor’s wife Sunita has set up fitness studios called Idea in collaboration with partners and has several locations in Mumbai today.
Food, fitness, beauty, home décor, handicrafts, entertainment and film and television production seem to be the favourite activities of Bollywood and sports celebrities. They almost always get into businesses that concern these fields and invest their monies into projects, which promise them an affluent future. The new trend is also that wives of leading actors indulge in businesses to augment the family’s income and to strike out into every fresh fields to enhance the saleability of the star quality that their husbands have earned over the years. So endorsements, entertainment, hi-end products, food and fashion outlets, yoga and exercise centres — these are the preferred businesses for celebrities in the film and sports worlds. However, this trend of creating alternate careers or business ventures for future safety is not entirely new. In earlier eras of Bollywood, Raj Kapoor built a huge studio with all facilities for film production in Mumbai and also built a farm in Loni near Pune for the same purpose. Rajendra Kumar, another top hero, built a mini theatre for trials and a post production facilities venture for his family. Dev Anand too, built similar facilities for his own films and clients who hire his studios. Sunil Dutt created a production house and entered politics as an alternate career. Sanjay Khan and his wife Zarine own resorts, interior décor studios and have a flourishing home décor business. Many Bollywood celebrities and sports personalities not only earn extra money through ads and endorsements but also put their money in property building, creating guest houses or hotels, sound or post production studios and other ancillary ventures.
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New
Delhi’s metro rail chief, Elattuvalapil
Sreedharan, has received France’s top civilian award, Knight of the Legion
of Honour, for his outstanding contribution in the field of transport
infrastructure in the country.
Sreedharan, who took over the Delhi Metro in
1997, is responsible for actualising the state-of-the-art metro rail in
Delhi. He was also recognised for his contribution in planning and designing
the first ever metro rail in Kolkata between 1971 and 1974. Sreedharan was
presented the prestigious award in recognition of his enormous contribution
to Indian transport by the French Ambassador to India, Dominique Girard, in
New Delhi. "It is one of the most prestigious awards because this is
an award coming from outside a country. France is a very great nation. The
greatness of a nation lies in recognising good development and good work
being done outside a country," said Sreedharan. Sreedharan’s
relation with France spans for more than a decade when he recognised the
technical expertise of the country in the Parisian metro. The metro in New
Delhi presently runs 27 km in its three planned sections - level, elevated
tracks and underground, and was built at a cost of $1.7 billion. Costing
$506 million, a 6.3 km-long tunnel connects the heart of the city with the
old city quarters. About 130,000 people presently use the metro. The Delhi
Metro, first conceived in the 1950s but delayed by political and
bureaucratic wrangles, is expected to carry more than two million people a
day after its network expands to 70-km by March 2006. — ANI
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The
image of Albert Einstein with his unruly mop of
hair may be etched in the memory of most academicians for his most famous
equation, E=mc2, but Sir Isaac Newton with his theory of gravity, beat the
former in a poll on the relative merits of their breakthroughs.
Asked by
the Royal Society to decide which of the two made the more important
contributions to science, 61.8 per cent of the public favoured the claims of
the 17th-century scientist who developed calculus. Among 345 Royal Society
scientists who voted, the margin of support for Newton was greater still,
with 86.2 per cent deciding that his work was more important than Einsteins.
The vote was closer over who made a bigger positive contribution to
humankind in general. Newton was again twice the winner, but with only 50.1
per cent of the public vote and 60.9 per cent of the specialists. The poll
was held as part of the celebrations of Einstein Year, which marks the
German-born scientists annus mirabilis of 1905, when he published three
papers that laid the foundation of modern physics, reports Times
Online. Along with the special theory of relativity and its signature E=mc2
equation, Einstein proved the existence of atoms and explained how light
could have the properties of both waves and streams of
particles. "Within just a few months during 1905, Einstein published
several papers that were to change the face of physics. He proved
mathematically that atoms exist. He proved that light is lumpy. It is made
up of tiny particles we now call photons and not continuous waves. He then
published two papers on his theory of relativity, giving us a new view of
reality itself," Jim Al- Khalili, a professor at the University of
Surrey, who proposed Einstein at the debate, said. — ANI |
