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Girls just wanna have
fun!
Says Roshni, a city-based media professional "It's not like a Saturday evening when you come with your boyfriend or husband and are stuck with them for the rest of the evening. You can drink, dance and have unadulterated fun without getting those vague glances every now and then." Agrees, Sucheta, an entrepreneur, who makes sure she goes out once a week with her group of friends. "When partying, it helps a bit with men around, but every once in a while we look for places which have ladies' nights where we can have drinks, be loud and have fun with each other." And well, you decide your dress code here so flaunt whatever you want. It's like a Page 3 party for them, where they can catch up with some latest gossip, with no complaining men around. And it's not just the complementaries, but high sprits that make these nites special. "Ladies nite culture is pretty popular in city. If you go by the percentage, then city fares
better than Delhi in terms of women partying out. The age group, though, is specified i.e. between 19-30, but we have regular elders as well," says Brajesh. Agrees Rahul
Sharma, administration head, Score-8. "On an average, we have around 60 regulars partying hard on ladies nites and over 100 odd couples." But with all the booze, pretty women around and party mood in full flow, what if things turn ugly? "We have special
security arrangements for our ladies' night. Usually we have three to four bouncers, but on
Wednesdays we have 10-12 bouncers to avoid any situation," says Rahul. So, don't forget to carry your ID too. All in all, it's a win-win situation for women - single girls looking to meet men (from the very few who make their presence felt) or
committed ones looking for time away from their men. So, all your inhibitions aside, it's fun partying without men!
nehawalia@tribunemail.com |
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But(t)
naturally
Vital stats: Absolutely vital a knowledge for men to have about their lady (we never said that the importance of knowing it dips with other ladies). Probably the second thing men notice in a woman after her face (given a choice, preference would change any time, any day) and given a choice even matrimonial ads that usually begin with the fair, slim beautiful, would read thus, "Seeking a girl with AB-CD-EF, fair, beautiful….", the rest of the credentials will vary as per suitability." So what does men want, a size zero or meandering curves? We thought of becoming their voice and asked them to have their pick. And, the gentlemen proudly pronounced, with just the sole condition, "Anonymity. Please assure me that you won't mention my name," only to leave us zapped.
Kareena Kapoor and her beau, Saif Ali Khan, might serve some inspiration. The actor in a summit said without inhibition, "I am proud to be India's size zero," and Saif was there for all the support. Anyways, Karan Ahuja (of course name changed), an event manager, prefers Bipasha Basu-like body to Kareena Kapoor's. "Because Kareena is too slim. She didn't look her best in Tashan, the movie she changed her body type for. Girl without curves look tomboyish," he says. Wish there was a law for those aiming for a Bipasha Basu-like body girl; they too should have biceps and packs like John Abraham. We talked to more men and realised size zero doesn't have many appreciators. Sanjeev Bali, an engineering student, thinks size zero is just another term for malnutrition, "I would like my partner to be chubby and fit. Size zero isn't appealing at all. In fact, I would like my partner to be voluptuous." The sculptures of Khujrao depict the sentiments of men so wonderfully even after centuries. Harpreet Singh, another student, is a die-hard fan of Jennifer Lopez for the but(t) of course reason and wishes his girl has the same. A few men who hesitant talking about their choice and gave clichéd answers, "We want our partners to be fit and in good shape. Size or statistics doesn't matter." Just with the promise that identities will be changed, we got the answers flowing again. Siddharth Sharma, a city-based DJ, swears by the 'healthier' option, "Indian girls with size zero look less appealing than girls with fuller looks. I too want my girlfriend to be healthy and not skinny." Definition of healthy redefined! Kareena finds an admirer in Sumeet Gupta (name changed), a businessman. He doesn't have a problem with size zero only when it comes to Kareena Kapoor. For the rest of the brigade, "Girls should be a little plump. Nothing quite suit girls who are very skinny, rather curves add to their personality." We hope Shruti Hassan changes her mind after this and start hogging to gain some pounds. Who knows, the revelation might make the lady consider putting on some weight as 'asset'.
ashima@tribunemail.com
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Treading carefully
"Rumours are rife and for once we are taking them pretty seriously," shares Manipal Atwal, a student of Law. In addition to this, we are taking precautions at our own level. "We try to deliberately stay away from students who have cold or fever. Secondly, we prefer eating hygienic stuff as far as possible. Thirdly, we avoid shaking hands with fellow classmates or others," adds Manipal. Funny it may sound but swine flu is something students wouldn't want to take a chance with. As for Harpreet Dhillon, a student of Punjabi, "As of now there seems to be no permanent solution to this, nevertheless it is important to be careful, especially when our exams are around the corner. The mess boys wear mask and gloves. Medical teams make regular rounds to the hostels. Students too have read up on swine flu, and they have in a way have mugged up the precautions." Harpreet has stooped eating at the Food Street and other restaurants. "I prefer to eat at the mess. I have also stopped sitting for long hours in the library. I wear warm winter clothes to avoid getting cold," he says. Despite the hullabaloo, you wouldn't find students wearing masks, leaving aside one or two super conscious ones. Noordeep Kaur, a research scholar, feels that some students are spreading rumours to gain advantage. "Students who haven't prepared well for the exams are thinking of swine flu as a channel of escape route. There isn't much that you can do about it. You can see posters on swine flu outside the library and StuC, but I am not sure how many students actually stop to take a good look at them," she says. On a personal level, Noordeep has stopped going to the theatres to watch movies. "I also avoid going to crowded places." Then there are some who give two hoots to swine flu. " Jey hona hai ta ho jayega. Usdey dar naal asin sara din hostel tey nahin baith sakdey," laugh Harjot Sekhon and his friends.
jasmine@tribunemail.com |
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Dhol wajda
Rock night, celebrity deejays, Punjabi singers, and stand-up comedians, give the university crowd the best. But, when it comes to a cultural fest, nothing but the traditional flavour that goes down well with them. Whether it is a Haryanavi dance from Kurukshetra University, a Rajasthani performance or the beats of dhol, the energy of the bhangra and the magic of jhumar, traditional dance forms have always ruled the roost at these fests. A head banging, pulsating performance from the Rock band are apetitisers, real fun begins with the traditional live performances. The aahoo, aahoo, eyha, eyha, the crowd goes ecstatic, girls and boys alike. So, what is it about the dhol, the bholis, the jhumar that evokes such jubilation?
Offers S.S. Sidhu, dean, Student Welfare, Post-Graduate Government College-11, who has been preparing bhangra teams for almost 25 years now. "Traditional dance performances have always been a major attraction at university cultural festivals. Earlier, bhangra, gidda songs would be the major pull factor, but now students rope in star performers and singers for the same." Despite this, Sidhu feels nothing can beat the energy and dhamaal of bhangra. Puts the tall and good-looking Sukhwant Singh, a member of the university bhangra team, "We are the real heroes. We are the star attraction wherever else we perform." Now, have the heroes made some changes to match up with the 'star performers'? "We don't believe in damaging our tradition. But yes, we have added new steps, formations and bholis." It's not only the balley balley that goes down well the crowd, give them anything traditional and see them lap it up whole-heartedly and foot-tappingly. Suparna Sharma from KU seconds the opinion. "Wherever we perform, traditional performances always get a huge audience. This could be because the students don't get to see tradition anywhere else, and also they can relate to it. We have made changes here and there with dresses, background songs, otherwise more or less we are the same." Chips in Paramjit Singh, lecturer, department of Punjabi, "There is always a craze amongst the students to be in bhangra and gidda teams. At umpteen youth festivals, I have been to, students like anything that comes from their region. Yes, they also like added attraction in the form of film stars or comedians, but when they see smart boys and girls in traditional dresses dance to dhol beats, they can't help sticking to their seats." |
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A virtual lull
When the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks happened last year, the tremors also shook the virtual world. Filled with rage and a passion to set things right, people, especially youngsters, used the web world to create discussion forums and pledged not to let the carnage be forgotten. A year later, most of these groups have fizzled out.
The entries are months old, and the discussions, if at all, are on random topics. Take the example of one such group created on the popular social networking site, Facebook. "Mumbai Terror Attacks: I condemn it" was created soon after the terror siege of the country's business capital on the night of Nov 26, 2008. The three-day mayhem by 10 terrorists left 166 dead and 244 injured. The group, which started in December last year, now has 35,150 members. It started with a spurt of passionate discussions, heated debates and heart-wrenching stories. The aim of this cross section of people was the same -- keep the pressure mounting on the government to take steps so that such incidents don't happen again. While the online activism continued for a few months, it started waning by the middle of this year. By August there was a post announcing a gay rights rally and on Nov 9 -- almost a year after the attacks -- there was a discussion topic on Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray. The story of another group, Mumbai 26/11, is similar. The last post on it was three months back and that too on the trend of Indian youngsters going abroad for education. "The good news is that even if you are following the herd of about 2.64 lakh students going abroad to study, you don't have to score 90 percent. Students with as little as 40 percent are making a beeline for a foreign degree..." so went the last update on the 450-member-strong group's profile. Abhilasha Sharma, an advertising executive in Delhi who is a member of one such online group, admitted that she has not bothered to check the updates of the group in the last six months. "When I joined this group, the terror attacks had just taken place. The images of that episode kept flashing on the TV, therefore the emotions were raw. Not just me, but a number of my friends and people I knew joined these various groups that were created overnight on the web and pledged not to take things lying down," Sharma told IANS. "I remember I had gone for a candlelight vigil in India Gate too... However, as time passed, the memories started fading. There were no face-to-face meetings and the online momentum was soon lost amid the daily rush of life," she said. Anshuman Dey, a college student, said that while he signed up for one such group in December last year, he lost interest after people started posting updates on random topics. "When I signed up for the group on Orkut, I really believed that we can keep the pressure mounting on the government to ensure better security and putting the culprits on the dock. But after the first candlelight vigil, we never had a second meeting," he said. "There was no face of the group -- it was just a congregation of people. I am not blaming anyone, but I really feel that if a person or a group of people had kept the momentum going by organising meetings or rallies, it would have worked," Dey said. —
IANS |
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Lodge in Youth from across the country are opting to pursue hotel management courses in Srinagar, which is considered a perfect tourist destination. Most have enrolled in a bachelor's programme at the Institute of Hotel Management in
Srinagar.
"Earlier situation in Kashmir was bad and there was no scope in tourism as not many people used to come here. But now the entire hotel industry has changed as the situation has improved here. Now there is no militancy here and no militant activity takes place.
The situation here has improved, even our institute has changed, entire infrastructure has altered, and we have got new building. New students from outside are coming maximum from Delhi, Haryana and Himachal," said Anwar Mohin, a student from Lucknow. The new building of the institute was completed a few years ago with all modern facilities including a hostel that has attracted hordes of students from across the country. "Twenty-thirty students per year used to come till 2007. In 2007, 2008 and 2008-09 the intake capacity has increased manifold. Now instead of 20, 90-100 students are coming, and out of this 90 percent students are from outside J&K state. And among the ten percent from J&K state, many are from Jammu and other nearby areas. So people are preferring Srinagar as destination because the perception of fear and other things has sorted out," said Nitesh Shrivastav, Principal of Institute of Hotel Management,
Srinagar. — ANI
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The German Connection
"Until recently I hadn't discovered the stark similarities between the two cities when I by chance placed the pictures together," explains Barbara. Capturing the same aspects of the city was only a coincidence. It gets easier to realise the parallel she draws between the cities after a look at the paired photographs on display at the Government Museum and Art Gallery-10 under the title Horizontal City/ Vertical Village, Living with le Corbusier in Chandigarh and Berlin. A picture of the High Court is placed along a Le Corbusier's building in Berlin, a picture of an open space in the city and near a building in Berlin explains a lot. Besides the concrete structures, Barbara has also brought out the similarities in the social set up through photographs of how people of both the countries celebrate, remember their loved ones who have passed away, also the educational set up and work stations. "I had initially thought of putting up such 15 pair of pictures for the exhibition but the similarities took the number to 37," adds Barbara, who pursuing Ph D in cultural athropology from Panjab University. However, there are certain contrasts apparent between the cities. The High Court is plain and concrete where as the Le Corbusier building is done in bright colours. Barbara has a factual justification; "Le Corbusier was given a set budget while designing Chandigarh unlike when he was working in Berlin. He probably couldn't afford to take up the painting part of the buildings, the reason we see the concrete structures either in cement or at the most in red bricks." Another important contrast between the works is their form, horizontal and vertical. While Corbusier restricted the height of the usual building to three storeys in Chandigarh, in Berlin it is a multistory building with 530 flats in built. Barbara gives some vital information, "Corbusier was always in favour of high-rise buildings as they leave a lot of open and green space. But in India, there were practical problems like less electricity, which means elevators or lifts were virtually not possible and people weren't open to the idea of collective disposal of garbage, a usual practice in European countries." In spite of these contrasts, Le Corbusier architectural designs to provide sun, space and nature are the aspects common to all the projects undertaken by him.
On till December 2 |
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Remembering Surinder
"Jeene ke zamaane mein toh sab jeete hein/ Jo mar ke jiye , jahan mein naam uska hai.. rightly relates to the melody queen Surinder Kaur who strode like colossal on the firmament of filmy and Punjabi folk music. Endowed with mellifluous voice she was a singer par excellence and merged as a legend in her lifetime. Born on November 25, 1929 at Lahore, Surinder Kaur while in her teens gave a vocal recital at the Lahore radio, which was highly appreciated and she never looked back there after.
However the spirit, the flow of cultural nuances as cultivated by the legend in her gayaki with ethical standards have been maintained, fairly preserved, nourished and propagated by her daughter, Dolly Guleria, a folk and Sufi music maestro. On her mothers eightieth Birth anniversary she shares notes on her with Lifestyle. "In memory of my revered mother Late Surinder Kaur 'The Nightingale of Punjab' the Nightingale Music Academy which was launched in March 2004 by her and now is being run by me, will hold an informal get together of all the members of the Academy tomorrow to commemorate her eightieth anniversary." Talking about her mother she says, "I shared an emotional bond with her and she is never away from me, she inspires me to keep up the tradition of saaf suthri and spiritually sufiana gayaki without hankering for money which makes my responsibilities many fold." About her maiden book and other projects? "My book Chhavaan te Parchhavan to be simultaneously published in English as Shade and Shadow is about me, my life in all its manifestations. Besides that my new album Mein tenu yaad awangi, comprising of folksongs falls in the foot steps of my mother. The legacy will prosper further with my progeny Sunaini and her prodigious daughter, Riya." What is the best tribute you would like to pay to the legend of Surinder Kaur, "By serving the cause of pure Punjabi folk music, the spiritual and Sufi traditions which has given us a lot to hold on to. I feel proud to inherit her style of singing and proudly say that all her song became household musical treasure without a single video."
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The heat is on
Moving away from gas to electric ones, people now are going for even gel-fueled fireplaces for their convenience and style. Says Maharaj Sodhi, from Furniture Mart-22, "Yes, fireplaces are lot in demand these days and since people do not have the pre-fixed ones, they prefer the fake fireplaces. Ask him how do they work and he says, "They basically have coils in them and a screen at the back that gives the effect of wood burning." He adds, "Portable fireplaces can also provide an instant decorator touch as the image of a hearth conjures the images of comfort and security. A artificial fireplace can transform your living room into a warm gathering space with or without a fire." Talking about the variety, he says, "The gas fireplace has ceramic 'logs' that glow and a real flame that's fueled by direct access to the gas line or via a hook-up to an outside tank. For electric fireplace, it can be placed in any room where there's an electrical outlet. They don't require venting, usually have logs that glow rather than flames, and are fueled just by plugging it in." Well, heater and fireplaces are not the only options to beat the chill, blowers are another good option. From electrical shops in Sector 35 to the booths in Sector 34, you can pick blowers in any design and style. Achal from Jain Shoppe-18 says, "Beyond heaters, blowers are a definite pick by the consumers in winters. And, with a variety of designs available they make for stylish winter accessory." That's not all. If you are looking for something that can even heat up your lawns, there are tower heaters available. Says Sodhi, "We even have eight feet tall heaters with us. Weatherproof, they can be used anywhere from lawns to open halls."
jigyasachimra@tribunemail.com |
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They party hard and wild, minus the guys and at some of the hottest spots. And when it comes to having an evening of fun, women know how and where of it. Well, no prizes for guessing who's cashing on the concept— it’s various pubs and bars scattered around the city. Offering plenty in form of fun, early closing hours and only girl's, ladies are living out their Cinderella dream.
But there is a definite strategy behind keeping ladies happy. SaysBrajesh, manager, Voodoo-26; "The concept rests on the fact that women prefer to go out with their group, with not much men around." More encouragement comes in the way of guest female DJ's, dancers and even female bartenders. "We recently had DJ Pari performing at our ladies’ nite. Very soon we are also planning to offer special platter for them as well," he adds. Voodoo has its Cinderella nights on Wednesday's and on offer are sumptuous snacks, stylish cocktails and spell binding music. The rules are same everywhere with no stag entries, celebrity female DJ's and free drinks. Score-8 does its bit too, since they too had guest DJ Barkha leading the ladies to a night full of fun. Lava bar at Taj-17, too brings its own special attractions for ladies on Wednesdays with food, fun, vodka, champagne or wine are on the house. 
Balmy winter afternoons, fancy cars and jeeps parked lazily at the Stu C, hot cups of coffee to go with a mini thali. A diligent exchange of library notes, and a quiet conversation taking place between a pretty girl and a spiky-haired dude. Life on the campus is on the usual move, save for the rumours floating in the air for some days now. The swine flu scare, and its devilish tendency to attack unexpectedly! And now, it has made it to the most talked about things list on the campus as well. How, where, when, what if, what to do, just in case, which medicine, how many recent cases…anything and everything regarding the swine flu is being discussed at length. On a practical footing, we see how the students are dealing with the scare.
It wasn't planned or deliberate. Actually, it took Barbara Hoegner, the photographer from Germany, by surprise when she saw pictures of Chandigarh and Le Corbusier building in Berlin juxtaposed. She photographed Le Corbusier's work in Chandigarh in 2005 that was later put up on display in Berlin. In 2008, she clicked Le Corbusier building in Berlin and held an exhibition of the photographs.
If we talk of the winter and home, the mind immediately races towards the much-needed accessory for those foggy days and chilly nights — heaters, blowers and those elegant fireplaces.Though a fireplace is particularly associated with life in the hills, one can always add that touch of romance in plains too. If your house doesn't have a pre-fixed fireplace, you can still experience the warmth and the ambiance with a fake one. These alternatives to wood-burning fireplaces are less expensive and much easier to install. 
Available here are electric fireplaces that come in an array of ‘surrounds’ (the wood, metal or marble enclosing the firebox), from unfinished pine to Italian marble they are available for every budget. Usually available in 'straight' or corner styles, most artificial fireplaces can be placed anywhere in the room. 
Well, that's for the fireplaces. Moving onto heaters, there are gas, electric and even solar heaters. Anil Kansal from Bharat Crockery-18 says, "From pillar heaters to small, round and even concave, the variety changes every year. And, with the Chinese appliances readily available, the regular brands have to keep themselves updated."
Ask him about the artificial fireplaces and he says, "Yes, they are also available with us but the stock starts coming in December."