Tag: mumbai

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Eat

Street food and the Mumbai diabetic

Are you a diabetic looking for a snack on the street? There aren’t many options, but here’s presenting seven items.
by Mamta D | @silverlightgal on Twitter

Indian food is considered to be among the best in the whole world. While many countries are content to consume meat, fish, and vegetables in bland form, India prides itself on its rich, tasty and spicy cuisines. Owing to the diverse communities inhabiting India, our food has become all the more rich, sometimes even fusing two or more cuisines together. Besides the regular home-cooked varieties and food that is available in hotels and restaurants, India is also famous for its street food.

From the chhole bhatures of Delhi’s streets to the aloo paranthas of Chandigarh, to the dosai of Chennai and the ubiquitous vada pav of Mumbai, you will find sumptuous spreads right on the street, all at throwaway prices.  Moreover, the roadside stalls are open most of the day and people from any walk of life can consume their wares. Thus, you have a daily wage laborer eating steaming hot vada pavs alongside a well-dressed office-goer. Street food stalls don’t discriminate between their customers.

If at all there are any drawbacks to street food, it is that of hygiene and that they are not diabetic-friendly. The matter of hygiene is a controversial one, but once you have taken the plunge, there’s no looking back. People often jokingly claim that eating street food over the years has made them more immune to illnesses.

As for diabetic-friendliness, sadly there’s not much to cheer. Most of the popular street food is loaded with carbohydrates and/or sugar. For instance, a single vada pav serving is packed with 300 calories and includes 55 gms of carbs. The dabeli which is an import from the street sides of Kutch has approximately 197 calories and 26.5 g of carbs.

Besides vada pav, samosas, and dabelis, there are umpteen roadside idli and dosa stalls. Idlis are high in carbs and have a high glycemic index of 77, so they can hike your blood sugar. Likewise for dosas. If you’re a diabetic, stay away from the nimbu pani and gola carts and the sweet lassi counters.

Neither can you indulge in the paani puri. Even if you bravely attempt to consume the paani puri foregoing the sweet chutney, you will not be able to go beyond one attempt. The sweet chutney is meant to serve a purpose and doing away with it does not make sense.

But being a diabetic doesn’t have to mean giving up on your taste buds, especially, if you are prone to hypoglycemia and there’s no homemade food at hand.

So what are the good street food choices for a diabetic? Try these:

dhokla#1) Dhoklas: Dhoklas are made of besan (Bengal gram flour) and so offer a decent alternative to the carb-and glucose-rich foods. Dunk them in the fiery green chutney and voila! You have a tasty healthy snack.

#2) Kanda pohe: Made of flattened or beaten rice and often served warm or hot, this street side food is mostly available during the morning hours as a quickie breakfast. Ensure, however, that there are no potato slices or wedges in the pohe.

#3) Bhel puri: Bhel puri that is mixed without the sweet chutney can be a tasty and yet healthy snack. It has puffed rice, peanuts, finely chopped onions, tomatoes, green chillies, and coriander leaves.

#4) Upma: This rava dish is a perennial favourite across many communities. From South Indians to Maharashtrains, everyone loves upma for its taste value and simplicity. A simple onion upma can be ravishing when you’re super hungry.

#5) Misal/Usal Pav: Dipping thick chunks of bread or pav into the fiery red steaming missal that has an array of boiled sprouts floating in it and consuming it before the missal cools down can either be a blissful or a scary experience, depending on how weak or strong your stomach is.True blue Mumbaikars swear bythe missal pav.

#6) Egg bhurji and other egg items: Many roadside corners boast of an anda pav or bhurji pav stall. The bhurji is made in a jiffy with finely chopped tomatoes, onions, slit bhurjigreen chillies and scrambled with raw eggs. The hot bhurji is then slid on to your plate with a slick movement and a slice of pav is scraped on the tava, finally landing on your plate on top of the bhurji. On a cold winter evening, taking quick bites of this hot and spicy combination can be quite orgasmic. These stalls also serve boiled eggs and omelettes with pav.

#7) Kebabs and other items: Street food is not limited to the vegetarian varieties alone. There are kebabs, shawarmas, tandoori nuggets, and so on. Bade Miyan’s at Colaba, the umpteen stalls at Mohammed Ali street or Abdul Rehman street are the places to go to for these.

As you can see, unfortunately, the number of street food choices for a diabetic are quite low in number.  ‘Make do with what’s available’ will be the best policy here than to give in to temptations and have your blood glucose levels shooting up sky high!

(Pictures courtesy asiaexpatguides.com, kiransrecipes.blogspot.com, www.mapsofindia.com)

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Deal with it

A dream football space in Borivli’s backyard

‘Feet For Foot’ initiative seeks citizens’ help in setting up artificial grass for young footballing talent to train on, at Borivli.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It sees several budding footballers train on its premises regularly, and is a popular sporting hangout for children and adults alike. But now, the Vintage Football Club ground at IC colony Link Road, is embarking on a very special mission – to install artificial grass on about 4,000 sq feet of the ground’s surface for young footballers to train on. This, believe its patrons, will go a long way in training young talent to play on an international stage.

The initiative, titled ‘Feet for Foot’, is asking for donations of Rs 999 per square foot of the proposed area to be developed, and is slated to be fully operational by December this year. Once operational, this will be Borivli’s only international-level football training space.

Says Conrad Pinto (50), one of the coaches at the ground and part of the initiative (in pic on left), “The ground currently has natural grass, which is not very good for playing on. What’s more, the grass dries up and withers away in the summer months, so the surface becomes very hard, especially with the gravel lying exposed. It is essential to train young talent on artificial grass, which will help prepare serious footballers for the international stage.”

What’s at stake

Children from the neighbouring Ganpat Patil Nagar slum play at the ground, as do others from adjoining areas. “The Club runs free training camps for children in the 6 to 9 years age group, with one coach catering to about 25 children per camp,” Conrad explains. “We are especially tuned in to children from underprivileged backgrounds – if the child is willing to play, we ensure we put a ball to his foot.”

The ground was initially in a shambles – it doubled up as a debris dumping ground and parking space for buses. “We got it cleared up in phases and then covered it with mud. We needed about 290 trucks of mud to layer the 8,155 sq metres of total area,” Conrad explains. “We formed the Vintage Football Club about 10 years ago. There are four trustees and currently 200-odd members, but over 1,000 parents are also active supporters. We impart training for free, and only charge corporates or professional teams wanting to train at the ground,” he adds.

Once ready, the ground will cater to the suburb’s urgent need for a world-class training space. “The costs of preparing such a facility are enormous,” says Wilfred Fernandes (44), also associated with the Club. “India needs training at the grassroots for football. See the current condition of football training in the country – it’s pathetic. Our children should be trained to represent India. Football instills confidence and team spirit, and we are always working towards reaching more and more children. Our activities here are driven by passion, not commerce – we never let the ground out for events or weddings or rallies. We are proud to say that since we have been associated with the ground, it has been used only for sporting activities,” he beams.

The costs involved

The cost of installing artificial grass is enormous, and they’ve worked out the total cost to about Rs 40 lakh for about 4,000 sq feet of area. “We cannot possibly cover the entire ground, because that would be too expensive,” Wilfred says. “Besides, we plan to develop the other portions of the ground for separate activities – a tennis court at the back, a walking track, a senior citizens’ space, a small play park for children. The football area will be at the centre, and will be cordoned off with nets,” he explains.

But why launch the initiative now? “We started the project on June 1,” he says. “Currently, there is a lot of hype around the upcoming football World Cup in Brazil, and interest in the sport is at an all-time peak. We will wind up the collection (of funds) process by July 15, when the World Cup will end,” he adds.

Already, donations have started coming in. “We’ve got donations from all over Mumbai, as well as from Delhi and even Muscat. Till date, we’ve managed over Rs 3.2 lakh from June 1, when we launched the initiative,” Conrad says. “Several more people have committed funds for the cause. One gentleman works in a company that manufactures lighting equipment, and he has pledged that the lighting for the ground would be done by his company. Even our trustees are donating money. Help is coming from everywhere,” he says.

The Club will shortlist a vendor by a tendering process in August this year, and the actual work of preparing the ground and laying the grass should be finished by November. “We hope to be fully operational by December 2014,” Wilfred signs off.

Do you want to donate for ‘Feet for Foot’? Log on to vintagefeet4foot.com or check out their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/VintageFootballClubMumbai for details. Call 9022420053 for more information.

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Guest writer

Why has nobody thought of a good roti machine?

Women grapple with the task of roti making every single day of their lives. A Mumbaikar offers a futuristic solution.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

It’s a fact that Mumbai is always on the run. Between the binaries of fast and slow, fast is the chosen one that defines the life of almost every citizen of their dream world.

In the whole hustle-bustle and mad race, one looks for ideas and ways that help one cope better with the demands of everyday life. To make matters worse, if one is a working woman and has a family to cater to also, the tying up of loose ends and running an endless list of chores exhausts you to no end. This may sound sexist, but the general scenario that still pervades most households is that a working woman works two shifts, one at home and other at work, while males have the joy of concentrating only on the office front.

To bring about a change in this system is a farfetched dream. Though one does see a radical shift in responsibilities and sharing of duties between both genders now, but such cases are sporadic in number and occur in isolated patches.

To help tide away such mundane tasks, our Mumbai housewives then look for ideas and innovations that make their lives easier. One has, to a large extent, adopted automation that makes life easier, like washing machines, food processors and all variety of appliances that help to clean the house and other things, and lend some degree of relief. But what about the sad state of affairs when it comes to rotis?

Almost every Indian household eats rotis every day. The making of rotis is a tedious task. As a working woman and homemaker myself, I always wished for a genie to appear and Making rotisrelieve me from the endless task of making rotis day after day. Certainly, there are solutions to offer in the market, but I find that these only add to your woes. On looking at the available roti makers, one finds that still you have to do basic jobs like mixing, kneading, making balls of dough or manually putting each ball of dough on the making surface, etc. These roti makers’ only help is in the area of making round rotis.

The other day, as I was getting some photocopy work done and watching how copies emerged from the machine one after the other, I was stuck by an idea. What if there was a machine that handled the whole process of making rotis, right from kneading the dough to rolling out hot rotis? It would eliminate all the possible labour, including cleaning up afterwards.

Taking the idea further, there could be a panel of operations for making rotis. One can select the number of rotis, size, thickness, crispiness, oil/oil free. There would also be a provision for a timer to be set and a clock timer, plus automated cleaning and a way to keep it near the dining table so that fresh hot rotis can be had during meal times.

Just imagine it – after a long tiring day, to have fresh rotis with the press of a few buttons! What a wonderful dream! But I wonder – in this age of technology, why has nothing like this come up to reduce the efforts of Indian women? As insignificant as it may sound, it is one of the most important issues of our daily life.  So all you innovators and technologists, this is food for thought. Let us in a small way help provide some solutions to such time-consuming tasks that would help working women get liberated from a few of their daily life burdens. Not just Mumbai women, it would be revolutionise the lives of many more across the nation, including the men.

(Pictures courtesy www.nandyala.org, ribbonstopastas.blogspot.com)

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Deal with it

Sion residents and a cop reunite lost boy with mother

A heartwarming story of a lost boy reunited with his mother, with joint efforts by the cops and local residents.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

“Rushab found at Sion junction yeh ladka mere paas hai” pinged the Whatsapp message on 17 of Sion’s residents mobile phones. It was from Sujata Patil, a cop with the Sion Matunga Traffic Police, who had found a four-year-old boy lost and crying at Sion junction. The recipients of the message immediately swung into action.

“We are in the Sion Traffic Police committee,” explained Ajay Pandya (in green shirt in the pic), chief coordinator of the Sion Welfare Forum.”We regularly coordinate with the local police in times of need, and yesterday, we immediately rushed out to help when we learnt that the little boy, Rushab, was lost and crying for his mother. Sujata madam had found him on the footpath when she was on bandobast duty in the area.”

The child was first pacified, and when he had calmed down, the search party – comprising area residents and the police – fanned out in the area to try and locate his mother. “Sujata madam stayed with the boy throughout. It was three hours before the frantic mother was located.”

It turned out that the boy had simply strayed away from his mother when she was in Dharavi to buy something. “Then he couldn’t find his way back to her and panicked. Fortunately for him, he was spotted by a cop,” Ajay said.

(Pictures courtesy Ajay Pandya)

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Hum log

The not-so-reluctant social media maverick

Kiran Manral is everything at once – literally. We chat up the popular blogger, author, activist and volunteer network founder.
by Mamta D | @silverlightgal on Twitter

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would surely have heard of Kiran Manral – at least if you’re using the digital medium. Maybe on a blog, maybe on a Twitter feed, maybe you’ve seen her on a panel discussion. But as they say, there can be so much to a person that sometimes one lifetime isn’t enough to know them. Kiran is one such person.

Kiran Manral worked as a journalist before she quit to be a full time mother. Her blogs, www.thirtysixandcounting.wordpress.com and www.karmickids.blogspot.com, are both in Labnol’s list of India’s top blogs. She often blogged at Tehelka Blogs on gender issues. She is also considered a ‘social media star’ on twitter by the TOI and IBN Live named her as among the ‘30 interesting Indian women to follow on Twitter’ and among the ‘Top 10 Indian moms to follow on Twitter for 2013’.

Post 26/11, she founded ‘India Helps’, a volunteer network to help disaster victims and has worked on long term rehabilitation of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack victims and 13/7 Mumbai bomb blast victims, amongst others. IndiaHelps began with helping the 26/11 disaster victims and now works with all disaster victims, depending on reach and access of volunteers to them.

Apart from this, she is part of the core founding team behind CSAAM and Violence Against Women Awareness Month, two very well-received social media awareness initiatives across Twitter and the blogosphere. Her debut novel, The Reluctant Detective, was published by Westland in 2012.

The Metrognome shot some gentle salvos at her to get some more interesting information on what she thinks of her Twitter celebrity status, her thoughts on the CSAA initiative and doing her bit to generate awareness about violence against women, among other things.

Excerpts from the interview:

Kiran ManralFrom joining Twitter/Facebook to becoming one of the top social media influencers, the journey on social media must have been surely exciting. How did you accomplish this?

To be very honest, I don’t really know how or why this happened. I think I was just very opinionated, and it has been a fun ride so far. What is good for me is that the reach helps me tremendously when it comes to issues close to my heart.

Tell us something about the CSAA (Child Sexual Abuse Awareness) initiative that you have been spearheading since 2011, and is now going strong in 2014.

I am part of the core founding team of CSA Awareness Month. It was founded by a group of bloggers concerned about the growing incidents of CSA and our head-in-the-sand approach to it. In the first year, we did receive a lot of resistance for even daring to talk about CSA; people said we were propagating child porn, we were talking about something that didn’t happen in India, that we were corrupting morals. Today, thankfully, people are much more receptive and vocal about CSA.

We think we have been able to get the stigma about CSA erased, and made people realise that they must know, get informed and talk to their children about this very real and present danger. We work across all social media, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and this year, with the help of parenting portal Yowoto and the NGO Arpan and Podar Educational Foundation, we were part of a very successful offline event where parents interacted with speakers and experts on this subject. Hopefully, there will come a time when we won’t need to do CSAAM at all. That would be our true vindication.

Besides being involved with CSAA and also managing the Indiahelps blog, you are often vocal about gender issues and violence against women. How did this come to be?

I’ve always believed that one has to give back a bit to society, that if every single person does their bit, this world could be a better place, in whatever way one can, however small, however insignificant one might think one’s effort or one’s voice is. True effort will always get amplified. So, I try to do my bit, generate awareness through the mediums I know the best-social media, and writing. That is what I can offer.

You also write often on fashion, jewellery, accessories, parenting, and food, on your blog. Cliched though this may sound, how do you manage the time and keep the enthusiasm alive?

Ha ha ha! I am quite a vain puss and terribly fond of clothes and accessories, not so much of food. I could call myself more a glutton than a foodie, to be honest. Parenting, well, I do describe myself as a school gate mom first and over all other definitions.

How do I manage the time? I don’t work full time. My son goes to school from 7.30 am to 2 pm, and I have a good chunk of time available to me to do my writing and other things that matter to me. I’m terribly slovenly about socialising and rarely go out to party or lunches, dinners and such like. I would rather spend my time reading, writing or being with my son. I’m pretty boring in that sense. I am also very disciplined about my work time – I make lists of tasks to be done for the day and get my bread and butter work done before I get down to fiction writing or blog writing. I make sure I’m at my desk every single day unless I’m seriously ill.

Your second book, Once Upon A Crush, is just out. What was the first book about and what is the new one about?

My first book, The Reluctant Detective, was about a suburban housewife who stumbles upon two murders and reluctantly gets involved in the investigation. This one is pure office romance, a romantic comedy, firmly tongue-in-cheek chick lit.

What is next on your agenda? Another book? More projects like CSAA? Or taking some time off?

Honestly I don’t know. I am writing books. I don’t work on one book at a time, so I have three different manuscripts at different stages in progress. CSAAM has gathered steam and will do very well with or without me now, I think. As for taking time off, if one is a mom, one never has time off. I tend to take things as they come to me. So hopefully, more writing projects, more time I can give to offline social efforts and yes, enjoying the last couple of years before my son hits the terrible teens.

Anything else you’d like to share with The Metrognome’s readers?

There is so much one is tempted to say if one is given a soapbox and no word limit, but all I would like to say is follow your heart and the rest will fall into place.

****

A brief synopsis about Kiran’s newest book, Once Upon A Crush:

‘Rayna De, stuck in a dead end job with a boss from hell, zero love life and the big 3-O looming large on the immediate horizon, has started to panic a bit. No, make that panic a lot. Enter new object of lust in the office, Deven Ahuja, and Rayna is overpowered by inappropriate visions of Cupid aiming his arrows straight into her heart, with turtle doves doing their billing and cooing act in the backdrop.

Alas, Deven is completely out of Rayna’s league despite the contradictory messages he seems to be sending out, and is, as decreed by page three supplements of the city newspapers, the man in the life of the gorgeous, light eyed model-turned-actress Sharbari Raina.

As Rayna battles with her unseemly, going nowhere crush, shaky employment status and dithers about signing up for domesticity with the vetted by her parents, Sid Bose, of the multi zero pay package, the two and a half bedroom house in a suburban gated complex and the very cultured, respectable family, she discovers that life has its own plans…’

(Pictures courtesy Kiran Manral, www.aswethinkis.com)

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Uncategorized

Alas! No voting for me this time

This Mumbaikar was about to vote for the first time, because the NOTA option got her all excited. But alas!
2012-09-23-408by Ritika Bhandari Parikh

Part 7 of the ‘Your Vote’ campaign for Lok Sabha 2014. 

I must confess that am 25 years old and do not hold a voting card. People who will read this will lambast me on my lack of sincerity in exercising a fundamental right, which we are lucky as a country to have been granted by our Constitution. And for the first time, I am feeling very guilty about not being able to participate in this greatest show of democracy.

Being a journalism student, I remember questioning my teacher on the purpose of the elections. With stories of rampant rigging, cash-for-votes and the audacious selection of candidates, there was no motivation to even try and fill the form for the voting card. A look at the candidates’ profiles and I knew that we had to choose between the devil and the deep sea. Adding to these doubts was the futile attempt by my younger sister to get a Voter ID card, not once but twice. Hopefully, she will be listed this time.

Before you dismiss me as a non-believer in democracy and voting, let me cite that my parents have a Voter ID card and religiously stand in queue to vote like many Indian citizens. Why, I once prodded my mom to show her inked finger and only then allowed her to enter the house.

Yet the 2014 elections beckon me to wish for a miracle, where my name is listed on the Voters Electoral list. This sudden votingtransformation from ‘why should I even vote attitude?’ to ‘I should vote’ is all because of the magic of NOTA.

The Election Commission of India has not only tried their best to encourage Indian citizens to go ahead and come out for voting, but given them an option to stick out their tongue and use the ‘None of the Above’ option as a weapon of choice. So despite my vote not helping any one person or party, this existence of choice helps me.

But alas, I woke up too late and hopefully time will heal this regret. With the making of my Voter ID card as my next important task, I can only ask other fellow voters to go ahead and cast that magical vote to any party or none of the above. You have a choice, make it count, be heard. Don’t take that weekend vacation, instead take a walk to your polling booth and stand proud. As for me, I shall just soak in the atmosphere at the booths and mope and pray for a miracle.

‘Your Vote’ is a column capturing the Lok Sabha 2014 fervour in Mumbai. The series ends with this writeup. We hope you’re casting your vote tomorrow.

(Pictures courtesy www.youthkiawaaz.com, s-philipraja.blogspot.com)

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