The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - The Tribune Lifestyle

Married to Success
Purva Grover

They are drop-dead gorgeous, enormously talented, very much married & rule the BO. Our favourites of the actor-wife-mom brigade...

It would start with rumours of an evening spent with a special someone. Soon news of an engagement would travel through the grapevine. And then, some hard-core sniffing would uncover the truth, and our gorgeous lady would be forced to speak. A secret ceremony, few wedding pictures in the paper and after a while all that we would hear or see of the celeb mom would be brief appearances at award functions. Well, this was till yesterday when the female lead actors were happy to be once stars, and later celeb wives and moms.

But, talk today, and our pretty tinsel town’s wives and moms either believe in continuing with their work right through or making a comeback with a bang. And ruling the comeback trail at present is Madhuri Dixit Nene and if filmy magazines are to be trusted Sridevi and Karisma Kapoor will soon join her, in a sequel to Mr India and You & I, respectively.

Well, so on this season of comeback, we decide to bring to you some of the most beautiful and talented ladies who are simultaneously donning caps of a celeb-wife, star-mom and fine artiste.

Sensuous Madhuri

She enjoyed the anonymity abroad and so the news of her secret marriage in the USA didn’t surprise many. The filmmakers expressed uncertainty about the future career of Mrs Madhuri Dixit Nene, but the Ek do teen lady was determined to sway her fans once again. And, the snapshots of her comeback flick Aaja Nachle, to be released on November 30, are proving just that. And, though offers for the radiant Madhuri are flowing in, she says she wants to take it easy as her kids are too small.

Tied the knot in: October ’99

Loving wifey to: Dr Sriram Madhav Nene, a cardiovascular surgeon

Doting mother to: Sons Arin and Ryan

STEP OUT
Folks, go zorbing!
Yana Banerjee-Bey

Roll down a slope inside a plastic ball at Solang

The zorb goes rolling down the slope at Solang.

How many of you are game for zorbing? If you are hearing about it for the first time, here’s a brief introduction.

A zorb is a large plastic ball, usually about 3 m in diameter though some are larger. You get inside and roll down a slope in the ball. It is done solo or in pairs. In some zorbs, you are strapped to the inside wall, in others you are not and you flop about as it rolls! To make it more fun (or more hellish, from another point of view!), some zorbs have some soapy water inside so that you slip, slide and slither as you are flung about while the zorb rolls down. Zorbing is done on grass, snow and ice slopes and also on mountain streams.

Zorbing is a touristy adventure activity with lots of thrill and novelty thrown in. No skill, no extraordinary fitness and not much money is needed.

Getting started

How to reach: Go to Manali and then 13 km farther up to Solang. If you do not have your own vehicle, take a bus or taxi from Manali.

Where to stay: Hotels are available in Solang. Check into a hotel on arrival in Manali and go up to Solang the next morning. If you opt not to stay in Solang, return to Manali after zorbing. There is more to see and do in Manali.

Whom to contact: Hight Adventure Sports at 98160 56584 or 98163 67465.

Who can zorb: Anyone, but those with heart problems and high blood pressure must consult a doctor first. The zorb can take two people, weighing up to 120 kg each. A tourist claiming to be 90 years old has zorbed at Solang.

When to go: Zorbing is on in full swing now and will continue even after snow blankets the Solang slope. It will stop in mid-winter, when ice starts to form on the surface due to melting of snow and re-freezing. Zorbs for ice are manufactured differently and have not yet come to Solang.

Here’s what the actual experience was like, when I zorbed at Solang (above Manali) last year. The sport came to Solang in 2002 but is now also available in the popular tourist destinations near Shimla in summer. Some adventure tour operators also offer zorbing at Damdama Lake near Delhi. However, Solang is the only place where it is offered on a regular basis.

There is a ski lift along one side of the Solang slope and its poles are used as markers for the zorb rides. The ride from the First Pole is about 100 m and most tourists opt for it. The ride from the Third Pole is about 150 m and is faster and more exciting because of the steeper gradient of the slope!

There are two small circular holes on opposite sides of the zorb meant for entry and exit. You have to take off your shoes as they may tear the plastic of the zorb. Entry is head first and exit is feet first.

The slithering in and out is also great fun because of the bouncy feel! The zorb has two plastic walls linked together with elastic cords. It is this that absorbs shock and cushions you as you roll down the slope.

These zorbs have harnesses on opposite sides of the inside wall. You and your zorbing partner will be strapped in and then the zorb will be given a push to set it rolling down the slope. For maximum enjoyment, don’t hang limply on the harness. Straighten your legs and hold them stiff. Hang on to the hand loops provided on either side of your head and get set for the fun as the rolling starts. The zorb will roll faster and faster and then lose momentum as it comes to the flat ground at the bottom of the slope.

Yahoo!

(This column appears fortnightly)

The writer has authored India’s first handbook of adventure sports and is available at y.bey@excite.com

FILM & FASHION
A perfect balance

For Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, balancing motherhood and work is not as great a challenge as one might think. While talking about her latest animated film ‘Beowulf’, the 32-yea-old actress said, "You try to balance and try not to work too much. You take turns working, so it’s not too hard."

The Tomb Raider star added that she preferred focusing more on her private life than her career.

Friends no more

Spice Girls star Geri Halliwell and George Michael’s friendship has taken a severe blow after he failed to write the girl band’s comeback single. The situation emerged when Geri asked George, whose 2004 album ‘Patience’ entered the charts at No1, to write their first comeback single. However, he took too long to write the song, which resulted in Halliwell loosing patience.

"George was more than happy to write a song, but Geri was frustrated how long he was taking to finish it," a source revealed.

She wrote Headlines (Friendship Never Ends) with Emma instead. George was furious. "She’s still really good mates with his boyfriend, Kenny Goss, who’s been acting as a go-between in their battle," the source added. — ANI

Cool Stuff

Hair care
Tangles No More

Bid goodbye to weak hair with Pantene’s breakthrough total strength shampoo that fights seven signs of weak hair, namely split ends, dryness, roughness, dullness, tangles, friction damage and brittle hair. Made for today’s woman, the super-charged technology of the shampoo is combined with the revolutionary TRI defence complex with smoothing and conditioning ingredients that work together to reduce friction, smoothen hair strands, improve moisture retention, leaving hair protected, tangle-free and stronger. Priced at Rs 99 for 200ml, Rs 54 for 100ml, and Rs 3 for 7.5ml.

Beverages
Health Drink

Maxwell Nutrients Co. Pvt. Ltd has launched over 30 healthcare and wellness products including the pulpy Maxwell healthy orange drink. The company has been established with the objective of bringing quality dietary supplements to improve the standard of living. Dietary supplements supply nutrients, fatty acids or amino acids that are missing or insufficient in a person’s diet. They even provide the equally important antioxidants, herbal extracts, omega-3 fatty acids, amino acids and many other important nutrients that our body needs to function properly.

Fashion
Foot Fetish

Fashion footwear brand Vi-Ga introduces its gold collection of shoes and bags. The collection from Germany is simply stunning and effortlessly stylish. A lot of embroideries, diamond work, beadwork and coloured stones have been used in various style and designs for that offbeat look. Priced at Rs 199 to Rs 3,299 for footwear and Rs 999 to Rs 1,499 for bags the range includes ballerina, peep toes, saboos and sports footwear for women under maharani, page 3 and victory brands. Jeweled with beadwork, sworovski and embroidery, Vi-Ga handbags add more glamour to the collection.

Home decor
Style Furnishing

Leading home fashion brand Spaces Home and Beyond launches its autumn-winter collection. Built around personalised luxury the collection has themes like renovate, decorate and illuminate. The home linen and accessories available under the renovate theme echoes urbane luxury and includes draperies, trims, furniture and carpeting in sophisticated prints and colours. Decorate evokes the romantic beauty of an old European country house, complete with lace curtains, flower gardens, wooden beams and a fireplace. Illuminate represents decadent luxury and pure indulgence. — TNS

Closed Chapter
Saurabh Malik

The Municipal Corporation has slammed shut the chapter on book-hunting pleasure by removing the section of footpath stalls from Chandigarh’s history. Ever since it allocated permanent kiosks to the booksellers in Sector 15, the charm of "coming across the unexpected" has simply disappeared.

That’s right. Now you just cannot hunt for good books among the second-hand stuff. No, not anymore. If your target is clear, then you can aim and pick up from the racks the book you want. But, locating what you have not been looking for is a closed chapter. No wonder, it has lead to antipathy of sorts among the city’s booklovers.

If you still have not been able to read their objections, just drive down to the area around the petrol station in Sector 15. At a first glance, everything appears to be picture perfect — nice clean kiosks with a common fibreglass gable roof, neat concrete pavement and adequate space in-between the stalls for you to move around. Even the washrooms have been provided in the "mini book-mall", so there are no dirty walls around the kiosks.

Standing there, you only wish there was a nice little coffee stall for you to sip and search for good literature in the easygoing winter sun. You realise something is grossly wrong with the entire system only when you start looking for the books. Within minutes, you realise it’s like a hardback with nice glossy cover, but insignificant content.

"You see, the books have been neatly stacked in the racks meticulously placed in the stalls," says avid reader-cum-English lecturer Ramneeta Saini. "If you are looking for a particular book, it’s perfectly fine. But, if you are in a leisure mood, hoping to find something good to read, it’s just not the place for you."

Heaving a deep sigh, Panjab University English department’s former student Harjinder Singh Gill cannot help but agree with Saini. Remembering the hours spend among books in the old market, he says, "They were all there, on the footpath, spread in front of you, waiting to be picked up. I still remember going to the market without preconceived ideas, just looking for something interesting to read."

"I would simply pick up a book even if the title or the author was alien to me, feel the pages turned yellowish brown with time, read love messages scribbled by the original presenter to the beneficiary; and buy the literature if the contents were appealing," he says. You may find it incredible, but Gill actually has a home library of over a 100 second-hand books, all picked up at random from the stalls. Some of them are by known authors, others by writers with names just on the covers, not even on the Internet. "As everything was spread in front of you, picking up books from the footpath was like shopping in a departmental store. But now it’s like asking for your favourite tea or soap brand from a provision store," he concludes.

Well guys, you can only say the old order has changed with modernisation and systemisation and is gobbling up the charm of the disorganised. `A0`A0`A0

saurabh@tribunemail.com

Q&A
Beauty studio
Love your footsie
Pammy Kaul

Come winter, and with it comes the problem of cracked heels. An extremely common condition in winter , it usually stems up from dry skin. If neglected, the feet can turn ugly leading to callus, deep heel cracks, which further attract dust and increase the risk of infection.

Your feet deserve the best; they deal with the stress of standing and walking all through the day. With more than 7,000 nerves culminating here, the foot provides the high degree of sensory output to help us balance over many different surfaces. Skin on the heels is four times thicker than the body’s skin and is more prone to dryness and cracks. It won’t be wrong to say that the heel has a tough-for task aptitude, the skin on soles of your feet and the heel does get the worst of it all. Keeping in mind thickness of the foot, the skin fails to absorb moisture easily and is always crying out for moisture. Healthy skin on the external edges of the ruts can prove very irritating to the skin. Other signs of dehydration are skin losing its colour by turning pale yellow or off white.

This skin is prone to dehydration as it is extremely water resistant. Use cream to re-hydrate, soothe and repair the skin after indulging in water activities. Pregnancy, diabetes, age each has an effect on our feet and overall well being. Keeping your feet looking good is often the first step to prevent problems like cracked heels and calluses.

Word of caution

Stay away from foot files and exfoliating products if the heel is deeply cracked as it irritates the skin further.

Make foot care part of your everyday regular foot care regime - the only way to help prevent dry, cracked skin.

You could owe your cracked heels to the extra weight that they are carrying.

Make good choice of your footwear. It should not be offending your feet.

I have cracked heels and hard skin around my heels. I use lot of creams to soften but nothing helps.

Deepali, via email

People with excessively dry skin have a predisposition to cracked heels. While the build up of hard skin on the foot is natural, the other contributing factors could be ill fitting shoes and even incorrect walking. Don’t ever attempt to remove the callus yourself, let the podiatrist do the job.

For at least one week use a pumice stone or foot filer to take off the dead skin, preferably just before bed time. Soak feet in warm soapy water for at least 10 minutes. Use the pumice stone to shed off some more dead skin. Dry feet thoroughly and apply a cream designed for the skin on your feet.

As the skin on the sole is different, the products have to be specialist range of nourishing creams formulated to take care of the unique characteristics of the skin of on your feet.

Causes

Dry skin, inactive sweat glands, prolonged

standing, using hot water worsen the problem

Treatment

Apply a moisturizing cream twice daily
Use pumice stone to remove dead skin
Avoid open back shoes & shoes with thin flat soles
Eat foods rich in vitamins
Select comfy, cushioned &well-fitting shoes
Wear socks to prevent rubbing against the shoe
Stay away from chemical soaps

Pammy Kaul is a UK-based beauty therapist. E-mail your queries to lifestyletribune@gmail.com or write to The Tribune, Sector 29, Chandigarh

(This column appears fortnightly)

Telly Tales
Purva Grover

Generation leaps, sequels, remakes: That’s telly’s concept of fresh & new!

A scene from Sanjeevini look-alike Dill Mill Gayye

Our good ol’ idiot box never fails to surprise us, especially when it comes to its lack of innovation. Till a couple of years, the charge on our desi dabba was its attempt to get coloured in the videshi rang. This task christened Mission Inspiration brought with it soaps, reality programme or game show that our NRI brothers once watched.

And, when this international flavour began to lose its taste and we thought that finally the denizens of tellydom would now be forced to scratch their heads, they proved us wrong yet again. Forget, lending an Indian touch to international shows, they decided to instead add a new dimension (read, drag them to death) to the currently running shows. Let’s get a whiff of this freshness.

It would apt to begin with the in-thing called a generation leap that saw followers take up to the way showed by leader Ekta Kapoor. All her soaps in the ‘K’ stable have taken a 10 or 20-year leap, and as a result the characters have become younger and still more intolerable. Kasauti’s Prerna has neither fallen out with Anurag nor stopped dreaming of Mr Bajaj. Parvati, draped in Manish Malhotra’s saris, looks younger than her grandchildren. As for Baa, she continues to live on and on. And, we are ready to bet that she will be alive even after we’ve had a re-birth.

Now, all those who could not afford black dyes for their artistes took the path of re-births or remakes. Sony’s Kajal narrates yet again the melodramatic story of Kajal and Dev, this time in their re-birth avatars. The high on romance and low on medicine soap called Sanjeevini too is back in a xerox format titled Dill Mill Gayye on Star One. Also on the same channel is Saara Aakash’s extension called Choona Hai Aasmaan, which is safely being called the tweaked form of the original script.

And, if all this was not enough there are sequels of reality shows like Nach Baliye, which is in its third season and Jhalak Dikhla Jaa running in its second season. The slot of Sa Re Ga Ma Challenge-2 that came to an end last week has been replaced with a sequel of its children talent hunt. The Li’l champs too will be back soon, and so will perhaps be an Indian Idol-4. Now, we like watching people singing, dancing, crying and perhaps mindlessly sending SMSes too, but can we please not make all this an annual affair. And, if need be, then hire a fresh trainer for judges and contestants. For, by now even we know the exact time when tears will start falling or when an angry judge will threaten to walk out of the show.

Well, we guess you surely don’t want more of this freshness. Do you?

(This column appears weekly)

Little Interview
Anokha Talent

With small screen offering good opportunities to young talent and many making a name for themselves, young and beautiful with an innocent smile, Anokhi Srivastava of Balaji’s Kahin To Hoga and Khichdi fame, is not new to the small screen. This, Business-Management-degree-holder-turned-actress has deep roots in this city as her relatives are here and her mother is from Ferozepore. As Anuradha, Anokhi Srivastava has caught the viewer’s eye for her role in Paresh Rawal’s serial Main Aisi Kyun Hoon. In conversation with Life Style, she talks about the serial.

What do you think about the television scenario now?

It is a very competitive scenario now, but with equal amount of opportunities.

Is this your first show with Paresh Rawal’s Playtime Creations?

Yes, it is my first with Paresh Rawal’s production house. I have a long running role in the serial.

Tells us something about your role in the serial.

I play Anuradha who is married to Siddharth and heads her father’s newspaper ‘Morning Daily’.

What do you like about this character?

It is a very powerful role and the response is really good. I have received many compliments from the director and the viewers.

So are you doing anything else other than this?

I only have this one on hands right now. I do have some good film offers but right now I want to concentrate on this serial.

— Dharam Pal