The other day in the newspaper was a picture of a pretty lady selling woolens in a road side setup. Below a caption informed that woolens fromBhutanhave started catering to the Indian winter. We may miss the carefree summer evenings, winter’s splash of colours are unrivalled. The bright woolens in the mystic fog create an ethereal mood. It is time to change our cloak in sync with Mother Nature.

The most beautiful that one can experience near home a winter morning is to watch the neighbourhood kids making their way to the schools. A galaxy of colour adorns their otherwise monotonous blue and gray uniforms. The ingenious minds that imagined launching a school round every street corner failed miserably when it came to choosing the uniforms for the vulnerable kids. Winter saves them from the tedium dressing. Maroon, red, navy, blue, green, ash, browns-all sorts of colours shine bright over their gray pants and blue shirts. I am specially delighted by the tiny tots who go to the lower primary. They have the rare privilege of overriding the strict schools rules. The bonnets and caps on their heads are no less than crowns and tiaras. The multi coloured thermo pants embrace all the hues available for a fashionable lady. The best of all is the sunshine that they wear on their face. The golden colour radiates best from these little angels.

Whether it is the flea market or the high street showrooms, a little imagination and one emerge the best dressed. Watch the boys with
bikes for leather gloves and woolen caps. Five minutes surveillance and I know what’s trending this winter in the cap and gloves section. Shopping is no longer exhaustive. In fact we bring home warmth, literally. And a cup of hot chocolate trends best of all.

Reetamoni Das

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 “The warmth of blanket and a little bit rum”…..responded my cousin who works at TCI (Transport Corporation of India) when I raised him the question “What do you like about the month December?” When I slapped the same question to one of my friend who is a student in Delhi University, he answered very excitingly “I like every day of this month, I am crazy about winter. I love keeping myself in fashion this month by wearing all those winter outfits specially those stylish and chic jackets and carrying myself with those smart mufflers. It’s my favorite month and lots of sweet old memories are attached to it.” My colleague from Reliance Capital is over-enthusiastic about the picnic-going spirit of this chill month.

          So at last December has come again with all its jovial and cheerful spirit bringing the non- ending series of parties counting the Christmas one and chain of New Year bashes. I want to pop in that the moment I hear the word ‘PARTY’…I simply can’t stop my feet tapping and my body swinging from right to left. The split second the year enters into the month of December I too enter into the partying mood, rock and roll feel…ohh December I am in love with you.

        Let’s keep the topic of PARTY a little bit apart, otherwise it would be impossible for me to wind up this write-up with my body going wavy here and there. I find ‘ORANGE’ is the colour of the month. The charialis, tinialis, syndicates and fruit markets dashed with thelas of oranges, our kitchen flashing the bright lively colour of oranges and its smell. The garden in front of our homes with marigolds in full bloom stands appreciating and truly depicting this jovial month.

          Last year for Christmas I covered a story for ‘The Sentinel’, English daily. I met Aziz-ul-Haque, Pastor of Guwahati Baptist Church and Fr. Joseph Denis Solomon, St. Joseph’s Church, Donbosco, Panbazar and they beautifully delineated the various symbolisms that are hidden inside the colourful ornamental accessories which are used to decorate a Christmas tree. Green is the second colour of Christmas. The stately evergreen, with its unchanging colour, represents the hope of eternal life in Jesus. Its needles point heavenward as a reminder that mankind’s thoughts should turn heavenward as well. The shiny star is the heavenly sign of promise. God promised a Saviour for the world and the star was the sign of the fulfillment of that promise on the night that Jesus Christ was born. Red is deep, intense, vivid. It is the symbol of God’s greatest gift. Christ gave His life and shed His blood for us that we might have eternal life. A Silver Bell symbolizes that just as lost sheep are guided to safety by the sound of bell; it continues to ring today for all to be guided to the fold. The glow of the Candle represents how people can show their thanks for the gift of God’s son that Christmas Eve long ago. This is what is symbolized when the twinkling lights shine on the tree like hundreds of bright, shining candles, each of them representing one of God’s precious children, their light shining for all to see. The Candy Cane is a stick of hard white candy; which is to symbolize the virgin birth and sinless nature of Jesus. The bright Red Bow reminds us of the bond of perfection, which is love. So it’s all about Christmas tree’s accessories.

                   December has come and already reached its mid, so it’s the time to reach your zenith and max out the plans of Parties and Picnics. And yeah don’t forget to explore the “Bhutia markets” and smell the woolen garments. Wish you all a dazzling December….

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      Haflong

Let’s start  the list with our very own Haflong .For a winter destination, Haflong in Assamis a nice place to try. Located in the Dima Hasao District, it is known for Haflong Lake and Jatinga Bird Watching. Photography becomes a passion of travelers just by instincts.

Chopta                                              

          If you are looking for clean fresh mountain air, untold natural beauty and a sweeping vistas of the Himalayan ranges, head for Chopta  Still not run over by hordes of tourists, Chopta is an indescribably beautiful little hill station sitting at 2600 mts above sea level on the Ukimath – Gopeshwar road in the higher reaches of Uttarkhand. The panoramic view of the Himalayas, the rolling Alpine meadows filled with rhododendrons, invigorating treks into the surrounding forests all go towards making Chopta an up and coming hill destination.

Gulmarg

       Another popular Ski (winter) destination, Gulmarg is located in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Known for having the highest Ski lift (Gondola) in the world, the place has more than 1300 metres of vertical panoramic views of the Himalayas. To make best use of the snow for skiing, choose the month of January and February to travel up this point and have fun. Do not get startled by occasional sights of soldiers as the place is very near to the India-Pakistan border

    Diu                                                                    

One of the 8 Union territories of India,Diu is gaining more popularity for its tourism than ever before. Very near to the southern coast of Gujarat, the place had a long association with the Portuguese culture. The town of Diu houses Diu Fort and an Old Portuguese cathedral that are popular attraction for tourists. Enjoy the beach and island fun here.

      Lansdowne
If serenity and romance are top of your holiday wish list, then head to,Lansdowne. Set amidst towering pine forests in the Pauri district of Uttarakhand. Lansdowne is a charming cantonment town that was settled by the British and is situated at 1500mts, has a salubrious climate and loads of trails that branch off into the woods nearby.

A quaint little hill station, Lansdowne is the perfect place to unwind and be rejuvenated.

Mashobra                                                                                                               
Much smaller than its neighbor Shimla,Mashobra just a 45 minute drive away is a charming little hill station surrounded by pine forests and cedar trees. Set at 2500 mts, Mashobra is a place where scenic beauty is outstanding and there is plenty of opportunity to go trekking into the sylvan surroundings.

     Theog

Located just 32 kms away from the hustle and bustle of Shimla Theog, is a lovely little hamlet where you can relax and go for long walks, breathe in the fresh clean air and light a bonfire and warm in the evenings. Theog spells tranquility and is undiscovered by hordes of tourists yet.

Lavasa                                                                                        
A first of its kind, man made hill station Lavasa is located just 65 kms off Pune and 300 kms from Mumbai. A perfect getaway from the hustle and bustle of big city life, Lavasa is spread over seven hills and interspersed with calm water bodies. Catch a game of golf on a world class golf course, go boating on the serene lake, have a relaxing spa treatment or take a long leisurely walk into the surrounding hills.

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Winter Festival atMountAbu

The Winter Festival at Mount Abu has become increasingly popular on the tourist circuit mainly because of the color and vibrancy of the celebrations. The Winter Festival is a 3-day cultural and exotic extravaganza that is normally held during the last week of December. The festival is organized jointly by the Rajasthan Tourism Board and the Municipal Board of Mount Abu.

The main aim of the festival is to focus attention on beauty as well as the warm hospitality of the people in the scenic hill area.

Teesta Tea and Tourism Festival

The Teesta Tea and Tourism Festival is organized jointly by the Tourism Departments of Sikkim, Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council and West Bengal in the months of December or January to attract tourists to this area. Darjeeling, Sikkim and the surrounding towns on the banks of the river Teesta are the major tea producers in the North, and to capitalize on the popularity of the Darjeeling tea, the Teesta Tea and Tourism festival is organized for 9-10 days.

                      Feast of Three Kings

Feast of Three Kings is celebrated with a lot of pomp and merriment in the coastal state of Goa. This festival is not only meant for Christians, but also for people from all other religions. Legends have it that a lady in Befana was visited by the three kings who were in search of the child. Since then, the lady kept searching for the child and gave a bread crumb to every child that she met on her way. This marks the significance of the Feast of Three Kings. This festival is celebrated during Christmas, which marks the birth of Jesus Christ                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The International Himalayan Festival

The International Himalayan Festival is celebrated in the district of Kangra in Himachal Pradesh during the month of December. The festival is celebrated to commemorate the occasion when His Holiness The Dalai Lama was awarded Nobel Peace prize in the year 1985. This occasion holds a lot of significance as it symbolizes the Dalai Lama’s peace initiatives. Indo-Tibetan Friendship Society sponsors the Global Himalayan Festival in collaboration with the Central Tibetan Administration and the Himachal Pradesh tourism department.

The festival lasts for three days and is started off from the shrine at McLeodganj. It aims at strengthening the ties and bringing out communal harmony among the Tibetans dwelling Himachal Pradesh and the natives

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“If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world.”

―J.R.R. Tolkien

Well, while everyone kept on guessing what could probably go wrong in the doomsday’s favourite year 2012,the raging wars across the globe, the threats of a looming aggression, the extremities of climate change and the growing sectarianism and fundamentalism proves that the wrong is definitely alive and kicking.

In the face of all this chaos, my mind tries to find peace and to my utter surprise it has found solace in the gourmet wonder that has begun to rule the small screen in the recent times and the stars of the show have finally redesigned the assortment of nature’s best produce, cooked to delight the heart, soul and senses.

From the country specific Masterchef’s, to regional cooking competition where food experts add a twist to the food tale and to the regular housewife laying down a trick or two to add zing to the mundane recipe, the absolute fervor for foodgasm has actually revived the art of food assimilation which is also the cardinal need of humans. Bringing out the best in culinary skills, compiling the cultural probabilities on the plate is an absolute wonder.

When years ago cooking superstar Sanjeev Kapoor came out with ways and methods of reviving the regular ‘Ghar ka Khana’ and replacing it with delectable restaurant look-alike food, the Indian housewives found their way to kitchen supremacy. Scribbling down every single item, that was put into making the dish authentic, then exchanging those recipes and later adding their own ideas was the thing that housewives were adept at.

Families were happy to have discovered something exotic and started to get acquainted with the food of the very federalised palates of the country. But alas with the arrival of the modern food chains and the brands that promised to bring food exotics from across the seven seas, slowly the art of home-made food was somewhere locked in the closets of the modular kitchens. This along with the hectic schedule of modern urban lives, the preparation of the elaborate Indian meal was largely overlooked and finally what surely killed these shows was the arrival of ‘fast food’.

Restaurants and take- away soon became dominant and people with more disposable income had the liberty to avoid the heat and the mustiness of the kitchen and get a taste of Italy or China all in a time of 30 minutes of ordering.

But as the urban life began to settle down. And people got busy with earning and yearning for peace, the long lost love for food seems to have emerged as a hero finally having won the war. This became more apparent with the increasing number of travel shows that have a fanciful food stop overs or the foodies trying to find out the best culinary delight of every nook and corner of the country as well as the world.

Simply watching the changing colours and textures of the veggies, meat and the spices that add the vibrancy into the sizzling mix, soothes the eye and one could almost feel that the olfactory sense( sense of smell) has transcended the space and has evaporated from the screens to our very own living rooms.                                                                                      

Food in its different forms categorizingly catering to different  taste buds also slowly found global acceptance. From the regular mustard oil to the purely derived olive oil, from pasta to poha and from rotis to tachos, the food scenario has gone global and so has the average Indian palate. What is possibly more real than the sizzling food and the simmering sauces?

On one hand there is an ever increasing demand for the authentic regional cooking, while on the other hand the internal cuisines have donned a glocal avatar. The gross differences in the culture, clothing and language has been minimised with food being a universal language.

Though many would not of course turn out to be masterchefs dominating the kitchen or a food joint, but many would accept people and their culture for their commonality in terms of the love for food. To this comes an apparent thought  that perhaps the planet could be a better place if differences were dissolved, perhaps food had the power of killing the hunger for fued. After all it is food for which mankind lives and yet it is for everything else that he fights for.

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

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The Children’s Film Society of India was founded soon afterIndia’s independence by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,India’s first Prime Minister, whose affection for children is well known. Pandit Nehru established CFSI with the hope that indigenous and exclusive cinema for children would stimulate their creativity, compassion and critical thinking. The CFSI has till date come up with 250 films in 10 different languages and remains one of the primary producers of children’s films inIndia. However, not many such films with social messages were seen in films for children made by other filmmakers inIndia.

Some early attempts were made way back in the fifties by Raj Kapoor in Boot Polish and by Satyen Bose in Jagriti. Boot Polish was the story of two orphans, who after the death of their mother, are left to the care of their wicked aunt who forces them to beg on the streets. But a neighbour teaches them to earn money by polishing shoes. The story revolves around the journey of the two children from polishing people’s shoes to being adopted by a rich family at the end. Jagriti was the story of a trouble child Ajay who is sent away to a boarding school where the principal uses unorthodox methods of teaching. Here he befriends a handicapped boy Shakti. Despite Shakti’s attempts to make Ajay change his ways, Ajay continues to be the same and ends up running away from the hostel. When Shakti tries to go after him, he meets with an accident and dies, leaving Ajay feeling responsible for his death and making him a changed person thereafter. Both these films showed different aspects of children’s lives in the midst of social problems, and only subtle hints of social messages for the audience were present in them. In short, certain issues were raised, but not highlighted enough to make major impacts upon the minds of the people. They remained cinema for entertainment only.

Earlier children’s movies inIndiawere meant for children alone. The few Children’s movies that were made used to be stories that simply entertained the child. The child would easily forget the story or the characters or the issue, after watching the film once. Apart from the ones made by the CFSI, like “Halo”, “Gattu”, “Heda Hoda” etc., no children’s film made any attempt to cover social issues of importance. For most of the years, children’s films only meant animation projects like “Bal Hanuman”, “Bal Ganesha” and “Ghatotkach”. However, that is not the case anymore. Children’s movies have come a long way from those stories to ones that attempt to convey a meaningful message not just for the children, but for the adults as well.

After 2000, the themes and storyline of children’s movies changed drastically. With Makdee (2002), attention was drawn to the grave issue of witches and witchcraft and people’s superstitions in such issues. The breakthrough came only in 2007 with Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par starring the bucktoothed Darsheel Safari, which told the story of a young dyslexic boy who overcomes his learning disability with the persistent attempts of his supportive teacher Ram Kumar Nikumbh (Amir Khan). It went on to become one of the most successful children’s movies in the Bollywood box office. It totally changed the perspective that people maintained of children with any special need and challenges. More than that, it brought clarity in the way common people perceived and understood the differences between the different kind of disabilities as well as the importance of the education system finding a way to discover a child’s talent or skill and not to impose itself on a child’s imagination. Darsheel Safari’s portrayal of this dyslexic child left many parents moved, and increased the awareness and importance of special education in schools.

Soon, followed in 2009, two more such revolutionary children’s movies with messages for the grownups- Chillar Party, the story of a group of kids taking on a local politician and Stanley ka Dabba, another story of a teacher-student relationship. These films highlighted the importance of considering children as an important part of the society and also took into consideration the fact that children have their own special needs and their own perspective about different issues in life and they need to be told and expressed in their own way.

Social messages through children’s movies have now become the norm of the day post Taare Zameen Par. It is so probably because these are movies in which serious messages can be conveyed effectively through entertainment and fun.

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Rohinton Mistry once wrote that fiction doesnot create facts. Instead fiction comes from facts. He said that it takes sometime for a writer to absorb his experiences internally and if it is valuable enough it haunts him, and he haunts it, till the writer is comfortable with it to be able to use it as he wants. Such is his book Tales from Firozsha Baag. Mistry in this book  weaves a tale so analogous to his own story. The compassion and sympathy in its narrative is one reason why the book etches deep impressions in the mind of its readers.

First published in 1987 as Swimming Lessons and Other Stories, the book contains eleven stories which explore the intersecting lives of the residents living in Firozsha Baag, an apartment complex in Bombay. Firozsha Baag is a Parsi dominated neighbourhood and all the major characters throughout the eleven closely interwined short stories are Parsis who later go on to face alienation and dislocation. Mistry through the book delves into the double displacement often faced by the Parsis – a circumstance which Mistry himself must have experienced in his growing up years. The feeling of inbetween-ness is dominant all throughout the book. The mental angst  faced by the characters is beautifully brought out by Mistry.

Rohinton Mistry also largely explores  the immigrant experience. In one story, “ Lend me Your Light”, Kerci, a boy from Firozsha Baag, emigrates to Canada where he recollects memories of a lost childhood in India. However he experiences double displacement when he finds life at Canada miserable and on his return to India, he feels exasperated at the fact that the concept of home seemed to have changed too.There was no sense of belonging which he could feel upon reaching his homeland. More surprising was the fact that he found Bombay to be a dismal and filthy place after his return from Canada. He then seeks refuge in nostalgia to escape from the harsher realities of his life. Thus the feeling of inbetweenness runs in the veins of this book.

Throughout the book, it is evident that Mistry has a rich eye for detail and is extremely meticulous. Every situation unfolds with a richness which is synonymous with Mistry’s other writings as well.

Mistry thus finely captures the relationships at heart of the Parsi community, their dilemmas and troubles, their memories and nostalgia, and various other  facets that made life at Firozsha Baag. It is said that a good book creates an alternate reality into which one wishes to escape. And Tales From Firozsha Baag is one such book which stays with you long after you have finished reading it.

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Through bars of a decaying window

You stare out into a winding road of evanescent memories

Hazy faces pass you by

And your eyes grow moist

So many there were questions

And many a answers which were never voiced

Who are they now ?

And who are you ?

Could you ever climb the wall

That stands between you and them ?

Like all the iron that turns into rust

Love and commitment turned into dust

But as long as you are living, time will mend

And one fine day, this too shall end…..

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•   1 tin of Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 1 cup Milk Powder
• 2 tbsp Butter
• 1/3 cup Cocoa powder

• Melt 2 tbsp butter; add condensed milk, milk powder, cocoa powder and mix.
• Cook over medium heat until mixture becomes thick and leaves the sides of the pan.
• Add vanilla extract and mix.
• Pour mixture in prepared greased tin and refrigerate for 30 mts.
• Cut in desired shape.
• Serve at room temperature.

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