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Mumbai SAys ‘I do’

India is increasingly wanting to get married in South Africa – and Mumbai wants to get married there the most.
by Richard Holt

We probably receive about 10 to 15 Indian enquiries for South African weddings per year, and the majority of these would be from Mumbai. However, not all these are from Indians living in India, but from Indian couples living around the world. The enquiries include multicultural weddings, where one of the couple is Indian.  They can be for either smaller intimate celebrations (with the couple only, or a few close relatives) that combine the wedding with a honeymoon in SA, or for larger grandiose destination weddings. Our largest in the latter category has been for 180 guests from all over the world.

All of our Indian couples definitely have an ‘international’ presence – most of them now reside outside of India, but insist on bringing some part of India into the celebration. Very often, couples are looking for something more exotic, adventurous and different than a traditional home-based wedding, although whilst getting married abroad, they still tend to incorporate traditional elements into their wedding celebrations.

Many factors can affect people’s desire for a destination wedding and sometimes, family dynamics can play a big part. We find that generally, our destination wedding couples are a little bit older and they pay for the wedding themselves, rather than relying on family. This gives them more flexibility of choice. In addition, because there is such a large Indian population in South Africa, there are also large Indian influences on the culture there too. For example, Indian couples who don’t want to venture too far from tradition can easily acquire Indian-influenced food choices or fuse their food with South African elements.

The growth of multiculturalism is a big influence on weddings, where couples from different countries and cultures choose a different destination to accommodate both parties’ backgrounds. This reason alone is responsible for a large proportion of our destination weddings, and we have married off several Indians who are getting married to people from different countries and religions. Combining the wedding and honeymoon celebrations also plays a big factor, and in this regard, southern Africa offers huge advantages.

There is no doubt that culturally, Indians negotiate much more than other cultures around pricing and specific details in the wedding planning process. There seems to be a real focus on attention to detail and being involved at all levels of the process. Incorporating Indian wedding trends is also very important for Indian couples.

Richard Holt is Group CEO of Concepts Collection, one of the leading wedding planners in South Africa. The firm has managed over 400 weddings in SA.

(Featured image courtesy taugamelodge.co.za)

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Shiv Sena at the crossroads

Prakash Bal Joshi analyses Bal Thackeray’s recent speech, and if Uddhav and Raj will combine forces for the next elections.

For the first time in the last 46 years, Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray addressed the Shiv Sena rally at Shivaji Park through a pre-recorded video of his speech, indicating clear sings of ageing. His absence may have disappointed the Sainiks, but his speech, which lacked the usual Tiger roar, touched an emotional cord. Not only Sainiks present at Shivaji Park, but also those who heard him speak were moved. It was one of the most effective speeches he has ever delivered.

A cartoonist who mesmerised generation after generation, and kept addressing them from Shivaji Park without fail, the Shiv Sena chief today stands at a crossroads. He clearly indicated who the heir apparent is, and made an emotive appeal to his followers to take care of his son and acting president of Shiv Sena, Uddhav, and his grandson Aditya, who leads the youth brigade of the party. He made the appeal with folded hands, and showed how deeply wounded he was due to split in the party when Raj Thackeray left the Sena camp a few years ago.

It was not a speech but a dialogue in his typically aggressive, derisive and most graphic style – as if he is talking to his followers in person. Anybody who listened to him was convinced that the Sena is currently down but not out –  there is still hope if his supporters keep their faith in the organisation and the leadership of his son, who is leading it from the front.

The demographic profile of Mumbai has changed drastically during the last four decades, but Thackeray is not willing give up his Marathi domination over the metropolis. He lashed out against his pet object – NCP president Sharad Pawar – for eulogising the multilingual culture of Mumbai, warning him that the Sena will not allow political power to slip out of Marathi hands in the state capital. His next target was the Gandhi family leading the Congress Party – Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka, Robert and their political advisor Ahmed Patel.

Though it was basically an emotional appeal where Thackeray Sr talked about becoming an 85-year-old and described his physical condition, he also talked about some hard facts of politics. He reiterated that the Sena would continue its Sons of the Soil agenda, but at the same time, it will pursue politics of hard Hindutva – a strategy which helped catapult the party to power in Maharashtra in 1995.

He touched the most crucial and dominating issue of corruption by attacking Sharad Pawar on Lavasa, lambasting the Manmohan Singh government for Coalgate and other scams, and describing the situation by talking of India as a ‘country of cheats’. In his inimitable style, he also criticised people for ‘taking notes for giving votes’ and later joining anti-corruption agitations.

Thackeray has been adjusting his strategy from time to time to take note of the changing socio-political climate in the State, though his focus always remained the Marathi manoos and militant Hindutva. His concern appears to be an anxiety about whether Uddhav would be equally quick and sharp to navigate the Sena, since he is now almost out of action due to his age.

The coming elections will be test by fire for Uddhav’s leadership, who proved his mettle by reasserting the Sena’s position in the last Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, where his detractors tried their best to upstage him. Will he be able to capture power with the help of the BJP, which is facing its own crisis of leadership?

Aspirations and needs of the Marathi manoos in Mumbai have drastically changed since Thackeray launched the Shiv Sena way back in the late 1960s. Much will depend on how Uddhav fine-tunes the Sena apparatus before the coming elections. He may well have to compete with, as well as compromise with his cousin Raj, if he wants to take Balasaheb’s legacy forward.

Prakash Bal Joshi is a senior political journalist, who last worked with The Times of India, Mumbai. He is also an acclaimed artist and painter.

 

 

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Piquance is a taste

…and so are ‘umami’ and ‘metallic’. But, says our writer, we Indians are only now learning to tell the difference.
by Rakshit Doshi

I never take recommendations for restaurants from everyone. Simply because I am convinced that people (those who don’t care about what they are eating) don’t understand the difference between good food and great food; although, they do pick out bad food very easily and that is mostly accurate.

It is actually unfair to ‘judge’ food because it is subjective. It is like music or painting where the creator has his thought process laid out on a canvas, but it would be nice if the consumer understood what he is listening to, looking at and in this case, eating.

I asked a few friends about what was great food, according to them. The responses, mainly, were skewed towards their personal favourite tastes. So a sweet-tooth buddy went, “I love that Gujrati daal, man… it has got such a nice flavour”. Nope, it is not the flavour he likes, it’s the sweet taste of jaggery.

So here is my attempt at making this a short lesson on how to stop simply eating your food and savouring it, understanding it and enjoying it better. If I were to compare food to music, I would say that this piece may give you enough knowledge to at least decide whether you prefer rock or pop music, rather than just saying, “I like Madonna!”

Tastes of India

Good food has three basic factors that are in harmony: taste, flavour and texture. While it is easy to understand texture, people often confuse ‘taste’ with ‘flavour’. To put it very simply, taste is what your tongue conveys and flavour is what your nose tells you. Try this sometime: pinch your nose and have a mint. You will have no idea what you are eating, because you are not getting the ‘flavour’ of mint.

Now, there are seven different tastes that have been classified so far. Four of these are the more common ones which we can pick up very easily, two of the remaining three, are very difficult to explain, and one of them is an absolute revelation. Until recently, I too had no idea that this last one is a ‘taste’.

The four common ones are, sweet (like sugar), sour (like lemon), salty (well, like salt) and bitter (like coffee or cocoa). The uncommon two are ‘umami’ and ‘metallic’. ‘Umami’ is what you usually get from say, cheese or soy sauce. It’s that slight salty bitterness which is very evident in our ‘Indian Chinese’ food because we use MSG a lot here, which produces a strong umami taste. ‘Metallic’ is probably like biting a coin. It is difficult to explain or to pick these out, but my wife did point out a little truth about ‘metallic’ taste: water tastes different when you have it out of a metal container than a glass container. Do you think so, too?

And the final ‘taste’ is one, which until recently, was not even classified as taste! I am sure we have all experienced the ‘coolness’ when we pop a mint or the ‘hotness’ of jalapeño and pepper pods. Yes, this is a taste and it is called, ‘piquance’!

What’s in a flavour?

Moving on to ‘flavour’: this doesn’t really have any specific definition. Flavour is what actually makes food complex and builds on the taste via the nose. Indians love flavour in everything, and why not? After all, we are the spice capital of the world! Our regional and traditional food thrives on the balance of flavour. The Indian dish will comprise of one or two main ingredients, but there will be forty different spices to build the flavour. Maybe it is also true with western cooking, but their hero is that one ingredient whereas for us the proportion of ginger and cardamom, even in our afternoon tea, makes all the difference.

I thank all my office buddies who come from various parts of the country and bring their ghar ka khaana along. A simple bhindi ki sabzi from say, a Punjabi home, may have a strong mustardy robust taste and flavour, but when you taste that same bhindi from a south Indian home, you know it has changed completely, simply because of that extra pinch of asafoetida (heeng) as opposed to the mustard in it.

There’s also a little something called texture: this is where good food can become great and great food can become mind-blowing. It is something chefs should play with a lot more. Texture really helps in breaking monotony, like having toasted bread with your pasta or risotto; the fried noodles on top of the hot and sour soup; the biscuit with your evening chai and the papad with your sambar-rice are all instances of textural complexity in food. My favourite textural symphony is a great ramekin of Crème brûlée. Cracking that sugar and hitting a fluffy cloud of cream is musical.

So there you have it, a small insight on tasting food with a little more interest than just saying achcha hai. Looking for these elements can be fun and a little like a treasure hunt. It is for me. What about you?

Rakshit writes for broadcast media to earn his bread and butter but he is also a foodie, who loves to make a fat club sandwich of it.

(Picture courtesy images.sciencedaily.com)

 

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Hate. Tweet. Rinse. Repeat.

A Mumbaikar writes about the malaise that grips us all – of having a contrary, angry opinion, whatever the situation.
by Jatin Sharma

India is rising but the people in India are lying still. All of us are intoxicated by social networking sites. Any event or incident that becomes news, pressurises each one of us to update our Facebook statuses or tweets. And this pressure has given an impetus to a generation that is like a headless chicken walking on the roads.

Take the case of Arvind Kejriwal. In the entire fracas after he declared his political intentions, what became evident was that we all have started to hate common logic. There is no doubt that Arvind Kejriwal single-handedly took charge to expose different politicians; but there is also ample proof to suggest that people have completely developed a puzzling mindset – that of hating everything that is happening around them.

The moment Kejriwal entered politics by forming a political party, people started talking about how all the dharnas and all the fasts he undertook were under the pretext of gaining political mileage.

But I have a few questions for these ‘thinkers’:

Aren’t the politicians of the country supposed to do the same?

Aren’t the leaders of this country supposed to question and expose the ill-doing of other leaders?

And wouldn’t we like a leader who could make others fear their wrongdoings?

So what did he do wrong by attempting to expose corruption with evidence? Whether he has a political ambition or not is irrelevant. For once, corrupt politicians are feeling the heat. For once, they are being questioned. When was the last time in your memory that you saw this happen in the political sphere?

And another thing: what did we do when he stood as a common man with Anna Hazare? Supported him with a few tweets and a few status updates, and counted how many retweets and likes we got!

I suppose Arvind Kejriwal also understands that to bring about any change, he will need to change his strategy. Without political power, he will just end up as one of those several voices that are muted by the powerful. Whatever his intention may be, or whatever the name of the poster boy is, Kejriwal or something else, for once India should stand up for the greater good.

We can find good leaders only when we can become good followers.  We can become good followers only when we act as per a situation and not according to what people want us to think.

 Jatin Sharma 26, works in the media and doesn’t want to grow up, because he thinks that growing up means becoming like everyone else.

 (Picture courtesy www.indiatvnews.com)

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