indian weekender #61

Indian September 16, 2011 Volume 3, No. 11

For Free diStributioN

www.iwk.co.nz

AiA opens business Group

Bollywood | 29Community | 10

New Zealand’s first Indian weekend magazine

The Pulse of Kiwi Indians

Community | 7diwali to light

up beehiveAgeless Asha

turns 78

from every Kiwi Indian Family will create sufficient funds for a Fully Equipped AmbulanceDonation

www.indianweekender.co.nz

Indians prone to

Sai SanSthan to build temple, hall

Pg 8

Pg 4

Pg 22

Pg 2

2 Indian Weekender | September 16, 2011 | www.iwk.co.nz

Indian

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New Zealand

The world’s first fully integrated metropolitan Wi-Fi system, including free roaming Wi-Fi access across the central city and on public transport, has gone live in Auckland.

The city Wi-Fi network extends across all Link buses and some trains, with the an-nouncement that Auckland Transport has joined the network with Auckland Council and Wi-Fi supplier Tomizone.

Internet on the Auckland Wi-Fi network, provided free to users due to sponsorship from Localist, has already seen strong support from Aucklanders and visitors with heavy usage in its first week of operation.

“This is a global blueprint for how a sus-tainable Wi-Fi network can benefit residents and visitors – even while travelling on public transport,” says Len Brown. “I’m encour-aged by the number of people already using a network built by Aucklanders in under six weeks in time for Rugby World Cup.”

The Wi-Fi service is available on all new Link buses and selected trains. Over time, Aucklanders can expect to see the service expanding across the transport system and across the city.

“Being able to access the internet via this new Wi-Fi service means our customers and our visitors to the city can make more effec-tive use of their commute time,” says Mark Lambert, Auckland Transport’s Public Trans-port Operations Manager.

“Auckland Transport will evaluate the success of the Wi-Fi service prior to making it more widely available across the public trans-port network,” says Mr Lambert.

“Auckland is now home to the best inte-grated Wi-Fi network across a city anywhere in the world and it’s something our team are very proud to have delivered in such a short time,” says Tomizone Executive Director Steve Simms.

Auckland launches Wi-Fi world first

A major new study delving into the prevalence of stroke among the Indian community in New Zealand is under way.

The study is of particular importance to the Indian community as most important stroke risk factors appear to be very prevalent in persons of Indian origin, making them more vulnerable to the risk of stroke, says one of its senior researchers.

Led by Professor Valery Feigin, the Auck-land Regional Community Stroke Study (ARCOS IV) is a world class study taking place in Auckland this year. The study comprises a large team involving medical and re-search staff from AUT University, other tertiary insti-tutes and all major hospitals in Auck-land.

The study, funded by the Health Research Council of NZ, is the fourth of a series of previous ARCOS studies which aims to find all cases of stroke in Auckland and explore in-depth all the relevant medical informa-tion leading up to the stroke, during hospitalisation and up to a year after stroke.

Project co-ordinator and re-searcher Dr Rita K r i s h n a m u r t h i said the study was of importance to the Indian com-munity as most key stroke risk factors appeared to be prevalent in people of Indian origin, making them vulnerable to this debilitating condition.

“These risk factors include high blood pres-sure, diabetes and high cholesterol. Most importantly, many of these risk factors are modifiable through simple diet and lifestyle changes,” Dr Krish-namurthi said.

“Public awareness of the importance these risk factors and ways of reducing the risk of stroke need to be increased, particularly in the Indian community.”

Within the ARCOS study, Dr Krish-namurthi hopes to tease out firstly just how high the burden of stroke is in the Indian com-munity compared with other ethnic groups in Auckland.

Secondly, with the help of stroke patients and their families, she would like to gather in-depth information on whether the Indian population may be at a higher risk of stroke than for example the New Zealand European population.

Dr Krishnamurthi said previous AROCS studies showed that of the total number of stroke cases identified, 9 per cent were Asians/other (including Indians) compared with 16 per cent Pacific Islanders/ Maori and 75 per

cent New Zealand Europeans.“Most of us know someone who has had a

stroke, be that a family member or friend. But just how to reduce our risk of stroke or how to best manage if you or a family member has one is a big issue.

“Stroke is a common cause of disability and death in New Zealand but the general aware-ness of stroke and the signs and symptoms of stroke is not high as that of heart disease.

“Both the risk of death from stroke and the extent of long-term disability in stroke survivors are often underes-timated as well.”

Dr Krish-namurthi, of Fiji-Indian origin, is particularly inter-ested in exploring the apparent high rate of stroke in the Indian com-munity.

For the study to achieve its full potential, the ARCOS research team needs the support of pa-tients who have had a stroke and their families as well as the wider community.

“Our re-searchers may approach stroke patients in the hospital for p e r m i s s i o n include them in the ARCOS study,” Dr Krish-namurthi said.

“Where pos-sible, interpret-ers will also be available for those who don’t speak English. It is important that this information is gathered from as many people possible for the research data to be robust and reliable. This in-formation will in turn be passed onto decision and

policy makers and may have an important impact in the stroke prevention, treatment and management in future.”

The important “take-home” message to readers was that stroke was a common cause of death and disability but was preventable. Keeping yourselves and your families in-formed about stroke was an important first-step, she said.

A simple way to recognise the symptoms of stroke is to remember F.A.S.T:

Face: Smile- is one side drooping?Arms: Raise both arms- is one side weak?Speech: Speak- unable to? Words jumbled,

slurred?Time: Act fast and call 111. Time lost may

mean brain lost.

For more on the study, please contact the ARCOS team on 0800 MY STROKE (69787653) or email Dr Krishnamurthi on [email protected]

Stroke major concern for Indian community

A simple way to recognise the symptoms of stroke is to remember F.A.S.T:FACE: Smile- is one side drooping?ArmS: raise both arms- is one side weak?SpEECh: Speak- unable to? Words jumbled, slurred?TImE: Act fast and call 111. Time lost may mean brain lost.

Indian

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- Life/Trauma/Medical Insurance

- Redundancy/Mortgage Protection Insurance

- KiwiSaver/Retirement Saving Scheme

- Rental Property Returns/LTC setup

- Small Business Tax Returns

- Information on Wills and Trusts

CALL US TODAY TO DISCUSS YOUR FINANCIAL NEEDS

Ravi Mehta

021 181 0076

Rohit Takyar

021 172 8962

Accredited member of

Mortgage Brokers | Insurance Brokers | Financial Advisers | Tax Consultants

Professional Financial Solutions provides the best advice on all financial matters

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Indian New Zealand

A moving, personal tributeLong time associate, friend and legal luminary Thakorbhai Parbhu spoke engagingly about Sir Anand at the evening, peppering his address with little known anecdotes that revealed many biographical and personal facets of the Governor General. Excerpts:

“Your connection with the Indian community goes back to your late Father – Dr Sati as he was affectionately called. He practised at 201 Ponsonby Road. He originally came from Fiji and on completion of his medical degree was supported by the Indian Association for residency in New Zealand. He was one of our first Indian doctors in New Zealand.”

“You are the by-product of a good family. Your late father and your mother Taraben were respected stalwarts and great supporters of the Indian community. You married a lovely girl – Lady Susan, a Legal Executive from the law firm of Cairns Slane & Co. and you both raised your lovely family.”

“My personal reflections over all these years are the dinner parties at our place, your place and your parents’ place; too many to mention. You and Lady Susan attended by grand-daughter Shaila’s first birthday at May Road Hall.”

“The hockey game you organised with the Justice Department and my tea, our frequent meetings in the Law Library and the dinner at your unit in Freeman’s Bay with David Lange who lived around the corner in Wellington Street are still fresh in my mind.”

“I try to keep in touch with your movements at the local gymnasium which you attend with our mutual friend Norman Elliott.”

“Your nature, disposition and character, your amiable attitude, your ability to relate to all ethnicity, your friendship and contact with people and organisations has made you a likeable and acceptable person in fitting with your high office. You have been a great bridge builder in New Zealand with the various communities.”

“Your dignity in difficult circumstances has stood you well. In the position that you have attained you have brought honour and respect to the Indian community not only in New Zealand but throughout the world.”

“You have walked into the pages of New Zealand history.”

Remembering a dear mate…

there were fewer than 10000, now there are more than 100,000 making Indians the second largest ethnic Asian group. The participation of Indians is huge. When I joined law, Indian lawyers could be counted on one hand now there is a whole roomful and more,” he added.

While being Governor General, he had the occasion to attend several functions with “an Indian dimension” throughout the country, he said. Among these he recalled Diwali in many parts of the country, the diamond jubilee of the Wellington Indian Sports Club, the 85th anniversary of NZICA in Palm-erston North and the NZICA Womens Conference in Wel-lington in 2008 that Lady Susan inaugu-rated.

Touching upon relations between Indian and New Zealand, Sir Anand acknowledged the current negotiations on the free trade agreement and the commitment of Prime Ministers John Key and Manmohan Singh. He said there was “real substance” in the negotia-tions and that the relationship between the two countries “ was becoming closer in a substan-tive way”.

Sir Anand described the Pravasi Bharatiya Award that was presented to him at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi was one of his most cher-ished. While it made him proud of his Indian heritage, it also reflected the greatness of a

country like New Zealand where it was possi-ble for a person of Indian, whose grandparents and parents were migrants, could stand proud with achievements as lawyer, judge, ombuds-man and finally as Governor General.

He said he looked forward to “restore the spontaneity and relative anonymity that comes out of stepping down from office.” He was car-rying a multitude of memories with him, he added, many of these were shared closely with

the Indian community.NZICA General

Secretary Raj Thandi said, “Sir Anand is a great New Zealander and distinguished com-munity leader. He is a fine example of a New Zealander who made good through hard work and a commitment to realising high goals.

“The Association was very proud to honour Sir Anand and his wife, Lady Susan. A special plaque, designed by myself was presented to Sir Anand that symbolised the respect that he deserves.”

About 200 members and guests, including representatives of the New Zealand Govern-ment attended the function. Sir William Birch, a former New Zealand Minister of Finance, Ramesh Patel, a New Zealand Olympian, Judge Ajit Singh, Auckland City Councillor Des Morrison and Member of Parliament Kan-waljit Singh Bakshi also attended the event among several other community luminaries.

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New Zealand

Another member of the Indian com-munity has emerged as a candidate for Act Party in November’s general election.

Auckland banker Raja Ven-katesh, of New Lynn, has been se-lected by Act to contest the New Lynn electorate.

Born in New Delhi and brought up in Chennai, Mr Venkatesh, 43, worked in Singapore before moving to New Zealand 10 years ago.

Pratima Nand is the other member of the Indian community se-lected by Act to contest the election; she is 16th on the party list while Mr Venkatesh is not on the list.

Mr Venkatesh believes he can make a positive difference to the lives of Aucklanders.

His values in life: “To support, help and serve the needy in the community. “I have great passion for serving the community and the

nation. I believe in philosophy of our Act Party.

“I am well connected to the community at the grassroot level, I believe this opportunity shall cer-tainly help me to put forward various issues that concern the community at proper forum through Act Party.”

Mr Venkatesh believes the Act Party is now stronger with Don Brash at the helm? “Yes absolutely.

“Act really wants affordable housing to again become a reality for all Kiwis. A party vote for Act is a vote for property rights.

On Anna Hazare's campaign? “His campaign has awakened the moral conscience that appeared to be in slumber for decades.”

Mr Venkatesh has been the project co-ordinator for the Volun-teer Programmes in the Bank of New Zealand “Closed for Good” project (2009 / 2011) which turned out to be huge success.

He is actively supporting the community programmes of follow-ing organizations: ISCKON move-ment Auckland; Balmoral Presby-terian Church, Balmoral, Auckland; West Life Church Glendene, Auck-land; Harmony Events Auckland; IOSSKANZ – Karate Assn NZ Inc.

Mr Venkatesh is married with two children. His wife, Lata is a teacher aide and children are in college.

Act Party lists another Kiwi Indian candidate

India’s best-loved festival Diwali is an ancient Hindu festival that sym-bolises the triumph of light over darkness and the renewal of life.

It is a time for celebration in India and by Indian diasporas abroad, with families lighting lamps, candles and fireworks to symbolise the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil.

This year promises an even bigger celebration as festivities co-incide with the Rugby World Cup 2011. Diwali Festival of Lights will take place in Auckland on October 8-9 and in Wellington on October 15-16.

2011 performers from IndiaAsia:NZ is bringing some amazing performers over from India for the Auckland and Wellington Diwali festivals:

* Sand artist Ranjan Kumar Ganguly from Orissa

* Manipuri dancers from the JN Manipur Dance Academy

* the Chennai-based Indian Pup-peteers.

Sand sculptor Ranjan Kumar GangulyAs a child, Ranjan would use his imagination to carve out the images of Indian gods and goddesses on the beach of the coastal town of Jagan-nath Puri, Orissa.

By the time he was an adult, Ranjan was an expert at sand sculp-ture, and began to exhibit his skills around India. He has since exhib-ited internationally.

Manipuri dancersManipuri dance is one of the six classical dance styles that India is famous for. The dance, which is de-votional in nature, is known for its rounded movements, delicacy and grace.

The dancers’ colourful cos-tumes feature mirrors and zari embroidery intricately woven into beautiful designs. Instruments, in-cluding cymbals and drums, are a key element of the dance.

The Indian PuppeteersChennai-based puppet company The Indian Puppeteers will bring to life some of the best-loved stories known by all Indian children.

Chief among them is the tale of the brave monkey king, Hanuman, who leads an army of monkeys to rescue Lord Rama’s wife, Sita, from the clutches of the 10-headed demon king Lord Ravana. The puppets are made from parchment leather, and are up to two metres high.

Diwali in WellingtonThe 10th Wellington Diwali Fes-tival of Lights will be held on October 15 and 16 at TSB Bank Arena. Entry is by gold coin.

Besides the guest artists from India, the festival will feature an exhibition of portraits of Welling-ton's Indian community painted by artist-in-residence Swaroop Mukerji.

Bollywood Dance CompetitionExpressions of interest are sought for the Bollywood Dance Compe-tition and performances. You must register by Friday 16 September.Performers must register by 16 Sep-tember.

For further information please contact Murali Kumar, telephone 021 685 804 or by email on [email protected]

Diwali in AucklandAuckland’s 10th Diwali Festival of Lights will take place on 8 and 9 October 2011 at Aotea Square and Aotea Centre - The Edge.

Highlights of the family-friend-ly festival include delicious food stalls, traditional and contemporary dance and music, the hotly contest-ed Bollywood dance competition and a grand finale fireworks display on Sunday evening.

For further information please contact Steven Si, telephone 09 301 7400 or by email on steven.si@ aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

Great acts coming for Diwali

Sand artist Ranjan Kumar Ganguly . . . coming to New Zealand next month.

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The Department of Labour is reminding employers that the law now requires them to keep signed written employment agreements for all their staff.

Since 1 July all employers are required to keep signed copies of employment agree-ments or current terms and conditions for all employees, or they may face a penalty.

“Employment agreements are required for all employees no matter when they started work,” says Annie Newman, the De-partment’s Acting Chief Adviser of Employ-ment Relations.

“This affects all employees including those hired on a verbal agreement or employ-ees who do not have current written agree-ments in place,” says Ms Newman.

“Having a clearly written employment agreement helps reduce the risk of misun-derstandings and there are some provisions that must be included in employment agree-ments,’’ she says.

They must include the name of the em-

ployer and employee, a description of the work to be performed, the place of employ-ment, times the employee is to work, the wages or salary, and an explanation of ser-vices available for solving problems.

“It’s the employer’s responsibility to maintain and keep an up to date copy of each employee’s agreement and provide a copy of the agreement if an employee requests it,” Ms Newman says.

The Department of Labour has developed an Employment Agreement Builder to help employers through this process.

Failure to ensure an employment agree-ment is in place for all employees may result in a labour inspector taking a penalty action against an employer.

This involves a seven-day notice period to rectify the breach and if this isn’t com-plied with then penalties may be sought in the Employment Relations Authority of up to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for companies.

Employers must keep staff

Aucklanders and visitors will soon be able to enjoy enhanced and expanded Wi-Fi services, offering more wireless coverage and faster access to the internet across central Auckland and its fringes.

Auckland Council has entered a partner-ship with Tomizone, Australasia’s largest Wi-Fi services provider, which will see network expansion start immediately.

The expansion will offer economic devel-opment benefits to the region and provide an important service to visitors to Rugby World Cup and beyond.

“With 85,000 visitors expected during Rugby World Cup and more than 200,000 ex-pected from next year’s cruise season alone, visitors to Auckland will be able to step off their plane or ship and immediately access information about Auckland. For Auckland-ers, it means more and better wireless inter-net access for portable devices such as iPads,” says Len Brown.

The Wi-Fi zone will expand into areas such as Kingsland, the entire length of Queen

Street, Britomart and Queens Wharf, lower Parnell, northern Ponsonby Road, Mt Eden Village, Onehunga, key rugby training areas and selected transport hubs around Auckland.

The network will remain in place follow-ing Rugby World Cup and continue to expand to other parts of Auckland with re-investment of profits from the service.

“Auckland Council will retain control of the content, which gives it a flexible platform for the future,” says the Mayor.

Service will be offered at a guaranteed dis-count to benchmarked market rates, with free access provided to a number of websites offer-ing information about public services, RWC activities, tourism and transport services.

“This enhanced network coverage will be attractive to residents and our international visitors who want to use their Wi-Fi gadgets to roam around the city,” says Tomizone Ex-ecutive Director Steve Simms. “Many of our visitors will want to use their roaming account from providers such as Skype, iPass and Boingo which they can do on this network.”

Wi-Fi expansion for Auckland

New Zealand

Diversity forum will focus on mediaA multi-media study about Paul Henry and Hone Harawira is being presented by Wellington’s Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research at next month’s 2011 New Zealand Diversity forum jointly hosted by the Human Rights Commission and the Hamilton Multicultural Services Trust.

Its work examines the intense public ar-guments around comments made by promi-nent media figures in 2010, such as Henry’s deliberate mispronunciation of an interna-tional dignitary’s name and then repeatedly laughing about it, and Harawira’s alleged racist comments about Pakeha. The forum will also include activities that tackle race

relations priorities identified in this year’s Race Relations Report, and feature the pre-sentation of the Annual Diversity awards. A parallel youth forum is being held at the same time.

The New Zealand Diversity Forum 2011 is being held at Hamilton on 21-22 August Also on the programme on Sunday at 3.30-5.00 pm is a forum on “Community Media and Diversity” hosted by the Community Access Radio Waikato Trust.

Attendance on Sunday and for individ-ual forums is free. If you are attending for half a day or more on the Monday the regis-tration fee is $50.

The links between an ancient Indian martial art and young Aucklanders learning dance may not immediately seem obvious, but for Mark James Hamilton the connections are clear.

He believes there is a lot our young people can learn by incorporating elements of the martial art kalaripayattu into their dance training.

Hamilton spent five months of this year in Thiruvananth-puram, Kerala learning more about the unarmed drills and weaponry training practised as part of kalaripayattu – the modern form of a martial art that South Indian Nayar war-riors once used to defend their masters’ kingdoms.

The trip to Kerala was the latest in a series of exchanges in which Asia New Zealand Foundation grants aided movement artists from New Zealand and Kerala to travel between the countries to collaborate and share their skills and cultures.

Hamilton says the knowledge gained through this latest project will be used to help develop the Mika Haka Foundation’s Physical Activity Dance Programmes.

“This seems the most effective way to maximise on the number of young New Zea-landers who may benefit from this unique art form. In particular, the dynamic appeal and coherent biomechanics of kalaripayattu will be used to further invigorate and stabilise the dance training offered by the foundation.”

Hamilton’s focus for this latest trip was to understand how the use of weapons, and the risks involved in such training, brings a level of precision to martial artists’ performances that can be applied to dance.

“Clearly, dancers don’t need to become fighters, but an excellent performer needs a quality of assurance and commitment that is seen so clearly in the martial artists who have mastered their weapons.

“The postures and movements of kalar-ipayattu definitely have a value in making a performer flexible, strong and elegant, but more on a more subtle level, the training also instils an exactness and presence in the prac-titioner.

“It is this quality, above all, that I would like to bring to the training of young perform-ers – to enrich their art, and their ability to engage in all kinds of tasks, and all kind of areas of life.”

The Mika Haka Foundation, is currently

working on the Aroha Mardi Gras project for the Rugby World Cup. Hamilton says that once this project is finished, it will be time to review how the foundation’s training should be adapted and expanded.

“It is here that my knowledge, garnered in Kerala, will come into play. The secret of

the foundation’s progress has been to integrate cultural knowledge from all over the world into the Maori-led and Maori-centred work that Mika always leads. The ka-laripayattu is a great addition to his process, as its relation-ship to modern day Kerala’s performing arts is comparable to that between hereditary Maori martial practices and

today’s performance of kapa haka.“By looking at how elaborate and highly

theatrical dance forms like kathakali grow from kalaripayattu, new insights are brought forward about how haka and tu taua (Maori weapons training) might give seed to new kinds of dance theatre.”

Hamilton also believes that incorporating elements of kalaripayattu into Mika Haka’s programmes will also help foster healthy life-styles in the young people who take part.

“Kalaripayattu is so demanding on a prac-titioner’s mind and body that progress requires a resolution to forego anything that might get in the way of feeling 100% every time training begins. So, the martial art demands a commit-ment to healthy living.

“But beyond that, it is practice with a weight of tradition underpinning its every detail. It informs the practitioner on many levels, and ultimately brings about an aware-ness of how the whole of our being is one single unit. It teaches each participant to see how all aspects of our lives affect one another, and invites a greater awareness of how, over time, little choices add up to big results.”

Indian martial arts lessons for NZ youth

CVN Kalari instructors, Rajashekaran Nair and Gurukkal Sathyanarayanan Nair

Indian singer Mohit Chauhan, who started his career singing Indian pop songs with the band Silk Route and is now a major voice to reckon with on the Bollywood firmament, is due to sing in Auckland.

Mohit released two albums, Boondein and Pehchan, with Silk Route. The band dis-solved and in 2008 Mohit released the solo album Kalam, for which he composed and sung. Mohit took part in the television reality series Mission Ustaad on the entertainment channel 9X.

Mohit had success before acting with the song "Dooba Dooba" from the Silk Route band's album Boondein. The album debuted at number one on the album chart. Boondein fea-tured songs in Hindi, English, and Pahadi, and the band won several awards at the Channel V awards in 1998.

Mohit began singing film songs and sang for A. R. Rahman in the 2006 film Rang De Basanti. His songs "Khoon Chala", "Ma-sakali" from the films Rang De Basanti and

Delhi-6 respectively, composed by Rahman, and "Tum Se Hi" from the film Jab We Met, composed by Pritam, were hugely successful.

His latest chartbusters include the songs "Tu Ne Jo Na Kaha" for the 2009 film New York, "Ye dooriyan" for Love Aaj Kal, and "Pehli Baar Mohabbat Ki Hai" for Kaminey. He never took formal training in music, but sings and plays guitar and the flute. After completing his education in Himachal, Mohit came to Delhi where he formed the band Silk Route in 1996.

Mohit has lent his voice to many Bolly-wood movies, including Road, Mukt, Let's enjoy, Main Meri Patni Aur Woh, Rang De Basanti, EMI, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Kismat Konnection, Sikandar, New York, Love Aaj Kal, Kaminey, Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, Anjaana Anjaani, Raajneeti, Dil Toh Baccha Hai ji , Anjaana Anjaani, Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, Crook, Fashion, Jab We Met, Delhi 6, Robot , Jab We Met and Aarakshan.

mohit set to charm Aucklanders

By looking at how elaborate and highly theatrical dance forms like kathakali grow from kalaripayattu, new insights are brought forward about how haka and tu taua (maori weapons training) might give seed to new kinds of dance theatre.

FIlMFARe AWARDS’2010 Best Male Playback Singer Masakali from Delhi-6; Won2011 Best Male Playback Singer Pee Loon from Once Upon A Time In Mumbai; Nominated

Zee CIne AWARDS2011 Best Male Singer Pee Loon from Once Upon A Time In Mumbai; WonSTAR SCReen AWARDS2011 Best Male Singer Pee Loon from Once Upon A Time In Mumbai; Nomi-natedApsara Film and Television Producers

GuIlD AWARDS2010 Best Male Singer Yeh Dooriyan from Love Aaj Kal; Won

MIRChI MuSIC AWARDS2010 Best Male Singer Masakali from Delhi-6; Won

GloBAl InDIAn FIlMS AnD TelevISIon AWARDS2011 Best Male Singer pee loon from Once Upon A Time In Mumbai; Won

AIFA 2011- 2011 Best Male Singer pee loon from Once Upon A Time In Mumbai.

Mohit Chauhan & Aditi Singh Sharma with 9 other musicians performing live on Sunday 2nd Oct 2011 at Logan Campbell Centre.

Among the awards he has won are:

Indian Weekender | September 16, 2011 | www.iwk.co.nz 5

Indian

Auckland Libraries have been recognised for an “outstanding contribution to NZ Diversity Action programme” by the Human Rights Commission.

The award recognises the services and pro-grammes libraries offer that and celebrate the region’s diverse ethnic community.

The commission recently announced the winners of 2011 New Zealand Diversity Awards at the conclusion of its Human Diver-sity Forum in Hamilton.

The forum brings together community groups, government and business organisa-tions to share experience and work related to

race relations and diversity.The commission recognised Auckland Li-

braries’ as being inclusive and responsive to the needs of residents, diverse ethnic and com-munity groups and organisations.

“We are delighted to have been recognised, especially for our dedicated multicultural ser-vices team who work hard to ensure we offer services and information that cater for all Aucklanders,” says Abigael Vogt, multicultur-al service development team leader, Auckland Libraries.

Examples of library programmes offered are Samoan storytimes, computer classes in Mandarin, read aloud sessions for migrants and book groups. Events such as Chinese New Year, Diwali, Samoan and Maori Language weeks, World Refugee Day, Matariki, Waitan-gi Day and Pasifika are highlights of Auckland Libraries’ events calendar.

Auckland Libraries is a network of 54 li-braries in locations from Wellsford to Pukeko-he and four mobile libraries.It also works with 14 rural volunteer libraries across the region.

Auckland Libraries wins diversity award

We are delighted to have been recognised, especially for our dedicated multicultural services team who work hard to ensure we offer services and information that cater for all Aucklanders

New Zealand

Nominations are being sought from around the country for the Coca-Cola Amatil Young New Zealander of the Year 2012 as part of the New Zealander of the Year Awards.

Nominees must be between the ages of 15-30 who are leaders or role models to fellow young New Zealanders. They may have achieved extraordinary things in academics, sport, business, the arts or any other chosen field of endeavour or they may be involved in cultural or community activities, working with the disadvantaged, or creating stronger relationships between young people and the community.

New Zealander of the Year Awards manager Emma Mcdonald says “in the past 12 months there are many young people from different social and cultural backgrounds who have achieved great things and contributed to their communities and our country”.

The Young New Zealander of the Year Award is about recognising inspirational young people and engaging the community to nominate these young Kiwis who are striving

to make a difference.Managing Director of Coca-Cola Amatil

New Zealand George Adams says “we’re proud of sponsoring the category that iden-tifies New Zealand’s future leaders. Young people deserve to be applauded for exhibit-ing tenacity and dedication so don’t hesitate to nominate someone you know who inspires others.”

The winner of the Coca-Cola Amatil Young New Zealander of the Year 2012 will be awarded their trophy and $5,000 prize money at a gala awards presentation dinner in Auck-land on the 16th February 2012. All nominees will receive a certificate of achievement or en-couragement in recognition of their contribu-tion.

Nominations close on Friday 14th October and nomination forms are available from Countdown Supermarkets, Kiwibank and Mitre 10 branches or by free phone 0508 692 927. You can also nominate online at www.nzawards.org.nz or text ‘nominate’ to 244 for more information.

Nominate an outstanding young New Zealander

Aucklanders will have a unique op-portunity to listen to an eminent astro-physicist who is currently vis-iting New Zealand this month.

Dr Rajaram P Kane is an as-tro-physicist and an authority in cosmic physics. Dr Kane graduated

from Banaras Hindu University in 1944 and completed his Ph.D. from Bombay University. He worked closely with such eminent Indian scientists as Dr Vikram Sarabhai at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad. Dr Kane operated the

first Indian high altitude cosmic ray vertical meson telescope at Kodai-kanal in southern India.

Dr Kane was awarded Fulbright & Smith-Mundt Fellowship and worked with Prof. J. A. Simpson at the Institute for Nuclear Studies,

University of Chicago, USA, in 1953-54. He showed for the first time that cosmic ray diurnal variation had a 27-day recurrence tendency. He has published in peer reviewed jour-nals on a number of topics on astron-omy and astro-physics. Over 300 of

his works have been published. He has been with the National Institute of Space Research, Brazil for the last several decades.

He will be speaking at Onehu-nga in Auckland (see details below) on the “Sun-Earth relationship”

Eminent scientist to speak in Auckland














The first and the foremost step when investing in a mutual fund is to selecting the fund that would suit your investment requirement. Following steps would enable in the selecting the right fund:

1. TIMe hoRIZon: The first step, even before you start your fund selection process, is to determine the objective for which the investment being made and the tenure. To make it more effective follow a thumb rule - for tenure less than one year invest in pure debt investments like

Short-Term Income Fund, Fixed Maturity Plans, Liquid Funds etc. If the tenure is in the range of 1 to 3 years, Monthly Income Plans/Balanced Funds should be considered. If the term is more than 3 years investing into equity investments would be more effective as equity needs time to provide returns.

Sectoral funds should be con-sidered when one is bullish on the entire sector. A mismatch between the objective and the nature of investments could leave under achievement of expectations. This step itself would help to segregate a large number of investments from your set.

2. PeRFoRMAnCe: This provides an indication of how any investment performs under different market conditions. The minimum expectations, any inves-tor should have while investing in any mutual fund, is that the fund he is investing should outperform the broader index under various time horizons. For example: Incase of Equity investments, one should look for that has at least gained higher than NIFTY or SENSEX, then compare it with the fund's benchmark. (One can refer for fund snapshot option at www.ventura1.com, which gives a comparison of all the three in a single window) If the investment outperforms all the three indices, it could be con-sidered. For debt investments, compare performance with Bank FD rates for the same term (Post-tax comparison would be even more effective).

3. CoST: While above 2 points are used to evaluate any fund, there is one more factor that is becoming in-creasingly important and that is cost. Funds are not run for free and nor are they run at an identical cost. While the difference in dif-ferent funds' cost is not large, these

can compound to significant varia-tions, especially for fixed income funds where the performance dif-ferential between funds is quite small to begin with. Incase of the equity investments however, where the return potential, expense ratio should not be the criteria for evalu-ating the investments.

4. MAnAGeMenT: The Management of the fund house gives an indication about the integrity and the effectiveness of its policies & process in fund man-agement. Therefore, one should also look into the history, details and the duration of association of the fund manager who is managing the fund, as returns would depend to a large extent on the professional skill of the fund manager. As a thumb rule, have major concentra-tion of your portfolio into invest-ments of the Top 10 fund houses, and then check for the details of the fund manager managing the fund.

Once the fund is selected then the next step involves fulfilling the pre-requisites for mutual fund in-vesting:Pre-requisites for Investments.* PAN Card: Permanent Account

Number (PAN) has been made

mandatory for all fresh mutual fund transactions w.e.f. July 02, 2007.

* KYC compliance: Know Your Customer (KYC) norms require your copy of PAN card, copy of passport as proof of identity and proof of overseas residen-tial address to be verified and recorded with a central author-ity.

For further details please visit us onhttp://www.ventura1.com/Mu-tualFundnew/images/KYC%20FAQ%20(1).pdf

* Bank account: An investor has to maintain his Non-Resident External Rupee (NRE) or Non-Resident Ordinary Rupee (NRO) savings account with any bank in India for invest-ments.

Once the pre-requisites are ful-filled an investor can invest into mutual funds in two ways:

1. Through an advisor: This is the oldest and one of the most convenient ways of invest-ing in mutual funds. Just call an agent and tell him you want to buy mutual funds. He gets the required

documentation done from you and takes necessary signatures in the forms and submits application for investing. However, it is not feasi-ble for Overseas Indian Investors. Hence they can choose the option of investing online.2. Invest online: Some distributors like Ventura Securities Ltd. provide portals to MF investors for buying & selling online. All that one will have to do is open an online account, after which they get access to the entire universe of mutual funds. Once activated the portal offers invest-ments of almost all fund houses. Apart from the ease of investment, the portal provides tools to keep track of the investments being made along with access to in-house research and analysis to help in building the ideal portfolio.

For further details please visit us on http://www.ventura1.com/Mu-tualFundnew/iFrindex.aspx

DISCLAIMER: The above information has been written for general guidance only. Please consult your own financial advisor before making any finan-cial decision. ([email protected]

How to invest into Mutual fundsSaNjay BhatIa


IndianIndian New Zealand

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Artists Impression

Artists Impression

“Without the people and com-munities, you will not have much of a city, let alone a super city.” This was the caution, and in fact a concern that the Immediate Past President of Waitakere Indian As-sociation (WIA), Manoj Tahal ex-pressed before the formation of and amalgamation of smaller cities into a super city. In the last Holi celebra-tions, Tahal made a special plea on behalf of WIA to the politicians for the inclusion of the communi-ties and the Tangata Whenua in the super city.

It therefore was a proud moment for Waitakere Indian Associa-tion when this plea was upheld by Auckland Council which built up on structures and community events that were in place with local councils before the amalgamation. Former Waitakere City Council had been exemplary in setting up a suc-cessful trend of community-local government partnership, and this has been taken on board by the new council.

In July this year, Auckland Council signed a Sponsorship Agreement with Waitakere Indian Association to host 2011 Waitakere Diwali at the Trusts Stadium during the Rugby World Cup. While Waita-kere Indian Association was repre-sented by its President Anand Naidu and Diwali 2011 Project Manager Manoj Tahal, Auckland Council,

was represented by Vanessa Neeson, Chairwoman of Henderson-Massy Local Board.

“It is nice and reassuring to know that Auckland Council has recog-nised that good people make great communities and great communities make super cities,” Tmanoj Tahal said, adding that this year’s Diwali event theme was community health and well-being where services of

health professionals, police, fire de-partment, ACC and injury preven-tion groups and Watersafe will be engaged.

It appears there was something special about being a Westie – people from West Auckland or Waitakere. Neeson, herself a ‘Westie’, added that West Auckland was unique with heavy community involvement in Waitakere where different cultures

have shown unique character in coming together to celebrate their respective festivals. She was very pleased with such a gesture from Auckland Council. “I am delighted that Auckland Council has recog-nised how important this festival is out in the West. They have decided to assist with funding-this is a great community initiative for the Indian community and show how they cele-brate in bringing all communities to come together in achieving unity in diversity and well being among the local community” she said.

Neeson was confident that Auck-land Council and Local Boards will endeavour to support memorable and hugely successful event like Diwali that reflected the diversity of New Zealand and gives the reason to the Super City why community based events should not only be encouraged, but emulated in other parts of Auckland.

Waitakere Diwali will be held in the midst of Rugby World Cup to showcase different colours of Aote-aroa on Sunday 25 September, 2011 at Trusts Stadium, Henderson from 11 am to 11pm, culminating in a huge fireworks display.

Entry to all events is free and all are invited to attend to add colour to the atmosphere of 2011 Rugby World Cup while celebrating Diwali. Other details are available on WIA web site at : www.wia.net.nz

Super City takes Waitakere Diwali on board

“It is nice and reassuring to know that Auckland Council has recognised that good people make great

communities and great communities make super cities"

Bank of India, the second Indian bank to start operations in New Zealand, will open its doors to the public on October 6.

The bank’s New Zealand Man-aging Director Paladugu Nagesh-war Rao said reserve bank Gover-nor Alan Bollard will inaugurate the bank’s premises on Manukau Road in Epsom.

Bank of India to open October 6


Indian Community

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Artist’s Impression

The Auckland Indian Association inaugurated a new committee called “Business Group”, at a meeting at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre on September 7. About 50 people from a cross section of the Indian com-munities from banking, insurance, media, small businesses, business consultants in accounting, proper-

ties and food industries attended the inaugural meeting, which was sponsored by Bank of Baroda NZ. The bank’s clients were also among those present.

Harshadbhai Patel, President of the Auckland Indian Associa-tion formally welcomed the audi-ence after the informal networking

session, which was conducted over drinks and snacks. He emphasised the importance of starting the group to discuss issues facing the members of the business community of this Association and find solutions and also to help like minded people and bring together on one platform.

Harshadbhai proudly acknowl-

edged Dr Lingappa Kalburgi, former General Secretary of the Auckland Indian Association and also current Chairman of the Tagore Library and Senior Citizens Committee, whose idea it was to start such a group. This is Dr Kalburgi’s third position as chairman in the Association.

Dr Kalburgi officially welcomed Mr Navin Chandra Upreti, Manag-ing Director, Bank of Baroda (NZ) and his team and thanked him for sponsoring the inaugural meeting of the “Business Group”. He also thanked the executive committee of the Auckland Indian Association for endorsing the group as a new subcommittee in last month’s ex-ecutive committee meeting. He also welcomed members of the Board of Trustees, officers and execu-tive committee members and other prominent members of the commu-nity.

Ashokbhai Darji gave a brief in-troduction of the executive commit-tee members of this group. They are Kanubhai Patel, Lingappa Kalburgi, Chandubhai Patel, Puspaben Lekin-wala, Ashokbhai Darji, Dhansukh Lal, Chirag Solanki and Pravinbhai Keshoor.

Kanubhai Patel, Chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Trust addressed this gathering and expressed his happiness to attend this meeting after putting sincere efforts of the executive committee. He appealed

to the audience to support such meetings in the future and bring ideas, proposals, requirements and needs of the business community for working and tackling together to find solution.

Mr Upreti thanked Auckland Indian Association, especially Dr Lingappa Kalburgi, for approach-ing them for sponsoring this historic event of inaugurating the group under the Auckland Indian Asso-ciation. He was proud to be associ-ated with the pioneer institution of Indian community in Auckland for sponsoring this business group and also appealed to consider Bank of Baroda for any events of the Asso-ciation in future to consider for its support.

Mr Upreti outlined different services provided by the Bank of Baroda and appealed to all members to consider his bank as their coun-try’s bank and feel free to approach for any help from the bank. He also answered questions on the bank’s services like personal, business and property loans including helping small businesses like dairy shops by providing short-term loans

Chandubhai Patel handled the question and answer session. Dhan-sukh Lal thanked Mr Upreti and the executive committee members of the Business Group for working together and making this meeting meaningful and successful.

AIA opens ‘Business Group’

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Indian Community

E-gurukul.net is inviting learners from New Zealand and across the globe to enrol for Online Certified Teachers Training Programme in Vedic Mathematics.

Vedic Mathematics is the name given to the ancient system of Indian Mathematics which was rediscov-ered from the Vedas between 1911 and 1918 by Sri Bharati Krsna Tirth-aji (1884-1960). According to his research all of mathematics is based on sixteen Sutras, or word-formulae. For example, 'Vertically and Cross wise is one of these Sutras. These formulae describe the way the mind naturally works and are therefore a great help in directing the student to the appropriate method of solution.

The simplicity of Vedic Math-ematics means that calculations can be carried out mentally (though the methods can also be written down). There are many advantages in using a flexible, mental system. Interest in the Vedic system is growing in education where mathematics teach-ers are looking for something better and finding the Vedic system is the answer. Research is being carried out in many areas including the effects of learning Vedic Maths on children; developing new, powerful but easy applications of the Vedic Sutras in geometry, calculus, computing etc.

As a part of Global Educational Programmes Series, e-gurukul.net have announced launch of World-wide Online Educational Pro-gramme. “Vedic Ganita Kranti” in March 2011. The mission of this online teachers training is to create skilled trainers worldwide who will be able to teach generations of stu-dents the science of Vedic Math.

They are organizing a web-based Audio-visual interactive Teachers Training Programme in Vedic Math-ematics on October 02 -2011 with World Famous Vedic Mathematician Mr Kenneth Williams from Vedic Maths Academy , UK.

Learn & understand the beauty of this Ancient Sciences – Vedic Mathematics http://e-gurukul.net/

portal/?p=808“In modern times, Internet has

made entire world a global village. Anyone from any part of the world can learn and gain insights from the comfort of their homes, Only pre-requisite is an internet connec-tion with headset and zeal to learn this practical scientific knowledge of Ancient India." said Mrs Usha Koppaka.

Vedic Ganita Kranti is just a humble mission to create trainers across the globe utilizing state of art internet technology; interested learners can enrol from any part of globe, first group of trainers gradu-ated in March 2011. We are looking forward to create more teachers thru

this new online training “she added.“The power and effectiveness

of Vedic Mathematics is being ap-preciated more and more nowadays, both by teachers and by researchers. There is therefore a great need for skilled teachers to be trained and I am delighted to have this opportuni-ty to give the benefit of my expertise to help train top-notch teachers of this system. Now with the new tech-nology, people world-wide can learn and I can teach from the comfort of our homes” said Kenneth Williams.

E-Gurukul.net, an online plat-form, is an endeavour to disseminate the scientific heritage gifted by the great scientists, mathematicians, phi-losophers and sages of ancient India. It brings online courses, Web Semi-nars in various topics like Mudra Science, Spoken Sanskrit, Science of Sun Salutations, Vedic mathematics, Ancient Managements tips etc. The sessions are free, all are welcome to participate.

Next topic: Online Certified Teach-ers Training Programme in Vedic MathematicsTrainer: Mr Kenneth Wiiliams.Date: Starting - October 02 -2011Mode: Audio visual Interactive web session - 100% Online Online Application Link: http://e-gurukul.net/portal/?p=808

The Shri Shirdi Saibaba Sanst-han of New Zealand is building a Temple of Shirdi Saibaba, with several other deities and a Com-munity Hall at 18, Princes St, One-hunga, which is a 4 million dollar project.

Mr. Bhaskara Reddy Duvvuru, President of the Sansthan explained that the 1960 sq m of Warehouse in 2975 sq m land will be converted into a templeand community hall complex which will cover an area of about 3200 sq m after comple-tion.

The Sansthan will be install-ing 5.50 m life size statue of Baba, specially made in White Makarana marble in Jaipur. The Temple will also house Ganesh, Hanuman, Mata, Ram Darbar, Radha Krishna, Dattatreya (all in White Makarana marble made in Jaipur), Shiva Linga, Balaji/Padmavati, Navagrahas (all in black granite made in Tirupati).

All these statues are 3.5 m in height except Navagrahas, which are about 0.5m. Some devotees in Auckland have already sponsored the statues of Mata, Ram Darbar, Shiva Linga and Navagrahas.

Sansthan Vice President Mrs Thulasi Krishna explained that all the deities were brought to Shirdi on Thursday, August 11, puja was performed by the temple preist and PRO of Saibaba Sansthan, Shirdi in the presence of Bhaskara Reddy / Arun Kangokar (past executive committee member).

All deities were shipped from Mumbai on Thursday, September 1 and are expected to reach Auck-

land around October, 10.Hameed Mohammed, the Sec-

retary informed that the build-ings permits are expected before November, 2011. Bhumi Puja will be on Saturday, February 4, 2012. (Waitangi Day Weekend) followed by other programmes (to be final-ised) on 5th / 6th February, 2012.

Bhaskara Reddy explained that the cost of conversion to Temple/Community Hall was about $1.5 million and requested devotees to support the Project through Major Donor Scheme ($10,001) launched by the Sansthan.

The Sansthan plans to install 108 small statues of Baba in the proposed temple, each representing one of the 108 Asthothara namas with the major donors’ details.

The Sansthan has already re-ceived 65 major donor commit-ments till date. It is now looking forward to a further 43 and spon-sors for other deities. Devotees can make a commitment and pay in in-stallments.

The place is going to be a good venue to celebrate weddings, all kinds of community events and functions.

Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan to build Temple, Community hall

The Sansthan will be installing 5.50 m life size statue of Baba, specially made in White makarana marble in Jaipur. The Temple will also house Ganesh, hanuman, mata, ram Darbar, radha Krishna, Dattatreya, Shiva Linga, Balaji/padmavati, Navagrahas.

Vedic maths teachers training making comeback

mathematics is based on sixteen Sutras, or word-formulae. For example, 'Vertically and Cross

wise` is one of these Sutras. These formulae describe the way the mind naturally works and

are therefore a great help in directing the student to the appropriate method of solution

Indian Community

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Community news in pictures

The Indian community felicitated Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur who was in the country along with her delegation to attend the 40th Pacific Islands Forum summit in Auckland. The felicitation was held at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre and about 100 people attended it.

Community felicitates Indian minister

The annual Ganesh Chaturthi festival was celebrated with great devotion and fervour at the Bharatiya mandir on Balmoral Road. Picture shows devotees participating in large numbers during the celebrations.

Ganesh festival at Bharatiya mandir

mata Chowki CelebratedThe Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan observed Mata Chowki at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre last week. Hundreds of devotees attended the daylong ceremonies.

Indian

The importance of the Hindi lan-guage in our community will be highlighted in a day-long Hindi Diwas celebration in Auckland next week.

Opposition Leader Phil Goff will be chief guest at the Hindi Diwas (Day) celebrations 2011 is organised by the Hindi Language and Culture Trust to be held at Pa-patoetoe High School on Saturday Sept 17, from 9.30pm.

“The core objective of the cel-ebration is to bring awareness for the importance of teaching and learning of Hindi language,” trust president Satya Dutt said.

“The Trust’s mission is the fa-cilitate formulation of national Hindi curriculum and being offered in schools. Research has shown that learning mother tongue and second language enhances academic per-formance of students.

“New Zealand is establishing trade relationship with India. Hindi language and culture will play vital role as means of better communica-tions and understanding.

“The celebration was aimed at forming network with individuals and organisations to come together and work for a common goal that was taking referendum and take a course of action.”

Dutt said Papatoetoe High School was chosen as the venue because it was the first school in the

country to teach Hindi to year 9 and 10 students. Seven non-speakers of Hindi are studying Hindi language.

Participants are coming all from Wellington, Hamilton and others parts of the country includ-ing mostly from greater Auckland areas.

“Workshop participants will have an opportunity to acquire deep understanding of the impor-tance of maintaining language and culture. It will conclude with panel discussion to develop strategies to move forward in facilitating work on creating national curriculum.”

The theme for the Hindi Diwas celebration is Hindi Hamari Pehechan.

ADMISSIon: FRee. Morning tea, afternoon tea, lunch and dinner provided free.

PRoGRAMMe: September 17

9.30–4.30pm: WoRKShoP – 10 topics would be covered (refer to the programme)

11–3pm: Sports & Fun games

6.30-10pm: Entertainment, Official Opening, oratory, exhibitions, projects, poems, Bollywood, jokes etc.

“We are requesting general public, mandalis and other organ-isations to register at east two par-ticipants for the workshop. Songs and other items are all welcome,” Dutt said. Souvenir magazine will be printed to commemorate the cel-ebrations.

Workshop celebrates Hindi language

Some 300 people are expected to attend a celebration of the Hindu festival of Diwali at Parliament on Monday 26 September.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is India's biggest and most significant celebration and enjoyed by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists.

It is celebrated around the world and has become a well-established part of New Zealand’s cultural cal-endar.Diwali is a time when fami-lies light small oil lamps (diyas) and candles and place them around the home and set off fireworks.

The firecrackers will be missing at Parliament but not the Diwali spirit of togetherness, light, warmth and happiness.

The audience, which is expected to consist of people from many eth-

nicities, will hear speeches, watch a traditional dance performance, a slide show, and eat delicious food.

The Parliamentary event also offers an opportunity for the Indian community to be thanked for their contribution to New Zealand.

Mervin Singham, the Director of the Office of Ethnic Affairs, which is helping to organise the event says “There is a growing relationship between India and New Zealand, particularly in the areas of tourism, education and trade. This relation-ship is set to grow with the India-New Zealand Free Trade Agree-ment, which is currently being negotiated.” “Sharing celebrations such as Diwali plays an important role in making New Zealand a more tolerant and vibrant nation.”

Diwali spirit to light up Parliament

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Happy Navratri

New Zealand is establishing

trade relationship

with India. hindi language and

culture will play vital role as

means of better communications

and understanding.

Community

Indian India

New Delhi: The United States Embassy, in partnership with the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), on Thursday concluded a two-week seminar titled “Identifi-cation and Seizure of Digital Evi-dence”.

This is the most recent in a series of counterterrorism training efforts between the U.S. and India.

The session was conducted with instructors from the U.S. State De-partment’s Antiterrorism Assis-tance (ATA) program and hosted by the Central Detective Training School in Chandigarh.

Over the last 16 years, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security has organized 82 police training courses with Indian law enforcement professionals under the ATA program. This month’s train-ing seminar focused on the use of innovative crime scene investiga-tion techniques to enhance the ef-fectiveness of police investigations.

The interactive workshop fea-tured hands-on, practical scenarios that trained mid-level police offi-cials to effectively secure a terrorist crime scene, with a particular focus on digital evidence and methods for exploiting information obtained from terrorists’ computers, USB

drives and other electronic media. More than 30 Indian law en-

forcement officials from federal and state agencies were selected to participate in the program by the MHA’s Bureau of Police Research and Development, including two participants from the newly-formed National Investigative Agency (NIA).

After the training concluded, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Ambas-sador Peter Burleigh said, “Ter-rorist attacks like the September 7 bombing at the New Delhi High Court are a constant reminder of the need for our two democracies to work together in combating the scourge of terrorism.

The broad scope of our coopera-tion extends to the highest levels, such as the recent U.S.-India Home-land Security and Strategic Dia-logues, to hands-on joint training sessions and cooperative investiga-tions."

"The people and government of the United States are working hand-in-hand with India against terror-ism, and we will continue to work together to address this global threat to innocent people with practical, timely and effective assistance and cooperation," Burleigh said.

US Embassy partners Indian detective school

Kolkata: Sikkim Manipal Uni-versity – Directorate of Distance Education (SMU-DDE), one of the largest providers of Distance Educa-tion in India, on Friday announced the signing of Memorandum of Un-derstanding (MoU) with Edinburgh Napier University (ENU), a premier state-owned, Government Univer-sity in Edinburgh and one of UK’s largest Universities.

The collaboration between SMU-DDE and ENU aims to foster advancement in teaching, research, academic collaboration, cultural un-derstanding and to create avenues for enhancing student experience.

It will create a strong foundation to encourage exchange and sharing of academic, scientific and cultural experiences. ENU will be an aca-demic partner with SMU-DDE by

providing academic training & in-frastructure to fulfil the educational needs of the students enrolled.

Professor George Stonehouse, Dean, ENU Business School said “With India being one of the world’s largest and most dynamic econo-mies, we are even more delighted to work with its leading University. This partnership will foster academ-ic links between our nations and will provide for research collaborations that would contribute to and support the development of higher education in India."

Prof N S Ramesh Murthy, Di-rector, SMU-DDE said, “We are delighted to sign the MoU with Edinburgh Napier University. This MoU provides a strong footstep for strengthening the academic and build a long-term beneficial rela-

tionship between the two Universi-ties. It will also promote knowledge sharing, reflecting the deep interest & commitment of SMU-DDE and ENU towards building a strong edu-cational foundation for the distance education fraternity at large."

Under the scope of engagement, ENU and SMU-DDE will collabo-rate in the management education space.

SMU-DE degree holders will be given the option to get an additional MBA degree from ENU by enroll-ing 60 out of 180 credits of the ENU MBA program.

Students will be given the option to pursue these additional credits by enrolling for a term on campus at ENU’s Craiglockhart campus in Edinburgh. This means, SMU-DDE students will avail a waiver on 2 term credits, thus saving time.

Students opting for a term at ENU’s Craiglockhart campus will have an added advantage of working part-time (20 hours per week with minimum wages of 20 £ per hour).

Sikkim Manipal signs MoU with UK university

Kolkata: With Durga Puja round the corner, popular radio station OYE! 104.8 FM on Friday here unveiled an initiative called ‘Ma Durge Dushono Nashini' attempting to control pollution.

The concept focuses on build-ing up a community to propagate the message of increasing pollution and to voice their concern against pollution, be it environmental, so-ciological, economic or political.

The project is of 35 days where a

fabricated branded 'Center' will be moving across the city of Kolkata with the aim of diminishing pol-lution. OYE! 104.8 FM asked for peoples participation by donating bio-recyclable and bio-degradable waste at the Center.

After 20 days of collecting these bio-degrading wastes, the Center will be transformed to a Mobile Studio where people can watch the waste materials taking the shape of Durga idol by artist Debranjan Dey.

Tollywood actor Aparajita Auddy turned up to support the concept on Friday.

Shantanu Bhattachraya, Direc-tor of Vibgyor Group said, "New dresses for street children and flood affected kids will be distributed on Astami at City Center.”

The ‘Durga Idol’ will be dis-played at City Center I, Salt Lake during the five days of Puja.

(Reporting by Papri Chanda and Priya Maitra)

Goddess Durga to control pollution

Indian India

New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Open University’s (IGNOU) Vice Chancellor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai inaugurated a two-day International Conference on 'Diaspora and De-velopment: Prospects and Implica-tions for Nation States’ here and announced that the university is in the process of setting up a Centre for Diasporic Studies in its campus.

“I am confident that this confer-ence will provide an opportunity to share thoughts on how India can benefit by mutual interactions,” he said.

“The connotations of the term Diaspora have gone far beyond forced exile and desire for homeland. Today, Diaspora is a generic concept of a trans-national population, and India represents this concept in a major way. In many ways, IGNOU is like the Diaspora.

"In most countries, Diaspora is quite a small community, but it punches far beyond its weight. IGNOU is doing the same in many

ways” said Dr. A. Didar Singh, Sec-retary, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), who was the chief guest during the inauguration held at IGNOU’s Convention Centre," said the VC.

Jointly organised by the School of Extension and Development Studies (SOEDS) and the School of Inter-disciplinary and Trans-disciplinary Studies (SOITS) of the university, the conference broadly addressed the socio-economic, political, cul-tural and gender issues to provide holistic perspectives in understand-ing the interlinkages in diaspora and development.

The conference saw the partici-pation of diaspora experts from over 25 countries, who deliberated upon various themes such as Diaspora and Development Dynamics: Issues, Strategies and Practices; Diaspora Finance and Socio-Economic De-velopment; Human Development; Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion; Diasporic Writings; Gender in the

Diaspora; and Films & Theatre. “There have been three major

waves of economic migration in India till now -- the indentured labour migration during colonial times; the movement from South Asia to the Gulf in the post Inde-pendence period; and the move-ment of professional/skilled workers to the West. However, the most unique wave is the return migra-tion, wherein these professionals are coming back to India in large numbers,” he added.

Mizan R. Miah, Director, School of Social Work, Southern Illinois University, USA, delivered the Key Note Address on ‘The Global Com-munity of Diaspora: Contributions, Challenges and Prospects.’

While throwing light on the various themes of the conference, Miah urged, “Diasporians of the world should unite by contributing towards making the world a better, safer place for peaceful co-existence by the level of our talents, passion and productive contribution towards all kinds of development – social, cultural, political and economic.

"For the people of Diaspora, de-velopment should lead to the reduc-tion of poverty and poverty reduc-tion should lead to the reduction of illiteracy, intolerance and hostility, which in turn should usher in a new era of world peace.”

While delivering the Welcome

Centre for diasporic studies coming up at IGNOU

New Delhi: Sankara Eye Care Insti-tutions, India (SECI) on Friday an-nounced it has won FICCI Health-care Excellence Award for the third consecutive year.

R Balasubramanian, Direc-tor - Group Marketing and Mentor, Sankara Eye Care Institutions, India (SECI) received the award from the Chief Guest, Mukesh Chawla - Head, Knowledge Management, Human Development, World Bank at an award ceremony held at The Lalit, New Delhi.

FICCI Healthcare Excellence

Awards recognizes the contribution of healthcare providers in delivering quality healthcare, patient care and increasing reach in rural and remote areas.

SECI won the award in the cat-egory, ‘Addressing Industry Issues’ which looked at such key concerns as taking healthcare to the masses, implementing a successful PPP model, reducing the cost of health-care, enhancing the availability of talent through education and train-

ing and so on. The FICCI Healthcare Excellence Awards was instituted in 2009 to provide impetus to preven-tive healthcare in the country.

With 80% of healthcare in India being provided by the private sector with specific focus on curative care, it was essential to seek and recog-nize role models in the healthcare industry who actively address pre-ventive healthcare in the communi-ty, especially among those with little or no access to it.

Sankara Eye Care Institutions, India has been offering specialized

diagnostic and surgical eye care to the visually impaired through 9 institutions across India. With Sankara, nearly 22 million have benefited from preventive and cura-tive care and over 7,72,000 vision-restoring procedures have been performed till date, claimed the in-stitution.

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) is the largest and oldest apex busi-ness organization in India.

Sankara Eye Care wins FICCI award

With Sankara, nearly 22 million have benefited from preventive and curative care and over 7,72,000 vision-restoring procedures have been performed till date.

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Sydney: The Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, Australia’s popular running festival, last week announced the association with Wipro Technologies, the Global In-formation Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing business of Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT) as a Major Partner and Official Technology Partner.

The Blackmores Sydney running festival will leverage Wipro's con-sulting and technology expertise as part of the event.

In addition, Wipro Technologies will also present 'The Wipro Team Challenge'. The Wipro Team chal-lenge is a new addition to the Black-mores Sydney Running Festival that not just tests one’s endurance but also team spirit.

Blackmores Sydney Running Festival is Australia’s most spec-tacular running festival taking par-ticipants over the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and finishing at the Sydney Opera House.

The event, which is the only re-maining participant legacy of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, is a NSW Government Hallmark event and delivers over $12 m to local businesses and brings over 5,500 people to Sydney from interstate and overseas. The event will help raise more than $ 2.5 million for charities in 2011.

Wayne Larden, Blackmores Sydney Running Festival Event Director said, “I am delighted to welcome Wipro technologies as a major partner of the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival. We strongly believe that their support and expertise in the technology arena will help us to further heighten the race day experience for partici-pants, over the course of their in-volvement.”

Rajan Kohli, Chief Marketing Officer, IT Business, Wipro Ltd. said, “Wipro recently celebrated a decade of operations and stellar growth in the ANZ region. We remain deeply committed to the region and will continue to engage with the local community here.

"There cannot be a better plat-form than the Sydney Running Fes-tival for us to partner with – not only is it a landmark event but its DNA of superior performance, high energy, endurance and sustainability, reso-nates well with our brand values."

Wipro Technologies established a presence in the ANZ region in 2001, and has since built strategic, long term partnerships with marquee companies in the region and has over 2200 employees working for this region, from delivery centers in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as from India.

Blackmores Sydney partners Wipro

Kolkata: Hong Kong-based cell-phone maker Coolpad plans to launch a tablet computer running Google’s Android operating system for the Indian market priced below Rs 10,000 by November, company officials said in Kolkata on Thursday.

The device will be feature CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) con-nectivity and will be pitted against the plethora of tablets already crowd-ing India’s nascent tablet market, most of which use the alternate GSM (Global System for Mobile Commu-nications) connectivity.

“We intend to partner with Reli-ance (for launching the tablet) which has a robust CDMA network and we see them as the key driver of mobile data business in India,” Coolpad Communications Managing Director Sami Al-Lawati told IBNS.

India’s second largest mobile carrier by subscribers, Reliance in August launched its own offering for the Indian tablet market called the Reliance 3G Tab, manufactured by China’s ZTE Corporation, running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread plat-form and priced at Rs 13,000.

According to analysts, bolstered by deeper partnership with mobile phone carriers and a wide range of offerings at different price points, the Indian tablet market could grow to be as large as 0.7-1 million tablets by the

end of the year.Coolpad on Thursday launched

three handsets, including the com-pany’s first Android-based CDMA smartphone in India, partnering with Reliance for discounted voice and data plans that will redeem the price of the handset to customers in two years’ usage.

The device with an 800 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM and a 3.5 inch resistive touch screen aims to add some glitz to the otherwise lacklustre handset offerings available to CDMA users, currently at about a quarter of India’s 850 million mobile subscribers.

“The average selling price for CDMA handsets in India is about

Rs 3,500. We want to target the quite unitised mid high-end CDMA handset market,” Al-Lawati said. However the company is also focused on GSM-based offerings, he added.

The phone, which runs Android 2.1 Éclair, instead by the latest 2.3 Gingerbread version, will be avail-able from Reliance Worlds and Reli-ance Mobile stores at Rs 7,999 along with bundled voice and data plans.

Coolpad officials on Thursday also said they intend to set up a re-search and development (R&D) centre in India by Dec. 2012 at an investment of Rs 100 crore centred at Delhi or Mumbai and a manufac-turing facility within “three to four years”.

“The R&D facility in India will be our first outside China and we are very interested in tapping the talent pool here. With the manufacturing facility, we intend to cater not just the Indian market but also other markets abroad,” Al-Lawati said.

Coolpad, which had a revenue of $900 million in the last fiscal and posts a 50 percent year-on-year growth, said that it intends to sell a million handsets in India for the current year and step up to a hundred thousand sets per month by this time next year.

(Reporting by Divyanshu Dutta Roy)

Coolpad to launch sub-10K tablet by November

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Thiruvananthapuram: India's southernmost state Kerala is soaked in festivity as the region celebrated Onam on Friday, the rice harvest festival that also marks the home-coming of the legendary emperor Mahabali who is welcomed with floral decorations and lots of fanfare.

Onam is an ancient festival of the Hindus but over the time it has acquired a secular character in this part of India.

Kerala's rice harvest festival and the festival of rain flowers, which fell on the Malayalam month of Chingam, celebrated the Demon King Mahabali's annual visit from Patala (the underworld).

Onam is unique since Mahabali has been revered by the people of Kerala since prehistory.

As per mythology, Kerala was once ruled by the generous and virtuous ruler - King Mahabali or Maveli. It was a period of all round prosperity, which became a reason to arouse the envy of the devas (gods in Heaven) and also due to the fact that King Mahab-ali was an asura; a member of the demon clan, who are bitter enemies of the devas.

And in the actions that followed, King Mahabali was sent to the nether world by Vamana - an incar-nation of Lord Vishnu; one of the triumvirates. Before sending to the nether world, Lord Vishnu granted Mahabali the permission to visit his subjects once in a year. This occa-

sion is celebrated by all Keralites as Onam.

And the agrarian backdrop of Onam is attributed to that time of the year (the Malayalam month of Chingam), when farmers of Kerala enjoy a good harvest, result-ing in granaries full of rice grain and happiness all around.

Onam celebrations are held for ten days, beginning with the athamasterism in the Malayalam month of Chingam - corresponding to the months of Aug-Sept.

Flower carpet decorations, feasting and snake boat races are part of the festivity besides Kai-kottikkali dance.

Pookkalam or floral design is the hall mark of Onam festival. Kerala Tourism has presented an innova-tive pookkalam, a fascinating video gallery, composed of 600 amazing video clips that flaunt the breath and spirit of Kerala.

Onam also gets a royal touch with the elephant ride that takes place at Thrissur, the cultural capital of Kerala. Decked in gold, the favourite animal of royals of India looks even more magnificent.

From the traditional Onam cuisine to the enchanting backwa-ters from the life-giving Ayurveda to the serene beaches of Kerala, the tourism department is wooing visi-tors to the state during Onam.

In Kerala, everyone is wearing brand new clothes now and greet-ing each other. The food of Onam is special and 'sadya' is a dish that

is served on plantain leaf compris-ing rice, curries and different types of sweet.

Several fairs, shows and other functions are planned during Onam.

Besides Kerala Governor MOH Farook and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, top political leaders of India greeted the people of Kerala and the nation at large for Onam.

Indian President Pratibha Devis-ingh Patil in her message said: “On the auspicious occasion of Onam, I convey my warm greetings and good wishes to the people of Kerala and all Malayalees settled through-out the world.

May this harvest festival of colour and vivacity bring pros-perity and all-round gaiety for the entire nation.”

In a message, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that, "the beauty of Onam lies in its secular traditions."

"People of all religions, castes and communities celebrate the fes-tival with equal joy and verve. The rich cultural heritage of Kerala finds true expression during the ten day long festival.

"May the festival bring joy, peace and prosperity to all," the Prime Minister added.

Various films also hit the screen during Onam.

The major Onam releases in Kerala this year are Joshy's Sevenes, Jayaram's Ulagam Chuttum Valiban and Bobban Kunchacko's Dr. Love.

Kerala celebrates harvest festival Onam

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IndianAnirudh Diwakar passes away I was deeply saddened to learn about the passing away of a very dear friend, school mate and a community worker. Having lived in Nasinu,I always remember him as a very passionate, kind and caring person, qualities that he traced in his career. As a young Radio Fiji recruit he quickly became the admiration of his seniors and the rest was history. We have always enjoyed great friendship and on behalf of all my brothers I express my deepest condolences to his loved ones and colleagues. RIP.

– D.C.Maharaj, California, USA.

Suva's GPH to regain lost glory“This is the most thrilling news out of Fiji. I was born in Fiji and have always admired the architectural beauty of this hotel. As a teenager, I enjoyed my many Friday evenings at the GPH Lounge. I couldn't believe my eyes at what I saw while I was on vacation in 2009. I pleaded to the young man in uniform to inform his boss not to sell this property and that I could help set up a Foundation whereby we could restore this place to its original beauty! Glad something is being done!!

– D.C. Maharaj

Workshop celebrates Hindi languageWith highly knowledgeable ISKCON leaders well versed with India's true religious lit-erature, this trust can become a winner. It is heartening to see that experts in Sanskrit and the scientific tradition of yoga taught by Prabhupada and spread all over the world by ISKCON are leading in this workshop. With such knowledgable and saintly persons who know Sanskrit and the Indian literature from which Hindi is derived, this work-shop is blessed and will surely succeed with Lord Krishna's and Caitanya Mahaprabhu's blessings.

– Bhakt Haridas

A symbol of friendship between India and FijiPadmini has got her facts and history in a knot. A.D. Patel's political party was the Federation Party, entirely made-up of the "Indians". His motto was independence from the British. The "Fijians" were both numerically fewer than the Indians and also weak in education.

– Azad

While again and again Gaunder refers to the Catholic priest as "Rev" Andrews, and ef-fectively assigns him as the visionary who pioneered "racial integration" in Fiji (Rev. Andrews had great hopes that “racial integration will proceed amicably in those distant lands”), a similar address to Chaturvedi is missing and he is repeatedly addressed by his last name. Plus, disharmony is blamed totally on "Indian dominated coalition". Hey, but isn’t the white man irresistible Paddy?

– Jessy Payal Patel

Spectacular opening for World CupWell Done New Zealand. Congratulations to Auckland City what a spectacular event. On behalf of NZICA Officer Team and the Proud Kiwi Indian Diaspora we are proud to be part of this Rugby Playing Nation. Our best wishes to the participating teams. Go the ALL BLACKS we are 100% behind you, our good wishes and support is with you all the way. You have started on a positive note. We are sure you will be the Victors at the End. Proud Kiwi Indians wishing you every success. Cheers.

– Paul Singh Bains JP, President NZICA.

Vipassana: a most wonderful experience in AucklandI agree with you totally! Initially I was absolutely fazed and wanted to just get out of it all. A very tough course that tests your mettle; and yet after the 10 days of silence and meditation it is almost catharsis one experiences. A strong recommendation to challenge yourself and do the course – the staff are excellent and it is an experience!

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From the Editor

Indian Weekender is published by Kiwi Media Group, 98 Great South Road, New Market and printed at APN Print, Ellerslie, Auckland Copyright 2010. Kiwi Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

Indian Weekender Volume 3 No. 11Publisher: Kiwi Media Group LimitedGroup editor-in-chief: Dev Nadkarni [email protected] editor: Arvind Kumar [email protected] Technical Officer: Rohan Desouza rohan@ indianweekender.co.nzDesign: Sonata Design Ltd - [email protected]: Giri Gupta - Ph: 520 0922, Mob: 021 221 1131. Email - [email protected] & Admin: Chetan - Email: [email protected] email original editorial contributions, community notices and pictures to [email protected] expressed in the publication are not necessarily of the publisher and the publisheris not responsible for advertisers’ claims as appearing in the publication

Letters

Ten top stories on iwk.co.nz1. Spectacular opening for World Cup 2. Getting hum aur tum to hum with Humm 3. Workshop celebrates Hindi language4. Subtlety, elegance imbue Sudima’s new Auckland hotel 5. Kareena Kapoor on Zee TV soap6. Is 'The Bhai' about Dawood? 7. A classy, complete wedding package8. Vipassana: a most wonderful experience in Auckland9. Nand picked by Act to contest Mt Roskill10. Golden Temple exhibition

The Pacific Islands Forum summit in New Zealand last week saw leaders of the world’s biggest and most powerful organisations and blocs attend the three day proceedings. Among them were the Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of the Euro-pean Union, top officials of the World Bank and other global organisations.

This was in addition to political leaders, Prime Ministers, Presidents and govern-ment ministers from around the region and beyond. The presence of top leaders and organisations at Pacific Islands Forum annual summits has been growing bigger over recent years, with nations like the United States sending an increasingly larger number of delegates.

The Pacific Islands region is part of a large chunk of the globe that has been relatively unexplored. The Pacific Ocean occupies about two thirds the surface area of the planet and the island nations that dot it, collectively have legal jurisdictions over large swathes of the ocean in the equatorial belt, which is one of the most productive regions for fishing.

Powerful and rich countries around the world have realised the growing importance of the Pacific Islands over the years and there has been a scramble in recent years to win their favour and get closer to what could well be potentially world’s biggest resources.

Recent studies have proven the existence of precious minerals and hydrocarbon reserves on some of the islands as well as in the seabed that falls under their exclusive economic zones. In addition, the islands’ territorial waters extend into the world’s most productive marine environments, teeming with a wide range of commercially exploitable marine life.

Moreover, the islands are politically and strategically important as well. Politically because of their voting powers at global forums like the United Nations or regional ones that has to do with fishing and other major commercial activity. And strategically because they could serve as outposts for distant powers, as they so often have throughout history.

New Zealand and Australia have traditionally held sway over the islands for nearly a couple of centuries, other than France, which still has links with its territories New Caledonia and French Polynesia. But over the past few decades, the Anzac nations’ have encountered increasing competition from more distant Pacific Rim countries. Japan, China, Taiwan, the United States and more recently Indonesia, the Philippines and even South American nations like Chile and Cuba have slowly but steadily increased their engagement in the region.

New geophysical data has helped increase the exclusive economic zone boundaries of almost all island nations, putting greater areas of the ocean and the seafloor below it in their respective sovereign controls. This has caused a gold rush of sorts with big mining companies already beginning to prospect both on land and in the seabed.

Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji are already begin-ning to see increased activity in the exploitation of natural resources. In fact, the boom in PNG has made the country’s economy one of the fastest growing in the entire region. Australia and China have dug their heels deep into PNG’s mineral resources sector and they and new players are stepping up their role in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

India has had limited engagement in the Pacific with its old relationship with Fiji. Unfortunately, in all these decades, it has not capitalised on it by leveraging it to spread its engagement across the region in the way China has. Large Indian companies, particu-larly in the financial sector, like Life Insurance Corporation, United India Assurance and Bank of Baroda have been in Fiji for half a century. Yet they have not expanded into the Pacific.

India has now realised the Pacific’s importance and has begun sending bigger delega-tions to the Forum summits over the past few years. This year too, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur and a sizable delegation attended the summit in the capacity of official observers. It is reliably learnt that the Government of India is plan-ning a formal approach to the Pacific Islands Forum to step up trade relations and set up a trade office for the islands in India.

This is a welcome development, though rather late in the day, but a step in the right direction.

- Dev Nadkarni

India must step up Pacific role


Indian

Anna Hazare has done the most im-portant thing: he has belled the cat. That is an accomplishment by itself when nobody has turned even a leaf to do that. The media reports all the fantastic loots of famous people. The political class keeps on doing what they have been doing all along, central ministers are giving each other good conduct certificates and the Prime Minister knows nothing about anything. And the intellectu-als and activists air their views and comments and are satisfied with their two minute fame.

“Ordinary citizens” of the country are angry and upset but can hardly do anything. Our options are either watching TV or reading the newspapers with all the commentar-ies of intellectuals and activists, or joining the Maoists.

However narrow and confined and complicated it may be, Anna Hazare has created a space for the or-dinary people to voice their disgust and dissent. There are serious prob-lems with his campaign as Arund-hati Roy has eloquently pointed out. We cannot afford to tie down the fate of this vast and complex country to the whims and fancies of one indi-vidual messiah as Prabhat Patnaik has convincingly argued. Gail Omvedt has rightly diagnosed the situation as people of India getting tired of democracy.

More importantly, Muslims and Dalits have expressed more serious concerns about the Anna campaign. As the Dalits do not want the Con-stitution, Parliament and bureau-

cracy to be shunned or weakened in any way, some Muslim leaders feel that they have not been consulted or included in the current campaign. All of the above are valid issues and concerns. And they need to be ad-dressed openly, honestly and demo-cratically.

Anna Hazare, the individual, who spearheads the campaign, has been unacceptable for some. His experiment in his village Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra has been la-belled controversial by others. With all good reasons, it seems!

H. V. Seshadri, the then RSS general secretary, wrote a series of articles on Anna and his mission in the RSS mouthpiece “Organiser” in early 1987. In an article “The Village That Reminds Us of Rama-rajya” (February 8, 1987), Seshadri described the various features of Ralegan Siddhi and the different ac-tivities undertaken by the villages: total prohibition, abolition of un-touchability, ban on smoking, con-flict resolution by the village com-mittee, and developmental activities such as setting up a school, digging community wells and so forth.

However, reconstruction of the village temple was the “very first project” as it was “the focal point of devotion for the entire village.”

In the next article “Ralegan Siddhi: A Name for Social Meta-morphosis” (February 15, 1987), Se-shadri dwelt long on the importance of the village temple at the backdrop of the Ramjanmabhumi issue that was burning so powerfully at that

time. Seshadri highlighted the need for a temple for a community’s iden-tity, morality and organisation.

He recollected a story he had from Anna Hazare and it merits re-production in full: “Some time back, an IAS officer who happened to visit the village questioned the propriety of spending such a large sum of Rs. 90,000 for the temple construction, instead of utilising it for putting up more school buildings. Annasaheb

did not reply, but took him to the fruit gardens laden with ripe fruits, adjoining the hostel. There was no fence, no locks, no guards and still not a single fruit was stolen. Anna-saheb told the dumb-struck officer that mere schools cannot produce such moral uprightness. It was devo-tion to God and high values of life that could bring about that miracle.”

In a sequel dated March 1, 1987 with the title “A Karma Yogi in Action,” Seshadri pointed out that this village Ramarajya had two other

important characteristics (that re-sembled the modern national project of the Hindutva forces). Accord-ing to Seshadri, Anna Hazare told him: “There are Jains, Buddhists and other Hindus but no Muslims or Christians in our village.”

Similarly, the Ralegan Siddhi had registered bodies for irrigation, educational development and other areas but “there are no elections for any of these bodies.” Even the

Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the village were “unanimously selected by the Grama Sabha.”

These testimonies do not help much to be excited about Anna Hazare, or his national Ramarajya project. Obviously, Ralegan Siddhi model cannot and should not work at the all India level.

But the people of the country are facing a real problem: the deadly and vehement combination of cor-ruption, communalism (and cas-teism), capitalism, and colonialism.

The present ruling class supports and promotes all of these evils. And there is a dire need to foresee an al-ternative India here and now.

Anna’s stirring the hornet’s nest is good and a welcome effort. If we do not like one messiah, let us convene 100,000 messiahs and carry the task forward. Transpar-ent, accountable and participatory leadership is crucial for this national reconstruction project. If we rightly shun messianic leadership, we should create a collective leadership.

The intellectuals and activists must go beyond getting their ar-ticles published in leading dailies and assume responsibilities in this revolution. And they together could thank Anna Hazare for belling the cat and take the operation from here.

Although Hazare calls himself a Gandhian and emphasises the non-violent nature of his campaign, he does refer to the ways of Chhatra-pati Shivaji and sends out a rather confused message to the people. Let the collective leadership take an un-equivocal stand on nonviolence and lead the country towards a serious reformation.

Pushing us back into the hands of Parliamentarians like Manmohan Singh, Sharad Pawar, Raja, Suresh Kalmadi, Kanimozhi and their like will be a horrible and historic mistake.

S. P. Udayakumar, Ph.D., is an anti-nuclear activist spearheading action against the Koodankulam nuclear power project. Article cour-tesy: Ground Report India.

Comment

Now, let others take over from Anna Hazare

Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the first Prime Minister of Fiji, had given this unique and thought provok-ing definition of colonialism: “Co-lonialism means that the western people, people who come from the western hemisphere and brought up in the western civilization think they are the only people who know anything in this world and no one else knows anything”

However, in India the British had a problem. They had to accept that they were dealing with people who were superior in every way. Lord Macaulay realised that the only way they could conquer them was by breaking the backbone of that nation which was her spiritual and cultural heritage.

So he proposed to replace the ancient Indian education system with English education. This would make the Indians lose their self respect as they would start thinking that all that was English was better and greater than their own which would make them a truly dominated nation.

As part of this education chil-dren were taught that the Aryans came from the west in 1500 B.C. and they were the ones who civilised the country. Now multidisciplinary and ‘purely scientific research has shown that this premise, which was

based on linguistic guess work, is not correct’, it was said recently at a seminar in New Delhi.

When it was proposed in the late 18th century that the Aryans were indigenous to India it was rapidly marginalised. It was further taught that the invading Aryans drove the Dravidians, the supposed original inhabitants of the Indus valley, to the south where they have remained.

Now studies have shown that the ‘genetic profile of humans settled in north, south, east and west of India is the same and has remained the same’ for the last 11,000 years or more. This was revealed at the seminar on scientific dating of events before 2000 BCE which was organised by the Delhi chapter of I-SERVE (Institute of Scientific Re-search on Vedas).

Dr. V. R. Rao, Professor of An-thropology at Delhi University made the interesting revelation that ‘contrary to the popular belief, the Dravidians as well as north Indians have common ancestors and both are original of India’. The seminar was further told that the indigenous civilisations have been developing and flourishing in India for the last 10,000 years and ‘some of our an-cestors moved out to civilise others’

One of the objectives of the seminar was to highlight the fact

that some new scientific inventions and tools can now ‘scientifically de-termine the authenticity and histo-ricity of ancient events and as such any reliance on religious beliefs or linguistic guesswork is superfluous. Such scientific dating is not only credible and convincing but is also likely to pushback the antiquity of our civilisation by 4-5 millennia, giving all Indians a shared pride in our rich cultural heritage’.

Ms.Saroja Bala, who is now the Director of the Delhi chapter of I- SERVE, had declared in 2003 that Sri Rama was born on January 10, 5114 BCE. At that time she was the Commissioner of Income Tax, but Indian history, culture and heritage had been her interests. She said her colleague, Pushkar Bhatnagar of Indian Revenue Service, was the real originator of this theory.

Bhatnagar acquired a software, named Planetarium, used to predict planetary movements. By entering in this software, precise details of planetary positions of the constel-lations described by Valmiki in the Ramayana, it was possible to deter-mine important dates starting from Sri Rama’s birth to the date of his return to Ayodhya.

Ms. Bala said it was possible to trace, apart from Rama’s birthday, the entire sequence of incidents

throughout Ramayana. Valmiki Ra-mayana states that Sri Rama was 25 years old when he went into exile. When the configuration of planets described at this point is fed into the software, the date thrown up matches perfectly with Rama’s age at that juncture of his life – 25 years. Again in the 13th year of his exile Valmiki describes a solar eclipse.

Valmiki describes Hanuman crossing the sea and returning from Lanka to Rameswaram. He gives details of 8 constellations. Usually one can only see 6 constellations at a given point in time but since Hanuman was flying across and it must have taken him approximately 4 hours to get there, he could see 8 constellations. In two hours one constellation would have moved out of sight and another become visible. So in a period of 4 hours he saw 8 constellations.

Former President Abdul Kalam who presided over the seminar in Delhi in July, 2011 endorsed the scientific methods used for dating ancient events and emphasised the need to disseminate this knowledge to the children in schools and col-leges.

In 2003 NASA had put pictures on the internet of a man-made bridge the ruins of which are submerged in the sea between Rameswaram and

Sri Lanka. If you travel by train from Dhanushkodi to Rameswaram and look out of the window you can see with your naked eye big rocks throughout which look like the remains of an old bridge. One natu-rally wonders if that is the remains of the bridge built by the ‘vanara sena’ to help Rama and Lakshmana cross over to Lanka.

It is felt that there is govern-ment apathy to archaeological dig-gings and investigation. For more than three decades underwater explorations have been going on in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Gujarat. In 2001 they discovered the ruins of an ancient city, believed to be Dwaraka, Lord Krishna’s city. According to C. S. Mahadevan of Madras, Lord Krishna was born on July 26, 3112 BCE (The Hindu, February 21, 1985). We may be able to verify that soon using scientific methods.

Another aim of the seminar or-ganised in Delhi by I-SERVE was to integrate the latest findings of eminent scholars with the contents of school and college text books. Only when that is done we would be able to get rid of the remnant of colonialism that still persists in the contents of the education that is imparted in schools and colleges in India today.

PadmINI GauNder

Colonial hangover prevents Indology entering mainstream education

S P udayaKumar

Anna Hazare has done the most important thing: he has belled the cat. That is an accomplishment by itself when nobody has turned even a leaf to do that.


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Indian India

New Delhi: Social activist Anna Hazare, whose fast at Ramlilia Maidan for a strong Lokpal Bill gal-vanised the whole nation and unnerved the ruling government, gave a series of interviews to the na-tional news channel editors from his Ralegan Siddhi village in Maharashtra this week.

Excerpts of his remarks on the Prime Minister, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and even oppo-sition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) patriarch L K Advani:

On the PM: The PM is a good man, incorrupt-ible. But he is surrounded by many others who feel they are prime ministers. No one listens to him. He is being remote-controlled. His authority is limited.

On Sonia Gandhi: She is not assertive enough on corruption. I met her but if she were serious about fighting corruption she should have pushed a strong Jan Lokpal Bill. Whether it is Sonia Gandhi or Man-mohan Singh, they should remember that Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister not because of Con-gress workers, but because she had worked for the poor.

On Advani's rathyatra against corruption: I do not support his yatra. If BJP is serious about fighting cor-ruption why not they come out in the open in support of the Jan Lokpal Bill.

On Digvijay Singh: He is my old friend (smiles). He used to touch my feet everywhere he would meet me. Now he calls me an RSS man. I don't know what happened to him.

On Swami Agnivesh: He is not part of our team since we decided that till he stops going to the minis-ters again and again we cannot associate us with him. He keeps going to the ministers.

On the mass support he received: I never thought that lakhs and crores would support me. I think it is God's work. Earlier only a few thousands or ten thou-sand would join me in my movements.

Sonia, PM, Advani: Anna speaks plain

Kolkata: The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Indian and Israel, which has been on the cards for quite some time now, would change the composition of business between the two countries, Ambassador of Israel in India Alon Ushpiz said in Kolkata on Tuesday.

New sectors like information and technol-ogy (IT), agriculture and biotechnology would be broght into focus, diversifying away from the diamond-centric bilateral trade that Israel and India share at present, Ushpiz said at a programme organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

The FTA would also help increase trade volumes, which currently stood at around $5 billion and would exceed $12 billion in another five years on the agreement. “It (bilateral trade) has the potential to touch $15 billion,” Ushpiz said.

The India-Israel FTA, talks for which have entered the third round and are currently include reaching a mutually agreeable exclu-sion list to help protect some sensitive domes-tic sectors, was initially expected to be signed by February this year.

Speaking on Isarel’s specific interest in West Bengal, Ushpiz, who also met state chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Direc-tor General of Police Naparajit Mukherjee on Tuesday, said there was wide spectrum where collaboration was possible.

Although he was tight-lipped on a possible partnership in helping the Bengal government combat the Maoist insurgency, the diplomat, who began his term in India this July, said col-laborations in agriculture development was on the agenda.

“We have partnered to start a Center of Excellence in Haryana to work on agriculture and the results there are remarkable. Talks are

on with Maharshtra and Rajasthan for similar projects, maybe we could even work out some-thing similar with West Bengal,” Ushpiz said.

Following his meeting with the Chief Min-ister, he said that Israel was keen on working with the state government on food processing, tourism and irrigation as well besides agricul-ture. “West Bengal is a priority state to us,” he said.

Ushpiz also inaugurated a Business Pro-motion Office from the Embassy in Kolkata on Monday. The office would help in match-making between businessmen from the two countries in the fields of IT and biotechnology among other sectors, he said.

India-Israel FTA to diversify trade: AmbassadordIvyaNShu dutta roy

The FTA would also help increase trade volumes, which currently stood at around $5 billion and would exceed $12 billion in another five years on the agreement. “

Mumbai: Bollywood’s ace photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha died of a massive heart attack at his residence in Mumbai on Tuesday. He was 61. Family sources said he breathed his last at 4 am.Rajadhyaksha’s funeral was held at 5pm on Tuesday at Chandanwadi in Mumbai, said his cousin and writer Shobhaa De.Born on Sept 16, 1950, Rajadhyaksha was one of India's best known celebrity portrait-ist, having photographed almost all the icons of the Indian film industry.Celebs mourned Gautam Rajadhyaksha on Twitter:Amitabh Bachchan (actor): Gautam Rajad-hyaksha the most gentlest of humans, and one of the finest photographers in the In-dustry, a friend,family favorite ..RIP. -Too shocked to learn of Gautam ! Were talking about him just the other day. Many of his pictures adorn our house and our books .. -Gautam ! You have left behind a legacy that shall keep you in our hearts forever .. pic-tures that you took shall be with us always !Javed Akhtar (lyricist): Gautam was my friend from 70s.all childhood pictures of Zoya and Farhan in our albums are by him.he was like family to us .He is gone.Abhishek Bachchan (actor): The 1st time I ever did a professional photoshoot was in front of the lens of the great Gautam Rajya-daksh. He was a pioneer in glamour... Pho-tography and possibly one of the sweetest and most gentle people you would ever meet. Rest in peace Gautam, you will be greatly

missed.Shekhar Kapur (filmmaker): shocked 2 learn Gautam Rajadhakshya passed away. Grt photographer, artist old friend n sup-porter. Gautam Rajadhyaksha : Mumbai's best Opera collection, best original portrait photographer of film ppl n grt cook. Origi-nal portrait photographer 2 d stars n freshest faces, India's best Opera collection, Maha-rashtrian culture n food RIP G Rajyadhak-shaLata Mangeshkar (singer): hum sabke priya mitra ,bahot bade photographer ,acche gayak, acche lekhak, aur bahot hi acche insan gautam rajadhyaksha ji ka aaj subha dehaant hua,humare liye ye bahot dukh ki baat hai,mujhe kadam kadam pe ek acche insan ki yaad aati rahegi,main ishwar se prartana karti hun ki ishwar unki aatma ko shanti de....(Our dear friend, successful photographer, good singer and writer, and a great person Gautam Rajadhyaksha passed

away this morning. I will remember him every step of the way.. and pray God grants his soul peace.)Shreya Ghosal (singer): Just heard about the sudden demise of Gautam Rajadhyaksha ji. Rest in peace.Karan Johar (filmmaker): Gautam rajad-hyaksha was one my most favourite people in the fraternity...funny,sensitive and always positive..I love you gautam and I miss uShobhaa De (columnist, author): My darling Gautam Rajadhyaksha no more.Saddened beynd belief.Farewell confidante-cousin.Thank u 4 your generous love nd soft focus memories.Riya Sen (actor): R.I.P gautam rajadhyak-sha.. Shot my first ever pictures in my life ! You will be missed ..Shazahn Padamsee (actor): Omg. RIP Gautam Rajyadhyaksha. Was like a member of my family. Lovely human being. U will be missed terribly.

Ace lensman Gautam rajadhyaksha dies at 61


Indian Fiji

The Citizens’ Constitutional Forum calls on the Bainimarama govern-ment to immediately remove the Public Emergency Regulation and initiate steps for a constructive and critical Political dialogue process if it is confident of the findings of the Lowy Institute Survey “Fiji at Home and in the World.”

“The report must prompt the Bainimarama government to take concrete steps towards holding dem-ocratic elections and the first step would be to remove the PER and call for open and inclusive dialogue on the Constitutional and electoral reform processes”, stated CCF CEO Reverend Akuila Yabaki.

“Any such moves, based on the Governments confidence in the Lowy report, would also be a clear indication to international partners

that there is room for critical en-gagement as they have stated time and time again that they stand ready to provide financial and technical support for free and fair elections to be conducted in Fiji” says Reverend Yabaki. “ Financial and technical assistance from international part-ners is vital for genuine democratic

processes and systems to be put in place so that the people of Fiji can gain confidence that the time will soon arrive for them to elect their next government.” “The opportu-nity to take these steps, to inform the people of Fiji on their roles and responsibilities in the lead up to elec-tions and ensure an inclusive consul-tation process can be implemented, is glaring in the face of the Bainima-rama government and they must not let it pass” stated Reverend Yabaki.

One way to arouse an interest in agriculture and forestry among youths is to engage and support them in these activities from an early age. SPC’s Land Resources Division (LRD) has been putting a lot of effort into this recently.

Farming equipment — includ-ing forks, hoes, spades, knives and garden rakes worth a little over FJD 300 — was presented to a Suva based Tacirua Bhartiya School for drawing the winning ticket in a lottery organised by the LRD during the recent Fiji Ag-riculture Show. More than 8000 students from 153 schools visited the SPC booth during the four-day show, and the name of each school was entered in the lottery.

Sairusi Bulai, Officer-in-Charge of LRD, presented the prize. ‘Encouraging youths into agricultural activity has been a challenge worldwide and the Pacific Islands are no exception. Starting this at primary school will help to create awareness in our youths,’ he said.

According to statistics pro-vided by the Food and Agriculture

Organization, the global demand for food will increase by 70% over the next 40 years so, worldwide, we need youths to get involved in this sector to help meet the demand.

SPC has been steadfast in en-couraging youths into agricultural activity, inspired and guided by the Pacific Youth in Agriculture Strategy.

Head teacher Surend Muda-liar thanked SPC/LRD: ‘These tools will surely assist us in im-proving our school garden, which will encourage our students to eat healthy food and know the value of growing their own food.

‘We are one of the few schools that allowed all our students to attend the Fiji Agriculture Show because we believe in encourag-ing agriculture amongst youths,’ he added.

SPC will continue to take every opportunity to encour-age youths to take up a career in farming. It recently organised essay and poster competitions for school children and results will be announced later this month.

Suva school rewarded in Fiji Agriculture Show

Government must act on Lowy Poll results: Yabaki

We are one of the few

schools that allowed all

our students to attend the

Fiji Agriculture Show because we believe in encouraging agriculture

amongst youth

The opportunity to take these steps, to inform the people of Fiji on their roles and responsibilities in the lead up to elections and ensure an inclusive consultation process.

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Indian Fiji

Two-thirds of the people in Fiji approve of steps taken by interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, a recent poll shows.

The poll by Australian think-tank Lowy Institute said Commodore Bainimarama had an approval rating of more than two thirds.

The poll was conducted on the main island, Viti Levu, in August, and polled 1032 people.

“Commodore Bainimarama has good support from 66 per cent of the people polled, and 65 per cent believe Fiji is heading in the right di-rection,” the survey showed.

“An overwhelming 95 per cent

of people support the right to vote in a free election, and around half the people felt the interim Government is doing a good job making progress to elections.”

The Pacific Islands forum, cur-rently meeting in Auckland, is seen as the most important regional or-ganisation for Fiji, and 79 per cent of people disapprove of Fiji’s suspen-sion from the regional organisation.

The majority of people believed the country should be left alone to sort out its return to democracy, and sanctions against the country should be lifted, the poll showed.

The Ministry of Information per-manent secretary Sharon Smith-Johns says the recent Lowy In-stitute opinion poll shows the difference in quality of leadership between Prime Minister Com-modore Voreqe Bainimarama and that of the Prime Minister of Aus-tralia Julia Gillard.

“With a 66 per cent approval rating Prime Minister Bainima-rama is almost three times more popular with the people of Fiji than the Prime Minister Gillard is with the people of Australia,” Ms Smith-Johns said.

“The poll has proven that the Fijian Government is commit-ted to the policies of good gover-nance and has courage to do what

is right for the people, if Fiji is to make progress.

“The citizens of Fiji approve of the Prime Minister and the Gov-ernment by a huge margin. So if our own people think we're doing a good job and that's all that matters. And it's thanks to the Australians themselves in the form of the Lowy Institute.

“This by no means suggests there isn’t still a massive amount of work to be done prior to elec-tions in 2014. We have a long way to go, however it certainly indi-cates that the reforms are reach-ing the people and they approve of the direction the Bainimarama Government is taking them,” Ms Smith-Johns added.

'Bainimarama more popular than Gilliard'

Fijian government welcomes Australian poll results

Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama told participants at the second Engaging with the Pacific meeting in Nadi last week his gov-ernment was committed to return-ing Fiji to democracy as previously announced.

Commodore Bainimarama hailed the forum as the perfect plat-form for reiterating the Roadmap to Democracy and advising neighbour-ing islands of Fiji's progress in pur-suing the plan.

"Such a meeting gives my gov-ernment the opportunity to brief you about the ongoing democratisation process in Fiji, the implementation

of the People's Charter, the reforms in Fiji and the lead-up to the consti-tutional development before elec-tions are held for parliamentary representation by September 2014," he said.

Speaking at the opening of the two-day forum in Nadi's Tanoa International Hotel, Commodore Bainimarama said the People's Charter, approved by nearly 65 per cent of the population, was the guiding principle of his government and would provide the fundamental principles for the new Fijian consti-tution.

"In the lead-up to the September

2014 elections for parliamentary representation, my Government has and will focus on lifting the living standards of all Fijians, provid-ing the trajectory to sustained eco-nomic growth, modernising our laws, removing systemic corruption, improving access to justice, imple-menting the legal and moral basis of a common and equal citizenry and ensuring the new constitution will enshrine the values and practice of one person one vote and give effect to true representative governance," he said.

The Engaging with the Pacific meeting ended Friday.

Bainimarama has two-thirds support, poll shows

Fiji is going to elections in September 2014.

The results of an independent Poll conducted by the Australian foreign policy think tank, the Lowy Insti-tute for International Policy was welcomed by the Ministry for In-formation permanent secretary, Sharon Smith-Johns today.

Ms Smith-Johns said the Lowy Institute Report showed the results of the Bainimarama Government’s objective of implementing reforms through the People’s Charter for Change, Peace and Progress which united the people of Fiji.

“The results shows the Govern-ment has been actively listening and paying attention to the views and concerns of various stakeholders, across the whole of the country,” the permanent secretary said.

“The Bainimarama Govern-ment has never wavered from its

roadmap towards parliamentary de-mocracy and this is clearly shown through the results of the report and the support of the nation.”

On the international front, the report has very accurately revealed the true sentiments of the people of Fiji where they “are concerned with the way in which the international community have treated Fiji since the 2006 take over ”.

“The majority of those polled said Fiji should be left alone to sort out its return to democracy, ex-pressing opposition to international pressure on the Fijian Govern-ment,” Ms Smith-Johns said.

It is heartening to see that while we have political differences with Australia the report reveals that 74 per cent of people polled, warmly regarded Australians and that

81 per cent said Australia should lift all sanctions and re-establish normal relations with Fiji.

Overall the report is extremely positive as stated in the report: “The Fijian Government has prom-ised it would improve basic ser-vices for the population. Its efforts to deliver services appear to have registered with citizens with 82 per cent saying the Government was doing a good job providing educa-tion, 71 per cent said it was doing a good job providing transport and 69 per cent said it was doing a good job delivering healthcare and health services”.

This clearly demonstrates that the Government is moving in the right direction and has the support of the people, Ms Smith-Johns add

Speaking at a Press Conference today (6/9/11) Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said Gov-ernment, through an advertise-ment in tomorrow’s Fiji Sun news-paper would call for expressions of interest for the registration of voters through an electronic voter regis-tration system.

The advertisement will call for companies that have experience in electronic voter registration system to start from January 1, next year.

“Essentially, this advertise-ment calls for companies that have experience in voter registration through electronic system to com-mence work by 1 January, 2012,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

“We are giving ourselves the maximum of six months to com-plete voter registration, so by June 30, 2012 all voter registration should be completed.”

Government is on track to see that elections are held in September 2014 as stipulated in the Strategic Framework for Change.

This is to ensure that a fair system of voting is established.

Those people who will turn 18 after the registration, will have the opportunity to register as voters

once they turn 18 prior to the Sep-tember 2014 elections.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said they were also writing to the various Heads of Missions and other mul-tilateral agencies interested in par-ticipating in the electronic voter registration.

“We are also writing to devel-opment partners and various other overseas missions to see the inter-est. What we are also supplying to them is a work plan leading up to the registration and of course during the registration,” the AG said.

“We have also quite interest-ingly made contact with companies off shore that in fact have written to us by themselves, on their own initiative, have offered the service obviously for a fee to register voters through electronic system.”

The Attorney-General said

they were looking at registering about 660,000 Fijians.

“And just by way of interest, there is one particular company that carried out electronic voter regis-tration in one of the African coun-tries where they had 869,000 voters and they registered them within six

weeks,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum added. “For Fiji, if you look at the 2007

census, and given the demograph-ics, we are probably looking at the registration of about 660,000 Fijians. That is a much smaller number and we believe that if we use such companies, of course we’ll

go through the tender process, but there are companies out there who can do this in a very short span of time.”

He highlighted that electronic voter registration would ensure the elimination of voter and political party fraud.

The Attorney-General said they did not want a repeat of what hap-pened in the 2006 elections.

“If you read the European Union (EU) report on the 2006 elections, notwithstanding the fact that they said that the elections was incredible, they also pointed out, for example, in one of the constitu-encies in Vanua Levu, there was a voter turnout of 101 per cent. You cannot have a voter turnout of 101 per cent.

Obviously, some people voted more than once and also it did point out that there was a number anoma-lies pertaining to registration, such as your names would appear in dif-ferent constituencies,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum added.

He said electronic voter registration was to minimize fraud, ensure accuracy of data and to ensure that people voted only once.

“The budgetary allocation for this exercise will go through the normal 2012 budgetary discus-sions and deliberations and we look forward to the work commencing on January 1, 2012 and ending at the latest by 30th June 2012,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

National Voter registration to begin in January 2012

The Attorney-General said they did not want a repeat of what happened in the 2006 elections. he said

electronic voter registration was to minimize fraud, ensure accuracy of data and to ensure that people

voted only once.


Indian Fijiheritage

Why Indian food is not just “CUrrY” ram lINGam

Indian cuisine is probably the most diverse cuisine in the world but sadly the perception about Indian food is that of “some curry”. The heritage of Indian cuisine goes back thousands of years and boasts of an assorted menu of cuisines which includes at least 300 ways of cooking a potato. While Indian food is synonymous with “curry, naan bread and pappadoms”, there is scope for a better awareness of authentic Indian food, which is more than just curry.

For many a folks, Indian food means just “curry and spices” as if all Indians just munch curry every day and tagged as curry-munchers! It’s like saying the Japanese are sushi-munchers and Italians are pasta-munchers. It is unfortunate that the image of Indian food has been pigeon-holed into a masala dabba. This perception is so ingrained that every time the Indian opens a lunch box, he/she gets asked ‘Is it curry?’

Ask a typical Indian in India where you can have curry and in all likelihood, he/she would give you a blank look as this strange word ‘curry’ is not found in the Indian vo-cabulary. The closest word is ‘kari’ in Tamil or ‘kadhi’ in Gujarati and Marathi. The general perception of Indian food comes from the take-away curry in Indian restaurants or food courts. But what is not known is these popular foods are generally the ones reserved for special occa-sions.

Anyway, here is a diversity test on Indian food. How many of us know about the ‘Idiappam’ and ‘Puttu’ from South India or the Maharash-

trian ‘Bhaakhar vadi’, ‘Ussal Vadaa’ and ‘Pitla’ or the Bengali ‘Macher Jol’ or ‘Bangla Kichudi’. Tried the Gujarati ‘Ponk’ or ‘Jowar Kichu’? How about a Kashmiri ‘Kahwa’ or the Garhwali ‘Fanna’? What about the Kumouni ‘Mandua ki Roti’, the Konkani ‘Garadudde Paayas’, the Odiya ‘Jahni Posta’ or the Himachali ‘Channa Madra’? Because India is such a diverse country, even Indians might not know some of these recipes. “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are” once said the renowned French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Not sure how even a Brillat-Savarin would have fared in this test.

Indian cuisine is plausibly the most varied food culture in the world that even within a state, there are different food preparations and food combinations. It is so complex that it’s difficult to define Indian cuisine. In fact, Indian cuisine is a misno-mer as there is no such thing as one Indian cuisine.

While the popular chicken tikka masalas and the nan breads have travelled far and wide into the food

courts around the world, the authen-tic Indian and regional cuisine is still unexplored by the masses. Just take the āloo (potato) recipes from India. Though it is well known that India has some 300 different ways to cook a potato, have a guess on how many āloo recipes one could think of. The cookery website of India’s best selling cookery author and chef Tarla Dalāl has some 4000+ Indian recipes.

The website has 900+ āloo based recipes like dum āloo, āloo bhajia, āloo bhaji, āloo bonda, āloo capsi-cum, āloo chaat, āloo chana chat, āloo gobi masala, āloo kachori, āloo ki puri, āloo ki sabzi, āloo ki tikki, āloo methi, āloo mutter, āloo pakora etc where āloo is either the ‘hero’ or the ‘supporting actor’. Add to that a few hundred complementary chutney recipes. The Indian menu card is actually a menu book with so many appetisers, breakfast items, main course meals, tiffin items, snacks, pickles, papads, salads, sweets, desserts, drinks that this food heritage is incomparable. Just a cursory look at any Indian sweets

tells us that India has sweets that could be made of milk (rosogulla), wheat (halwa), rice (kheer) cereals and lentils (besan laddoo), vegeta-bles (carrot halwa) or fruits etc.

Given this depth and diversity, the menu cards in Indian restau-rants hardly reflect the variety in India’s cuisine. What an overseas Indian family eats at home is rarely the same flavour and taste to what is available in Indian restaurants. The locals’ only exposure to Indian food is through Indian restaurants and most people don't have enough in-teraction with Indian families to see what is eaten on a daily basis.

Moreover, when one goes to these Indian food joints, one gets asked a surprising question “How would you like it – mild, medium or hot? By the way some even give a fourth option i.e. the “Extreme! Bring it on” option. Go to a regular dhaaba in Punjab or a restaurant in Chennai and ask for “mild” food, the guy will respond with a ‘whaaat?’ and a strange look specially reserved for a desi NRI.

Indian Cuisine is not just about

diverse food preparations but the serving traditions also play an im-portant part. Remember the ‘shaadi ka khaana’ and the way each item is served sequentially in right portions. Traditionally served, every food item comes in one thāli (big plate). So we have a North Indian thāli, South Indian thāli, Rajasthani thāli, Punjabi thāli, Mārwāri thāli, Guja-rati thāli, Maharashtrian thāli etc.

The art of cookery has been so perfected in the 10,000 year old continuous Indian civilisation that besides the flavour they also have excellent health value. Many recipes that are based on Ayurvedic principles not only satisfy the taste buds but also take care of the physi-cal wellbeing. The goodness in the masalas used widely in Indian cooking is also well-documented and the subject of regular research.

So Indian food is not just one type of food. Served authentically in the right portion size, it can be the right food for the right climate.

Scientists in Germany have found that sniffer dogs are very reliable when it comes to detecting lung cancer.

The researchers used trained sniffer dogs, - two German shep-herds, an Australian shepherd and a Labrador, to detect lung cancer by using their sharp sense of smell. It has been understood that tumors produce volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), which a dog can smell out.

The 220 patients to be tested fell into three groups: a) 110 healthy

people b) 60 with lung cancer and c) 50 with chronic obstructive pulmo-nary disease, which is a lung disease, caused by the narrowing of the lung airways.

The subjects breathed into a fleece-filled tube, which absorbed all sorts of smells. The dogs were made to breathe into the tubes; they sat down in front of those tubes in which they could "smell" cancer.

It is to the dogs' credit that the success rate of this screening was 71% and that they did not get con-

fused with chemicals linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or smoking.

Dr Thorsten Walles, from Schil-lerhoehe Hospital, who is the chief investigator says: "In the breath of patients with lung cancer, there are likely to be different chemicals to normal breath samples and the dogs' keen sense of smell can detect this difference at an early stage of the disease. Our results confirm the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer". "This is a big step forward

in the diagnosis of lung cancer, but we still need to precisely identify the compounds observed in the exhaled breath of patients. It is unfortu-nate that dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer!"he exclaims.

As it is not possible for dogs to be present in clinical settings, research-ers are working on "electronic noses" which would substitute the dogs.

Science information officer at Cancer Research UK, Dr Laura McCallum, said: "Although there are now some intriguing studies suggesting that dogs may be able to smell cancer in some situations, we're still a long way from under-standing exactly which 'smelly mol-ecules' they are detecting and if these studies are accurate".

"Because it would be extremely difficult to use dogs in the clinic, further research is being carried out to learn more about these molecules that are released from tumors and whether devices such as 'electronic noses' could help sniff them out," Laura remarked.

The study has been published in the European Respiratory Journal.

Trained Sniffer Dogs Help to Screen Lung Cancerhealth

The 220 patients to be tested fell into three groups: a) 110 healthy people b) 60 with lung cancer and c) 50 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a lung disease, caused by the narrowing of the lung airways.

Why Indian food is not just “CUrrY”


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Salman Khan appeared on this Eid as ‘Body-guard Lovely Singh’ in the Atul Agnihotri produced and Siddique directed film “Body-guard’. As a follow up to his ongoing screen demotion, he took up the mantle of a private bodyguard in his latest release, down from an IPS officer in ‘Wanted’ and ‘Sub-inspector’ in ‘Dabbang’. The success of his films however, seems to be inversely proportional to his de-motion and perhaps this film will also earn a lot of revenue sans the critical accolades. It is a top grosser already.

The PloT:

The movie opens with Lovely Singh being as-signed to protect Divya (Kareena Kapoor), the daughter of Sartaj Singh (Raj Babbar), pro-tecting whom Lovely’s father had died. Divya is in fatal danger from Sartaj’s foe (Aditya Panchali and his clan).

Salman now has the duty to follow Divya and her friend Maya (Hazel Keech) every-where they go (even to ladies’ toilet) and this ensured some funny moments on the college campus.

Lovely also has the job to teach them self-defence and give them fitness training. All these fall hard on Divya and her friend.

So Divya attempts to distract Lovely by making fake calls as Chaya and tries to portray Chaya as a girl who has fallen deeply in love with Lovely.

Divya has fun playing dual roles and Lovely slowly falls in love with Chaya (or rather her voice) while protecting Divya from all sorts of danger.

Lovely fights off the goons who attack Divya at a party killing one of the brothers of the clan lord played by Aditya Pancholi.

Divya gets highly impressed as she watches Lovely to be deeply in love with Chaya and yet keeps his duty as first priority which he does by protecting Divya from bullets, knives and even aimed pen-caps.

And no points for guessing, that in the af-termath of all that, Divya really starts falling in love with Lovely and the after-drama begins.

To Lovely, Divya is his ‘madamji’ and the daughter of his god-worshipped ‘malik’. Divya neither finds it possible to remove Chaya from Lovely’s heart nor has she the courage to tell him the truth.

She is also afraid that her family would never accept her marriage to Lovely. Amidst all this confusion of dual roles, bodies flying

and muscles flexing, word reaches her parents’ ear that she is in love with Lovely and is plan-ning to elope with him.

Quite predictably, crisis strikes from all angles in this potboiler and Divya is attacked by the gang from which Lovely was protect-ing her.

Lovely mashes the goons like potato and once again single-handedly plays the super-man without the cape.

Then just when the audience felt a glimmer of hope at a slight reprieve from all the sweaty action following an age old storyline, climax after climax ensues.

Divya saves Salman from her father’s out-burst by telling him that she is not his love and his love is waiting at the station.

To establish it she sends her friend Maya to pose as Chaya whom Salman had never seen. Maya was supposed to reveal the truth to Lovely as soon as the situation is under control. (Maya rhyming with Chaya and a hunk named Lovely, I think someone ran out of actual believable names or perhaps the characters are based on a true story from the 60’s. Any guesses anyone?)

Maya however, suddenly joins the mix and having secretly nurtured feelings for Lovely, she betrays Divya and settles with him.

But if you thought that’s the end then boy you are wrong.

After a few years, Lovely’s son learns of this story through a diary which his mother had left for him (Maybe the kid thought of making the movie; that could explain a lot.). Then when Lovely pays a visit to ailing Sar-taj’s house his son asks Divya, who unbeliev-ably has been waiting dutifully for her prince charming, to be his mother.

Shocked? Don't be, Just consult the recent Bollywood dictionary and look up the word plot; I am sure you will find the answer, that is if there is such a word in the recent version!

Predictably Sartaj gives his approval and the destined lovers finally met. Lovely soon finds out that Divya was the real (actually unreal) Chaya and an obvious mushy-mushy happy ending follows so that you can come out of the theatre and go to the gym to work on your own hopes of loosing that MBA job and getting those mean muscles that Sallu, the bodyguard, has.

And if you are thinking about future and money, then don't worry, this bodyguard life gets you all that you need with the ‘Lovely’ girl as surplus.

DIReCTIon AnD ACTInG:

Salman acted well enough in this film despite the opportunities (or rather the lack if it) and it will be wrong to say that his muscles did all the talking for him.

But as ever the latter was the showstopper as Lovely flaunts them whenever there is a chance to do so.

Salman has tried hard to imbibe the body language of a hardcore bodyguard and to a good extent had achieved it. He also portrays the soft side of his character with a touch of experienc

Kareena Kapoor has done fairly a good job as Divya. She seems to be slightly more mature as she did not allow her ownself in-truding into her character. Still her character is quite ‘Kareenatic’, but one can blame that on the stereotype script.

The supporting cast did their job profes-sionally. Rajat Rawaii was the comic relief as Tsunami Singh and this overweight character seemed to be a bit overused in the film. Hazel Keech as Maya earned good attention of the audience as the second lead actress.

Thinking of making a film? Well it’s easy and for recent pointers you can take a look at director Siddique. Take a south Indian pot-boiler, translate it and just copy-paste the end product on the screen with an overkill of large muscles and overdrawn action sequences.

Siddique maintained a continuous steadi-ness throughout the film and exploited Salman and his muscles as much as possible. The stunt of Lovely Singh will give blushes to even ‘Spi-derman’ and ‘Batman’. Thus the longevity of ‘Rajnistyle’ was again proved through ‘Body-guard’.

The director brings a blend of softness and hard punches to Salman’s character, which is the current overused formula.

The particular scene just before interval where Lovely at first seemed to hug Kareena but seconds later it was revealed that he actu-ally posed himself to repel a fatal knife attack on her deserves much appreciation if this would have been an Abbas-Mastan thriller but then again this is Telegu-Bollywood we are talking about, so anything goes.

veRDICT:

Bodyguard has all the elements to be a super hit from action, comedy romance, an item number from Katrina and the expected twist at the end, despite the shallow storyline.

Bodyguard is a film which will entertain you if action and muscular posing is you trivia of the day or else move back and let your un-fortunate friends tell you what they think of this Sallu flick.

Salman’s celluloid demotion generates revenue

Mumbai: Yash Raj Films’ new youth films studio, Y-Films, kick-started the marketing of it’s next production by un-veiling the first look poster of ‘Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge’.

A romantic comedy set against the backdrop of social networking, Mujhse Fraaand-ship Karoge tells the story of two losers, Vishal & Preity who fake their identities online to woo two really hot people, Malvika & Rahul.

Little do they know that the person they totally hate in real life is the same person, they’ve fallen in love with online.

The filmmarks the debut of 4 very talented actors, Saqib Saleem, Saba Azad, Tara D’Souza & Nishant Dahiya

besides director, Nupur Asthana who was previously known for hugely popular cult TV shows like Hip Hip Hurray & Mahi

Way and one of the most tal-ented indie musicians of India, Raghu Dixit as composer.

The film releases October 14.

Y-Films unveils ‘mujhse Fraaandship Karoge’

Mumbai: India’s first Face-

book love story Mujhse

Fraaandship Karoge (MFK)

has started off with a ro-

mantic song about chatting,

poking, liking and well, lots of

flirting.Scored by Raghu Dixit, one

of the country’s most talented

indie musicians, “Baatein

Shuru” has been sung by

Shefali Alvares and Joi Barua.

‘MFK’ is a romantic com-

edy set against the backdrop

of social networking.

Mujhse Fraaandship

Karoge tells the story of two

losers, Vishal & Preity who

fake their identities online to

woo two really hot people,

Malvika & Rahul.

Little do they know that

the person they totally hate in

real life is the same person,

they’ve fallen in love with

online.The film marks the debut

of four actors-Saqib Saleem,

Saba Azad, Tara

D’Souza & Nishant Da-

hiya- besides director Nupur

Asthana, who was previously

known for TV shows like Hip

Hip Hurray & Mahi Way and of

course, Raghu Dixit.

Facebook love story gets its first song

j P moNdal

MOVIE REVIEW


IndianBollywood

New Delhi: Actor Sonakshi Sinha launched sports lifestyle company Puma's new Autumn Winter col-lection shoes- Faas-in Gurgaon re-cently.

The collection is grounded in performance and features a biome-chanical design technology exclu-sive to Puma, called BioRide,that provides a naturally responsive ride – helping runners get into their own rhythm for increased speed and performance," said the company.

At the same event, the Jamaican carnival and the hunt for city’s own Bolt began at Ambi Mall, Gurgoan.

The participants needed to test their running speed by running on the treadmill or speed track.

Dabang beauty Sonakshi Sinha was present to cheer on the runners.

The three fastest runners won gift vouchers worth 15k, 12k and 10k and also got a chance to get a free photo at the photo booth by doing the Faas test.

DJ Reggae pumped up and churned out some of the best mixes along with the Jamaican dancers who enticed one and all with the deftness of their spinning moves.

Rajiv Mehta, Puma India Man-aging Director, said, “Faas running shoes are fast as fast can be, light-weight and come with everything you need for running, and nothing more. The trademarked BioRide

technology was developed by ob-serving the fastest athletes associ-ated with the brand, such as Usain Bolt, and studying their movement and foot placement.”

He further said, “Different running styles require different padding and flexibility, so Puma has released the Faas range of shoes in 3 lines – 250, 300 and 500, and we shall release more variants in the near future.”

Priced at Rs 3,999 (Faas 300) and Rs 5,999 (Faas 500), the range from Autumn/Winter 2011 features bright, bold colors with overlays and design details for each style.

Sonakshi Sinha unveils Puma's A/W shoes

Mumbai: Riding high on the success of its family car Ritz, automobile major Maruti Suzuki is all set to invade the TV sets by bringing an all new reality show Ritz—Jeele ye pal.

The reality show goes on air from Sept 10. Ritz Jeele ye pal has been specially designed in asso-ciation with LIN TV, a division of Lintas Media Group to connect and engage with its customers.

Talking about the uniqueness of Ritz –JLYP, Mr. Shashank Srivas-tava, Chief General Manager Mar-keting, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “The Ritz has a special place in Maruti Suzuki portfolio. Pegged for young families, the Ritz has gradu-ally strengthened its position with the Indian buyers and their families.

"We are confident this pro-gramme will help us engage with the young families even better. Ritz

Jeele ye pal is a perfect platform where a family can sit together and enjoy the goodness of Ritz while being engaged with the adventure and action.”

Ritz Jeele Ye Pal show will see teams of 6 celebrities and their mates embark on a fun filled and exciting journey with their constant companion - Ritz.

Ritz Jeele ye pal will be telecast on Star Plus over 6 weekends, Sat-urdays and Sundays at 7:30pm start-ing on Sept 10.

The 6 teams comprise of a tele-vision celebrity paired with a team mate selected from a country wide

audition. The show which will span across 12 power packed episodes, encompassing emotion, drama and happiness will bring out a fitting articulation of the brand Ritz’s promise ‘Live the Moment’. The contestants will traverse the journey of Ritz Jeele ye pal filled with both tough and easy challenges.

The celebrity contestants include Kinshuk Mahajan, Annupriya Kapoor, Karan Wahi, Rati Pandey, Gaurav Khanna and Pavitra Puniya.

The celebrity winner will receive the grand prize of living their dream vacation and the teammate wins a brand new Maruti Suzuki Ritz.

Kolkata: It’s raining good news for Bengali film Nobel Chor (Nobel Thief) and its makers.

Producer Ashwani Sharma on Friday announced that Mithun Chakraborty-starrer Nobel Chor has been officially selected for screening in the 55th BFI London Film Festival 2011 from Oct 12th -27th.

It will be shown in the World section and will be have two screenings. The occasion will be presented as the European Premiere of the film.

The film will also be showcased at 16th Busan International Film Festival in Korea.

“The film will be first having its World Premiere in 16th Busan

International Film Festival where it will be shown in the Section A Window on Asian Cinema and will have three screenings from October 6th – 14th 2011,” said director Suman Ghosh.

Actor Mithun Chakraborty plays the main lead Bhanu, who finds the Nobel Medal of world bard Rabin-dranath Tagore which was stolen from Shantiniketan in 2004.

What happens to the medal and Bhanu in a turn of events forms the storyline of Nobel Chor.

Another Bengali icon Soumitra Chatterjee stars in the role of Mas-termoshai in the film.

Well-known actors like Harsh Chhaya and Rupa Ganguly also star in the film in important characters.

Mithun's Nobel Chor reaches London

No time to date: ranveer SinghMumbai: Actor Ranveer Singh just stormed into our hearts with his electrifying perfor-mance in Band Baaja Baaraat, and one thing in this movie that we were all talking about was the chemistry.

Then to further heat the flames, the stories started flocking in; Sonakshi Sinha and other Bollywood babes started getting their names linked with this casanova.

We caught up with Ranveer and to our sur-prise he opened up more then expected.

“It amuses me the amount of curiosity that surrounds my love life. I do have friends in the industry, and a lot of them are female, but I’m not dating any of them. I am only interested in building my career right now. Love will happen when it has to. I’m not looking for it, but if it happens it happens,” he said.

So here it is people, straight from the horse’s mouth. Ranveer Singh is very much single but it doesn’t look like he is willing to mingle.

maruti Suzuki ritz enters reality TV

Mumbai: The struggle of anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare will be captured on celluloid as a Matathi film will be made on the Gandhian.

Arun Nalawade of Oscar-nominated film Shwaas, will be playing Anna in 'Mala Anna Vhy-aychay' (I want to become Anna) to be produced and directed by Ganesh Shinde.

“By watching television, I have already started learning Anna's body language and am trying to imitate his voice. Playing Anna is the biggest challenge in my life

and I am reading up on him. I shall try to give justice to the role," Na-lawade was quoted as saying by Mid-Day.

Shinde has already done some live shooting at Ramleela Maidan

in New Delhi where Hazare fasted for a stronger Lokpal Bill.

"I have also taken some shots from Mumbai and Ralegansid-dhi of the agitations supporting Hazare," Shinde told Mid-Day.

"This film is about an unsuc-cessful heart-broken youth who goes to commit suicide, but gets inspired by Hazare's work and finds the real purpose of his life," he said.

Anna fasted for 12 days de-manding a stronger Lokpal Bill to be passed by the Parliament. He broke his fast on Sunday.

Anna Hazare in Marathi film

Indian

India

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Mumbai: Ever since Bollywood actor Celina Jaitley announced her marriage with boyfriend Peter Hagg on Twitter, she is busy thanking her fans and well-wishers on the micro blogging site.

"Thank you again for the many thousands of wishes pouring in for r wedding from all over the world..Peter & myself r very touched and blessed," she tweeted to her fans.

Her marriage remained a secret affair till the model-turned-actor disclosed it herself.

"Beloved tweeple. ..With great pleasure I would like to announce my wedding with @peterhaag on

the 23rd of last month at a thousand year old monastery in Austria.

We seek your blessings and good wishes, and apologise for the delayed announcement due to a family tragedy," she had announced on Twitter on Aug 27.

She got married to Dubai-based Austrian hotelier Peter Hagg on July 23.

The couple, who has been seeing each other for nearly one-and-a-half years, tied the nuptial knot in a 1000-year-old monastery in Austria.

The picture posted by Celina with her hubby shows her wearing a white printed saree.

Newly-wed Celina Jaitley wishes her fans Los Angeles/Mumbai: Universal

Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company, and Desi Hits!, the world's premier East / West fusion entertainment platform, have signed a worldwide recording agreement with Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra.

As part of this global deal, Pri-yanka, the heartthrob of millions and the reigning queen of Indian cinema, will release her highly an-ticipated debut music album in North America with Desi Hits through In-terscope Records and in other Inter-national markets on Island Records UK.

A trained Western Classical singer, Priyanka is currently in the studio, writing and recording her debut pop album, which will be sung in English.

Troy Carter, CEO of Atom Factory, who also manages Lady Gaga, has signed with Priyanka to manage her music career across the globe.

"It has been a long cherished dream which is finally coming true," said Priyanka about her music debut.

"I am truly excited to have an opportunity to present my musical dimension on a world platform. I am privileged to be a part of the Universal Music - Desi Hits! family and to be working with some of

the most illustrious names in the music industry. This is a fascinat-ing new experience for me and I am thoroughly enjoying the journey," added Priyanka.

Priyanka is also the first major international signing for Desi Hits, which was founded by Anjula Ach-aria-Bath in partnership with UMG in 2010 as the preeminent home for highly creative artists with Indian/South Asian roots.

Acharia-Bath, the Chief Execu-tive of fusion multi-platform media company Desi Hits!, flew to India with UMG UK Chief Executive David Joseph to sign on Priyanka.

“Priyanka is an international superstar who has captivated mil-lions around the world. Her foray into the American music industry meets the vision of our company, which strives to fuse the best of the eastern and western culture to create magic.

It’s truly a dream come true, and we are very excited to bring this multi-talented artist to the rest of the world,” said Anjula Acharia-Bath, CEO of Desi Hits!

“Pop music has always had a love affair with Indian culture and with Priyanka's unique talent and expe-rience, we have the opportunities to push the boundaries of popular culture,” stated Jimmy Iovine,

Chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records. “I feel this is an amazing opportunity for all of us.”

“Bollywood has had Priyanka to itself for too long,” commented David Joseph, Chairman and Chief Executive of Universal Music UK. “She has exceptional talent and we look forward to launching her re-cording career around the world.”

"We believe wholeheartedly in Priyanka's talent, drive, and creative vision," stated Anthony Saleh, Ex-ecutive Vice President and General Manager of Atom Factory.

"We are confident in Priyanka's ability to redefine pop music on her own terms"

Her music debut will add another dimension to this actor, humanitar-ian, green crusader and brand am-bassador.

Priyanka, one of the most recog-nized talents in Indian cinema, is a recipient of the prestigious Indian National Film Awards amongst many others. She is acknowledged as one of the most versatile actors with many path breaking perfor-mances.

Priyanka is also actively involved in her role as the National Ambas-sador for UNICEF in India and the Green Ambassador of a nationwide environment awareness campaign in India.

Priyanka Chopra debuts in pop musicBollywood

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What do you think about the new generation of singers?You know what, I am scared for the new generation of singers. I have sung so many songs… how many more will I sing? But what will the new generation do? Now-a-days, no record company is ready to release new albums in face of piracy and internet downloading. What will happen to the new singers…will they stop singing if they don’t get films! If you do stage shows, you get money, but in the process, the shouting takes a toll on your voice. We seriously need to stop this piracy thing or else the singers will be in deep trouble. But the new talents get platform at reality shows…Now-a-days we can pick and bring anyone at reality shows…the Boogie Woogie types. Say, for three months the person stays 24×7 in front of public eye, he gets his two minute fame. But what happens after the show is over? The ‘saas bahu’ serial (Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) went for years…people got addicted to it. But now that the serial has gone off air, who remembers it? You have reigned for decades, you have seen the changing times. Why do you think, we don’t get soothing melodies like ‘Paan khaye saiyaan humaro’ now-a-days?The films have changed totally….let aside the songs. Name a recent film where you can spot a soothing village scene or find an in-nocent ‘Gaon ki chhori’ singing love tunes for her beloved! Sorry to say, there is hardly a sensible music director or a lyricist around at present. See what sort of film titles we have?…’Kaminey’ …can’t even differen-tiate if it’s a film or an abuse. Earlier, the ‘mahaul’ was something else…Uttambabu (actor Uttam Kumar) stage pe aate the, toh hum mar jaate the jawani mein. Now it’s all about ‘cheekhna chillana’. We only get dance songs without situations in films.

So, you do miss Pancham (husband and music composer RD Burman) now?Why only Pancham…I miss Kishore (Kumar), Rafi, Latadidi (Mangeshkar)…everyone…those times were different. We used to have so much fun at recordings…if I start telling you it will take at least four days to complete. I used to teach Hindi to Pancham. But he never taught me Benga-li…I learnt the language by listening to RD converse with his Bengali friends like Kishore in-between recordings. Now-a-days I don’t feel like singing in films. And as it is, there won’t be a second Asha. With whom did you enjoy singing duets most?Latadidi…because there was always this challenge within that ‘kuch karna hi hai’ (I have to do something special). Even today, there is a Lata-Asha comparison…That comparison is unavoidable because we are sisters. And since I am the younger one, people will tend to compare my singing with her. Had I been from outside the family, these things could have been avoided. Is there anything more that you want to achieve in life?What I want is not important, what happens, is. I have never planned life because it is not necessary that what I fix, will be ful-filled. My life has taken me from one place to another…an ordinary woman like me has got name, fame, RD, family, children, grandchildren, respect…what else can I want. But given a choice, I have twin grand-sons…I want to dance at their weddings. Any plans for your birthday on Sept 8?No plans yet (smiles).

With a career spanning over six decades, Asha has done playback singing for over 1000 Bollywood movies. She has recorded many private albums and has participated in numerous concerts in India and abroad and was in New Zealand recently.Correspondent Sreya Basu in conversation with Asha Bhosle:

Asha turns 78 but her voice is ageless

Bollywood

mumbai: Veteran singer Asha Bhosle turned 78 on September 8.

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Mumbai: The festival of Lord Ganesha is back and actor Shraddha Kapoor the leading actress of Luv ka the End and Teen Patti, is as excited as ever.

Source’s have it that her family always bring Ganesha to their home and Shrad-dha, ever since she can remember she was overjoyed to have Ganpati Bappa home.

“Its been a ritual, I've grown up wor-shipping Ganesha every year of my entire life & am blessed to celebrate the festival in my very own home. It is important to keep our culture and timeless beliefs in mind," says the young Bollywood starlet.

She shows a lot of maturity as she goes on to talk about tradition going hand in hand with protecting the environment.

"In recent years our society has started understanding that this beautiful festival is not the problem, the really issue in hand is the POP idols immersions and the plastic bags with flowers which have been dam-aging our mother earth for so many years so thus came the introduction of the Eco friendly Green Ganesha."

“I do believe that we have to care for planet earth and adapt according to its needs to preserve it and make it better. Hence Green Ganesha, I strongly support it & will be making sure that just like its inception, this year as well, I bring a Green Ganesha to my house and urge everone not to dump plastic in the sea," she says.

Well honestly it’s very encouraging to see young Bollywood adapt and try and change traditions to bring way for a bright-er future.

Shraddha goes Green this Ganpati


Indian

INGreDIeNTs250g – urad dal

½ tsp- cumin seeds ( jeera)

½ tsp- salt

Oil- to deep fry

Wash and soak dal in enough water overnight.

Drain off excess water the following day and grind dal to a smooth paste adding 2 or 3 tablespoons of water to it if it is too thick. In a pan fry cumin seeds and add to the batter half a teaspoon of salt.

Heat sufficient oil in a wok.

With tablespoon drop bhalla batter in it and fry until light golden.

Drain on to an absorbent paper. These are now called bhallas.

DHAI ( CurD)3cups- curd½ tsp- sugar½ tsp- red chilli powder1tsp- roasted cumin powder¼ tsp- rock salt (kala namak)Add all the ingredients to the curd and beat it.

TAMArIND CHuTNey15- dates (khajur)1tsp – roasted cumin powder½ cup- gur grated (jaggery)1cup- tamarind pulp½ tsp- rock salt (kala namak)1tsp- red chilli powderSalt according to tasteWash, stone dates and chop roughly. Mix together dates, jaggery, tamarind pulp, cumin powder, rock salt, red chilli powder and salt into six cups of water. Cook on medium heat until it comes to a boil, reduce heat and continue to cook for six to eight minutes and then cool it.

DAHI BHALLA

reCIPeBy Ruby Dhillon

Column

All of the above are not reasons for ‘needy’ eating but enforced ways of feeding yourself, even when you are not hungry? Wonder why this happens?

The so called ‘craving ‘or ‘urge to eat’ or whatever you call it, is not advisable!!

Majority of my clients mention they eat ‘involuntarily’ due to some other activity and not when the body needs it

This snacking or grazing can add extra calories to your daily intake and eventually impact the waistline. Often eating can be just a pleasur-able activity and is used to combat stress but unfortunately this is just our belief and not a fact.

Keeping the pantry or the fridge open and gazing at it can tempt you to eat at unusual times but more often dig in to the tempting choco-

late bars or the cookie which may be a bad choice.

Mums generally tend to finish off leftovers from their loved ones thinking they are expected to do this….stop doing so…this is not needed …….chuck it away ……….your stomach is not a rubbish bin.

Eating while cooking or cleaning is common however these add up to your calories, make sure you snack on healthier options like a fruit before you enter the kitchen.

Snacking itself is not a bad ac-tivity, as a fact it is recommended to have 3 meals and 3 snacks a day which help prevent the urge to binge however it is important to realise the limitations of snacking and that your bodies do count everything that you eat , it doesn’t discriminate …….so being mindful is the first thing

If you don’t have the self control,

Snacking – Is it right?varSha aSraNI

l Back from work at 5 pm and dinner at 7 pm - Are you feeling hungry?

l Catching a late night movie and you want to nibble on something - may be?

l Unable to sleep as too stressed with the day’s activities – craving for a chocolate bar to cheer up the mood.

l Finish the leftover pack of chips my little daughter was munching

don’t buy it / don’t preserve it in the pantry

Ensure you keep healthy snacks handy, fruit, nuts, trim milk, dairy food / yoghurts and healthy fruit bars are good choices, don’t stock cookies , cakes , muffins , ice-cream or chocolates (leave them far enough out of your reach or hidden in the pantry)

If your mind tends to divert to food, eat a (healthy) snack first don’t starve as this can worsen it, go for a walk or talk to a friend, the brain needs a few minutes to wind off that craving.

Ensure you keep all unhealthy snacks out of reach from your kids too - best is don’t purchase and keep it for treats only, mind the portion sizes of the treats too.

Be alert 24/7 - this means condi-tion your sub-conscious mind about not eating the ‘wrong’ foods, this develops into a habit for life eventu-ally.

Be active, it has wonderful effect on cravings and makes you feel better.

Never starve, eat when hungry, it reduces the chances of binge eating.

Till next time – Be happy and eat healthy.This article is a general guideline ONLY, if you have any medical condition and for individ-ual conditions you should consult a health professional or your medical practitioner immediately.Varsha Asrani is a New Zealand registered clinical dietitian, for personal consultations, queries, suggestions and feedback she can be contacted on [email protected]

TO ArrANGe THe BHAllAs½ cup- mint chutney

1 inch- ginger piece cut into thin strips

2tbsp- coriander leaves chopped

Red chilli powder and cumin powder

Put bhallas in sufficient quantity of hot water. Leave for two minutes. Squeeze between your palms to drain out water.

Place bhallas on a plate and cover with curd. Add mint chutney and tamarind chutney. Sprinkle red chilli powder and roasted cumin pow-der on top. Garnish with coriander leaves, ginger julienne and serve.


Indian

indian weekender #61

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