I HAVE been a tourist coming to Goa for years and admit that I love the place… but this love, my friends, is waning now! Tourists like me are taken for granted in every walk of life and the one good thing which life offers by way of quality time - listening to live music […]
The mountains of mining rejects that have piled up historically have now turned into a rich source of wealth with China willing to import even ore with 45 per cent ore content. The abandoned dumps are now being looted by illegal miners and traders.
IF one is living most of the time in the hallowed world of English journalism and literature and its commensurate cultural ethos, idioms, attachments…then it’s a wonderfully illuminating moment to attend one of the Sahitya Akademi’s national or regional literature meets! Then one realizes in detail how much inherent riches there are in this country alone given its 24 officially recognised languages. One also understands why translators play a key role in promoting national integration vis-à-vis Indian literature, they contribute towards keeping the country’s “unity in diversity” roots watered and alive or so to speak. Even if there’s the very real fear that English has pretty much become the master and monster language of our times in independent India!
AT A recent workshop Young Indians (a group of young business entrepreneurs affiliated to the Confederation of Indian Industry) were busy focussing on the subject of obesity. It’s a very serious subject when you consider that urban India is full of obese people today and obesity is very definitely a health hazard. Obese is not at all a nice thing to be! For it is the precursor of almost all of today’s so-called lifestyle diseases be it diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, cancer.
IF YOU’RE a discerning Chinese food lover Indian-style or Chinese Schewan/Ca-ntonese/ Hakka/Bu-ddhist vegetarian style and more; and if you’ve lived in Mumbai which was Bombay once upon a time long enough - you’ve probably heard of Nelson Wang’s China Garden (mid-town Napean Sea Road, the original restaurant) which became so famous and celebrated for its Chinese fare that the bold and beautiful and lovers of the good life/good food soon started flocking there to celebrate birthdays / anniversaries / romances and what not. I remember from my years in Mumbai that it was always a red-letter treat to go out to China Garden and then Nelson Wang got written about and became so popular he had to expand naturally. Mervyn Wong, CEO of China Garden in Goa
IF CHIEF Secretary S K Srivastava is to be believed, the government has notified Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act and has begun to acquire land at Sonsodo for final resting places for Hindus, Muslims and Catholics.
Sunanda Mehta writing in the Indian Express describes the political circus in Goa and quotes Dayanand Narvekar insisting that Goan politicians are much less corrupt than the counterparts in the rest of the country as none of them are even worth Rs 100 crores.
THE rede of Salcete have begun to lock horns once again. It may at first sight appear to be an uneven match. One of the rede is over six feet tall and equally broad and has a long history of engaging in bullfights. The other redo is less than five feet which has not prevented him from attracting hoards of women. In real life, unlike in bullfights, it is not the size of the bull or its pedigree but its tenacity and bravado and sheer brazenness that is the decisive factor in who wins the electoral bull fights. The irony is that this time, neither of the two most combative and ferocious bulls will be facing each other in the Spain of Goa, Benaulim. Churchill Alemao seems to be determined to fight the next general elections yet again from the Navelim constituency where he inflicted a defeat on veteran Congressman Luizinho Faleiro in the last general elections. The bonsai bull, Mickky Pacheco, has apparently decided to shift to the new Nuvem constituency because many of his strongholds and vote banks - such as Betalbatim and Colva - are now part of the Nuvem constituency following delimitation.
BY BINDIYA VAVAL
The Mahindra Great Escape is as much a test of endurance as of skill. Participants discovered that off-roading was safer than on-roading.
IT IS surprising that while India has one of the largest number of active not-for-profit, nongovernmental organisations, most global donor agencies and voluntary agencies lament that they do not find enough ‘eligible partners’ to work with. “We fund only around 250 NGOs in India. Finding professional, above board organisations that will follow transparent ways of functioning is a challenge (here),” says Nisha Agarwal, CEO, Oxfam India, a US-based organisation that mainly raises and donates funds to grass-roots agencies. Oxfam’s funding budget for 2009 was `90 crore.
