Indholdsfortegnelse for December 5, 2016 i India Today

On the evening of October 28, terrorists struck at the Indian army in the Machchal sector in Kupwara district. They beheaded a soldier, carrying his head across into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Indian army vowed an “appropriate response”. Retaliation came but not like the September 29 surgical strike carried out by Para-SF operators on multiple terrorist camps across the LoC. The following day, the army moved seven FH-77B Bofors howitzers near the LoC. The guns were fired in pistol mode or in a flat trajectory at the targets nearly two kilometres across the border. Seventeen Pakistani bunkers were destroyed in the fire assault which the army claims killed 20 Pakistani soldiers. Artillery had once again proved its lethality. It sent a message without crossing the LoC. On November 15, the…

INFANT DEATHS IN ATTAPPADI Official data, says NGO Thampu, has consistently under-reported deaths, which spiked in 2013 The grave was small, barely two feet deep. Pazhaniswami consigned the shrouded body of his sevenmonthold grandchild Prayaga into the hole as his grieving family looked on. The set ting for this solemn ceremony on October 1 was Attappadi, a forest paradise nestled in the mistsoaked valley in the Nilgiri hills of the Western Ghats. For the past six years, death has stalked the tribal hamlets of this administrative block in Palakkad district. Prayaga was among the latest of the 123 babies who have died since 2010. The 2016 figures are still being contested, but the first two weeks of November saw three casualties. The Attappadi deaths first raised a storm in 2013,…

The real estate sector is in transition. Developers were bracing for the new regulations under the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act (RERA)— which aims to make the market transparent—when came the government’s demonetisation double whammy, striking at the roots of black money in land deals and secondary market sales of residential units. This is expected to jolt prices in a big way in a sector already struggling with high inventories (unsold homes) and low demand. Here is how demonetisation will impact the sector in the near and long term. EXPERT VIEW “Buyers and sellers are waiting for these turbulent times to end. How the execution happens after December will decide market trends” Ankur Dhawan, Chief Business Officer, Resale Transactions, Proptiger “The property market will take a beating for six…

GETAWAYS GALORE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK LAMAHATTA Discovered and promoted as the newest hill station in Bengal, Lamahatta is a picturesque mist covered hill village roughly 25 km from Darjeeling. December though, not often considered an ideal time for visiting hill stations, can be quite enjoyable if you like the bracing the cold. Being an off-peak season can mean a quiet time and relatively clear views. In fact, if you’re lucky enough, you might just get a spectacular view of not just the snow peaked Kanchenjunga but also Tiger Hill, Darjeeling town and the river Rangeet meandering its way down the hills. Lamahatta also has a few options for short treks in and around the Lamhatta park. The park is done up with colourful prayer flags, and tall watchtowers…

 Eyes down. Don't smile. Indian brides never smile.” Remember those lines from the hilarious Bend it like Beckham? Well, luckily, a lot has changed since then. Not only do Indian brides now grin happily for the camera but they also kiss the groom, pull faces for the lens, dance like no one’s watching and even dive into a swimming pool in all their finery—all for the perfect wedding album and more importantly, to make sure the wedding hashtag (cleverly created especially for the shaadi shenanigans) gives those unable to attend major FOMO. Of course, the job of creating a good hashtag mustn’t be underestimated. It’s no longer about marrying two names to create a Brangelina or Saifeena imitation. Think Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover’s #monkeywedding. Talking of Bollywood weddings,…

Chef Siddharth Kashyap Restaurant: The Boston Butt, Kala Ghoda In his kitchen: Smoking machines, curing chambers On the menu: Pulled Smoked Chicken, Chicago Style Hot Link Sausages (pork or chicken)  It was a trip to London, where Chef Siddharth Kashyap tasted authentic American barbecue for the first time that sowed the seed for his pet project—The Boston Butt, a smokery and charcuterie. “Before that I had always associated barbecuing with flash grilling, high temperature searing with coal burning at 1000 degrees,” admits Kashyap. But Texan or southern-style barbecuing is very different, with the meat slow and low-cooked in smokers at temperatures as low as 150F-160 F just keeping the meat warm throughout the process. “This renders the tough tissues of the meat really soft and tender, and imparts a…

THE POET AND HIS CITY As the sun sets, the Dashashwamedh Ghat gears up for the evening aarti—a sight that brings hundreds of tourists and pilgrims to Banaras. The Ganga aarti is an ode to the river Ganga, that lights up each night with flickering diyas on the ghats. Against the gentle calmness of the river is a strong juxtaposition of a city that is forever bustling with pilgrims searching for the gods that are said to have occupied its banks many moons ago. Benaras or Varanasi was made from the grand union of rivers Varuna and Assi and is considered to be one of the oldest living cities in the world, as well as the centre of Hinduism. But there is a Benaras that exists apart from the temples,…

If you had invested Rs 1 lakh in Minda Industries, a small cap company, the money would have more than doubled to Rs 2.3 lakh in the past one year. This is the scale of returns smaller companies can deliver. The S&P BSE Small Cap Index has delivered a return of 14 per cent over the past one year, compared to a modest 3 per cent from its larger counterpart, S&P BSE Sensex. While we may want such companies in our portfolio for their higher growth prospects, the challenge is picking the right ones, since small caps are less researched and many in number. EXPERT VIEW “Small cap fund investors should be aware of the interplay between returns, volatility and required timeframe. Invest as per financial goals and risk…

web wow Hymn for the weekend There was loads of Coldplay-related anxiety this year—from astronomical ticket prices to political parties threatening to cancel the show. So it was heartening to see videos of Chris Martin singing Maa Tujhe Salaam with A.R. Rahman at the Global Citizen festival. web win Gift from granny When Jamal Hinton got a text inviting him to Thanksgiving from a woman who said she was ‘grandma’, he asked her for a picture. When Wanda sent him a selfie, Hinton told her she’d got the wrong grandson. But like all nice grandmas, she asked him to come anyway. net fail Coffee with Trump A Starbucks barista allegedly refused to serve a man who voted for Donald Trump. So other supporters of the President-elect have started ordering coffees…

Charm factor 10 Downing Street With its British ambience, Ten Downing Street has drawn people from across the town over the last 16 years on Saturday evenings. The same charm in a more contemporary version comes alive at the Gachibowli branch of 10DS; a blessing for people who now don’t have to drive all the way to Begumpet braving the evening traffic. “We are known for our food as much as our retro ambience and we have retained a similar flavour over here as well,” says managing director Tarun Reddy, 28, showing us around the expansive terrace. It features country style wooden tables and a wrought iron gazebo you’d love to take selfies under on a lunch date. In the evenings, the place wears a look that’s almost ethereal, resonating…

A couple in identical yellow jackets walk through the audience onto the stage. The woman carries a small red box and the man strums on his 1980s style keytar. In the audience, a few toddlers wail while their parents shift around anxiously. In less than a minute, though, the children quieten down. The actors, from the French theatre group Cie La Boîte à Sel performing PLAY, have them in rapt attention, watching their every move with keen curiosity. “Children are a natural-born audience. They are used to storytelling. They have their own sense of how they should be during a performance,” says Shaili Sathyu, All India Secretary of Assitej India, a society for individuals and theatre companies that work in theatre for children. PLAY is one of the six…

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION Weddings by Studio Noir When Weddings by Studio Noir shot a stop-motion wedding video for a New York-based couple earlier this year, they shot 45000 photos and spent seven months editing it. The result was a beautiful wedding film that looked like a dreamy sequence. “These are the new trends in wedding photography internationally which are gradually creeping into India—underwater, stop-motion, time-lapse videos and drone cinematography,” says Vishal K, photographer and founder of Weddings by Studio Noir, which specialises in save-the-date and wedding shoots. So, as couples opt for newer and fresher memories of their wedding, wedding books with high-tech printing are replacing the yesteryear albums and CDs; wedding apps are the new invitation cards and websites act as a repository of information and memories of the…

Q1. DO YOU AGREE WITH THE GOVERNMENT’S DEMONETISATION MOVE? ASHOK GULATI Not only do I agree, but I feel that with demonetisation, Narendra Modi has taken the boldest economic and political decision of his term so far. I feel this shock therapy was needed to graduate India to version 2.0. It will hopefully weed out corruption to some extent and sow seeds of hope for a clean India. ILA PATNAIK The costs associated with demonetisation far outweigh the benefits. In one stroke, 86 per cent of the currency in circulation was withdrawn. The disruption in transactions could hit the emerging consumer demand. In the last two quarters, consumption was the single-most important driver of GDP. This move could significantly affect the consumption demand. The informal economy, which is cash driven,…

LET’S EXCHANGE Currency traders, who on normal days exchange tattered notes for new ones, charged hefty sums to swap demonetised notes: Rs 400 for every Rs 1,000 BANK NOTE MAFIA They crawled out of the woodwork overnight, accepting old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes and giving back anything from 15 to 80 per cent of the value in Rs 100 notes FARM APPEAL Since agricultural income is not taxed, some piled on to farmers who started appearing in bank queues. Their claim? They had got cash (old currency) after selling goods at the mandi before demonetisation PARTY POLITICS Political parties can collect donations up to Rs 20,000 without having to reveal who the donor is. A party can, therefore, say it had collected donations in old currency prior to demonetisation…

Looming clouds of despair are driving 30-year-old Rahul Bhoyal, promoter of the privately run Industrial Training Institute (ITI) in Maharashtra’s Tumsar village, into deep depression. Not far away, Pankaj Bhende, who runs a similar establishment in Nagpur’s Thadipauni village, is equally in a bind. Like hundreds of other firsttime entrepreneurs who had sought to take advantage of a January 2016 Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship scheme to set up 7,000 private ITIs, their livelihoods, too, are in peril. Both Bhende and Bhoyal pooled in their moderate family savings with substantial loans in 2015-2016 to set up small units to train local youth as skilled tradesmen. Like many others, they too were inspired by Narendra Modi’s message before and after becoming prime minister: “India needs ITIs more than IITs.”…

The chaos caused by the withdrawal of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes has had the predictable side-effect of giving digital transactions a huge push. Paytm, a mobile wallet company, did business in the offline space (person to merchant transactions) worth Rs 150 crore in just six days after the demonetisation move. Clearly, e-wallets have become necessary, but UPI (Unified Payments Interface), by the government’s National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), is there too. EXPERT VIEW “The move is a big boost to the digital economy. We believe that UPIbased solutions can solve payment issues faced by all individuals and merchants in this time of transition” Vivek Lohcheb, Co-founder, TruePay MOBILE WALLETS A mobile wallet is a virtual wallet that allows people to pay for anything, from simple recharges…

Did you know? That indoor air is typically more polluted than outdoor air the world over? That furniture, PVC items, household appliances, detergents, cleaning products, plywood, leaking pipes, etc—all can emit toxic and harmful particles? That a bedroom with no plants has 50 per cent more airborne microbes than a room with houseplants? PHENOLS Pesticides and disinfectants contain phenols, as do cigarette smoke and municipal solid waste Source: NASA and the American Society for Horticultural Science Graphic by TANMOY CHAKRABORTY BENZENE Harsh cleaning products emit volatile organic compounds like benzene and trichloroethylene. Peace Lily grows in low light and can humidify your air OZONE Ozone is the main villain behind smog, but it also infiltrates homes and offices— released, especially, by ordinary copy machines, laser printers, ultraviolet lights and so…

1 RESTAURANTREVIEW / AUTUMN LEAF CAFÉ GREEN PERCH The recently launched Autumn Leaf Café is a green oasis in the midst of the bustle of Jubilee Hills, with foliage all around creating a relaxed feel. Grab a quick smoothie with friends or spend half a day by yourself under the cannonball tree, treating yourself to an exotic sushi burger and coffee. Sample their highly recommended goat cheese phyllo puffs dressed with a tart tamarind glaze and you are sure to come back for more. A selection of pastas and what the menu describes as big plates are delectable continental offerings for a fuller lunch. What’s more, you can also get your pet along and the staff here wouldn’t mind it—with the café being a pet-friendly joint with plenty of open…

We started right from our home kitchen and oven,” baker, chef and entrepreneur Lovey Kapur says, smiling behind her trademark horn-rimmed glasses. As home bakers for two generations, sisters Lovey and Puja often found themselves holding cooking and baking classes for Puja’s friends. Orders from friends, family and extended acquaintances were common too, until it became tough to do so much out of the home kitchen. So they moved to the garage with one mixer and one oven and hired five people to meet orders. Even then they could barely keep up. “I realised that even if I hired more people, I would still not be able to manage it. I needed to open a shop,” she says. So without a proper business plan, Kookie Jar was born. It was…

 It’s a pity Monkey Bar doesn’t open for lunch every day. Poised on the top floor of Fort Knox in Camac Street, it boasts of a view that could chase away your Monday morning blues. There is something about watching the afternoon sun washing over Victoria Memorial at a distance that puts you in a mellow happy mood. Their playlist (which chef and partner Manu Chandra promised would never be so loud as to “drown out conversations”) too is decent blend of indie and easy listening in the evenings. We started our meal with Baked Brie. The soft melty cheese and caramelised onions and marmalade was baked in puff pastry and served with fruit compote and chilli oil. Although quite nice, it can be a tad too sweet for…

 There's so much more to wedding food than chicken and potatoes. From decadent cheese platters to push pops for dessert, Sanjay Vazirani, CEO and MD, Foodlink Services India Pvt. Ltd, is full of ideas to spice up your wedding. From farm-to-table fare to satellite bars, here are ideas to consider for your standout reception menu. LOCAL LOVE Local offerings can inspire the menu and create one memorable meal. Source ingredients from the wedding locale and make them the focal point of the food setup. Guests will love getting a taste of the destination through each sip and bite. Foodlink sources local chefs who travel for the destination weddings to serve local delicacies. Like chole kulche from Amritsar, the chef also carries the water and all the local ingredients to…