Café de Tavern, rings in the Christmas Spirit

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November 24, 2019

Mussoorie, Keeping the tradition of ‘Christmas cake-mixing’ alive in the hill-station of Mussoorie, Brentwood Hotel and Resorts, had its first ever cake mixing at their newly opened bakery Café de Tavern, on the Mall.

Run entirely by local boys recruited from the hill-station and its immediate surroundings, the motley of bakers are consciously working on making ‘their’ Bakery ‘the best in town.’

Kartikey Mohan, the young Bakery Head Chef along with the staff of Café de Tavern brought in the spirit of Christmas early for locals and tourists alike with the mixing ceremony. Taking close to forty-five minutes, cinnamon to bay leaf, nutmeg, candy ginger, tutti-frutti, dry apricot, black currant, raisins, almond along with other dry fruits and orange peel were soaked in rum, vodka and brandy to enhance the flavor of the ingredients which will then rest for the next few weeks, before the sixty pound cake is baked.

Rajat Kapoor, Director, Brentwood Hotel and Resorts, tells us, “We started the bakery a month back, this seemed to be the best platform to introduce the bakery to the town, and the community. The idea is to give tourists and locals, the best of our traditional bakery products during the festival season.” Sandeep Sahni, Director, Brentwood Hotel and Resorts, adds, “We hope to make it an annual affair in sync with the English tradition which the schools and churches in town have imbibed in all of us. Christmas is a festival which is celebrated across continents and Mussoorie being a cosmopolitan town has kept alive the tradition in its true form.”

With Christmas almost a month away, the Café de Tavern promises some signature preparations and festive offerings like Christmas Cakes, Christmas Puddings, Tarts with custard sauce, Mince Pies and plenty more to tickle your food buds during the festive season which will last through the Mussoorie Winterline Carnival, from the 26^th-31^st of December.

Message in a plastic bottle

By

Tania Saili

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November 22, 2019

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Plastic waste — Ashish Garg, experiment with plastic waste

‘Be the change you want to see,’ is a worn-out cliché, but there are many amongst us who work on these very lines. Ashish Garg of Kewal Vihar Dehradun has been working on innovative ways of ensuring a greener, better tomorrow. Be it, saving rain water through a basic water–harvesting plant at home or making manure from leaf mould or simply managing waste, by segregation and recycling bio-degradable waste at home.

Motivated with the idea of minimum waste, Ashish Garg keeps coming up with simple ideas which make a huge difference, “Ban of single use plastic has done away with most of the plastic that we would bring back from the market. But what concerned me was the daily milk pouches that made its way into our kitchen every morning.”

Ashish Garg, experiment with plastic waste

Which brought about the idea of how after proper rinsing and drying these milk- pouches, they could be inserted into empty plastic bottles, compacted tightly with the help of a rod or wooden stick to accommodate as much as one could. “Infact any other transparent plastic waste can also go into the bottle, I could squeeze almost 80 such wrappers into one bottle alone, Ashish tells us.

The advantage. Bottle has reduced plastic waste by volume significantly and acts as a solid brick, that post a touch of paint, can be used as a colourful hedge around trees or flower beds, which automatically reduces waste that ends up in land fills. Or if you want, you could collect these bottles and send them off to the Institute of Indian Petroleum in Dehradun, for their diesel plant, as an olefin product.

Ashish Garg sums it up, “I am working on the lines of: ‘want-not, waste-not,‘ this is a very basic, doable idea. The motive behind it is to motivate and unite people for a cause so that we can minimise plastic waste which unfortunately finds its way to landfills.”

Mushrooms grown in Mussoorie

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Tania Saili

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November 20, 2019

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Prakash Semwal and Pawan Rawat, childhood friends from Mussoorie are an example of how casually ‘surfing the net’ can throw up some unexpected positive results.

The duo has successfully become the town’s first Cordyceps Militaris Mushroom growers.

Not even a year old and the friends are reaping benefits of their first produce grown from hard work, toil and sweat. From a rented 15 x 30 room fitted with 2500 jars of Cordyceps Militaris, they have managed to get five to six kilograms of the fungi within a year.

The proud duo with their yield of Cordyceps militaris

Cordyceps is in great demand as it is considered a potential harbour of bio-metabolites for herbal drugs and is considered a natural energy as well as a powerful immune booster, rich in medicinal values.

Prakash Semwal tells us, “While surfing the net we came upon these Mushrooms and their health benefits. The weather in Mussoorie is conducive for their growth so we decided to grow them instead of the more commonly grown exotic variety.”

With an initial investment of 7-8 lakhs the duo used technology to the optimum. Fitting the unit with an Air Conditioner, Humidifier, Drier and CCTV cameras to keep an eye on their unit in their absence.

Pawan Rawat highlights the fact that the mushroom can fetch a lakh for every kilogram sold and once dried Cordyceps can be taken as “tea or made into powder and used in bakery products for consumption, other than medicine alone.”

Both Pawan and Prakash are of the view that being a tourist-town the hotels in Mussoorie could benefit from their yield by serving tourists Cordycep tea and bakery delights made from these medicinal mushrooms.

A larger unit and growing more jars of Cordyceps militaris so that this expensive yet beneficial produce is made easily available to the layman who too can benefit from its medicinal value, is what the friends are aiming for in the near future.

Where no journeys end

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Tania Saili

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November 18, 2019

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As the portals of the four shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamnotri and Gangotri shut before they become inaccessible in the long winter months ahead, heralding the end of Chardham Yatra in Uttarakhand for this season.

The four deities are carried down to their various winter homes or gaddisthals with their pujaris in tow. They will return next spring. In Pandukeshwar you can pay your obeisance to Lord Vishnu, who has come from Badrinath after the closing of the shrine. Ukhimath, is the winter home for Kedarnath; Mukba is the home to Goddess Ganga; and Kharsali is home to Goddess Yamunotri.

For years now, amongst the changing of governments, the State’s officers have been trying their best to ensure that the pilgrimage carries on throughout the year. It is hoped that their winter abodes will continue to attract pilgrims and visitors alike. Only religious tourism in the lean months of winter, can keep the home fires going and the cash register ringing.

Somehow, this idea has been slow to take off. The numbers of pilgrims coming to Devbhoomi in winter, is but a bare blip in comparison to the almost nine lakh pilgrims who flocked here in the peak season from May-November.

But officials are hopeful. They believe that it is just a matter of time before winter pilgrimage numbers will match the summer ones. Talking to Newspost, Vice President, Chardham Yatra Vikas Parishad, Acharya Shiv Prasad Mamgain who recently visited Gangotri and Yamnotri tells us, “The state government is leaving no stones unturned to ensure that the Chardham pilgrimage continues throughout the year. All weather roads, better civic amenities, promotion of Pandukeshwar, Ukhimath, Mukba and Kharsali will mean that there is year round employment for people.”

The government exudes confidence in the belief that their efforts will slowly begin to fructify. But only after the completion of the all weather road; improved civic amenities and connectivity to set the ball rolling. They are confident that once these are in place, then and then only will the task of promoting off-beat winter destinations become a part of the mythical map of religious tourism in Uttarakhand.

Second Plastic Bank comes up in Ess Ell Honda, Dehradun

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newspost

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November 15, 2019

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Dehradun, Under the agreement between Gati Foundation and IIP, a second plastic bank was established at the Rajpur Road Branch of Ess Ell Honda, the largest two-wheeler dealership in the country including Uttarakhand.

Gati Foundation formed the Plastic Bank in the presence of officials and staff of Ess Ell Honda. Those gathered were told that apart from new two-wheelers being sold daily from the showrooms of Ess Ell Honda, a large number of two-wheelers also visited the showrooms for service, which meant that single-use plastic was being used in quantities. Plastic was also used in packing of oil and other parts used in service of vehicles. A rough estimate put the number of plastic waste collected at 300 to 400 kg every month from Ess Ell Honda alone.

On the occasion of the establishment of Plastic Bank, Director of Ess Ell Honda, Narendra Batra expressed happiness and said earlier we use to dispose plastic waste at our own level. However, now after opening of the plastic bank, it will be disposed off in a scientific manner. Batra said that he would also motivate the staff to deposit single use plastics in the plastic banks.

Anoop Nautiyal, Founder of Gati Foundation, said this is the second plastic bank in the city. In the coming days, efforts will be made to establish more plastic banks in institutions where single use plastic is used in large quantities. He appealed to the various city based organizations to try to collect plastic waste in such plastic banks. Anoop said that plastic deposited in this bank will be used to make diesel in the plant installed at the Indian Institute of Petroleum. Plastics that cannot be used in this work will be disposed off scientifically.

Pandavaas to woo audiences at Mandaan

By

Tania Saili

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November 15, 2019

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Pandavaas of the Time Machine fame will be holding their debut live-performance at Mandaan 2019, Bengaluru on the 17^th of November.

With an interesting medley of songs under their belt Salil, Kunal and Ishaan Dobhal are all set to give their first performance to their fans, down South.

Speaking to Newspost, an excited Kunal fills us in, “we have always been portrayed as a Production House, and rightly so! But Anoj Joshi invited us to put on a stage show which was hard to resist, and I am sure after this show, everything will change for Pandavaas, for the better.”

Team of 20-25 artists from all over the hill-state have been putting in hours of rehearsals in Dehradun, to give that unforgettable performance.

So what can you expect from their maiden performance, Kunal tells us, “The two-hour programme by Pandavaas is being tailored made for their fans. What we are working on is an unplugged session, something similar to a Coke Studio Session for Bengaluru. Maangal geet, the complete series of Time Machine, combining folk and fusion is being experimented with.”

With passes almost sold out for Mandaan, almost weeks in advance, the one-day event begins at 10:30 a.m. and wraps up at 7:30 p.m, at the GKVK Convention Centre in Bengaluru.

A day prior to this Pandavaas will take part in a discussion with students of Mass Communication at the Symbiosis School of Media and Communication, Bengaluru on the 16th, where their Production House is being studied as a case study from Uttarakhand.

Founder Anoj Joshi of Mandaan, tells us why he chose Pandavaas over other singers, he replies, “I try to feel the pulse of the youth and see what they want. Pandavaas have done a lot of commendable work which has been appreciated by the young and old and that was the idea of bringing them to Bengaluru.”

Pandaavas promise not to let them down.

Music enthusiasts that pride themselves for their technical excellence and perfection, Pandavaas first show will be something that their audience will not forget in a hurry.

Savoy: Saga of an Icon makes waves

By

Tania Saili

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November 11, 2019

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Savoy Hotel, WelcomHotel, Mussoorie — Pic Courtesy: Kshitij Sharma

62 minute featured-documentary “Savoy: Saga of an Icon,” dedicated to the hundred and seventeen year old hotel in the hill-station of Mussoorie is winning accolades, nominations and awards in India and overseas.

The film has won a slew of awards: ‘Platinum Award’ at the Latitude Film Festival, London; ‘Best Documentary’ Award and ‘Best Director’ Award at the Mindfield Film Festival, USA; ‘Best Voiceover’ Award at the Oniros Film Awards, Italy, ‘Best Editing’ at the White Unicorn International Film Festival, Kolkata, ‘Best Editing’ at The Florence Film Awards and also ‘Best Indian Documentary Film’ at the Crownwood International Film Festival held in Kolkatta.

It has been nominated for the Jaipur International Film Festival, India.

Cineddiction Films works as a tight team while shuffling roles. For ‘Savoy:Saga on an Icon’ Kshitij Sharma was the Director, Abhishekh Negi, Cinematographer, Deeya Dey, Production Manager and Bhaskar Sharma at the Sound. For five years now the young team has been making independent films. Collectively their creative work has been screened at more than hundred national and international film festivals, with fifty odd awards to their credit. Recently, Cineddiction Films Films won 34 awards for their recent project, “Devil” (Maupassant’s ‘Le Diable) presently being screened on Amazon Prime.

Savoy: ‘Saga of an Icon’ was shot in August this year, over four days but resting on forty years of research. The film uses sepia-tone images taken over a hundred odd years. Old pictures, sketches and memorabilia from personal collections along with rarely used footage from British Film Institute Library were put to effective use by the filmmaker. ‘The featured-documentary came together because of Producer, Mr. K. K. Kaya whose interest in the project never waned,’ says Ganesh Saili, who anchors the docu-drama.

Director Kshitij Sharma, a regular visitor to the property since his school days, was smitten by the property and his visual ode is a living testimony of his love for the property and its rich history. “I first came to Savoy as a school boy and felt a deep connect with it. I read Mr. Saili’s ‘Mussoorie Medley’ and knew there would be no one better to regale us with stories of Savoy’s past, than someone who has been an inseparable part of this grand property.”

The team hopes that ‘Savoy: Saga of an Icon’ will someday serve as a sort of bookmark in the pages of the hill station’s history as well as the iconic mountain hotel.

Christmas comes early @ The Savoy, Mussoorie

By

Tania Saili

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November 10, 2019

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Mussoorie, Festivities bring people together, even if they are a month away. In Mussoorie, WelcomHotel The Savoy is bringing in the spirit of Christmas, in advance, with the customary cake mixing ceremony.

Keeping its hundred and seventeen year tradition alive, the annual cake-mixing has over the years, become an inseparable part of the hotel’s Christmas celebrations.

In full attendance, the hotel staff, guests along with dignitaries come together for the customary ritual weeks in advance to, “blending an array of dry fruits such as cashew-nuts, sultana, black currant, almond flakes, dates, raisins, figs, apricots, glazed cherry, ginger peels, prunes, cloves, spices, mace, green cardamom, ginger powder, cinnamon sticks, nutmeg powder soaked in orange juice and choicest of spirits such as dark and white rum, white and red wine weeks in advance, to develop that festive aroma and taste,” Executive Sous Chef Prakash Negi, informs the gathering.

A head-start to the delectable Rum/Christmas cake, the twenty-minute cake-mixing ceremony was conducted under the wintery blue sky in the Central Lawns of WelcomHotel The Savoy. Guided by the Executive Sous Chef, the guests followed the instructions to the tee and worked on the perfect blend which goes into making a scrumptious traditional Christmas Cake.

For those who missed getting their fingers dipped into the traditional cake mixing pot, do not despair. “There is plenty of time to gear yourself to enjoy the fruits of labour, as the hotel is gearing up and coming out with special packages to bring in the festivities in Mussoorie, coming December” assures General Manager, Gautam Valli.

Film Conclave: Rolling, Camera, Action!

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Tania Saili

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November 8, 2019

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Dehradun, As a run up to Uttarakhand Statehood Day celebrating 19 years of the hill-state coming into being, a marathon of seminars dedicated to youth, entrepreneurs, industrialists and women achievers were celebrated throughout Uttarakhand.

On the eve of Statehood Day, Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and Union Minister Smriti Irani inaugurated a Film Conclave in Mussoorie.

Divided into three session, the Conclave saw an interesting queue up of Bollywood Directors ad artists from Vishal Bharadwaj, Rekha Bharadwaj, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Ajay Arora, Padmashree Soma Ghosh, Kavita Chaudhry, Taran Adarsh, Bharat Bhalla, Narayan Singh, Muzaffar Ali, to name a few.

Uttarakhand has been trying to promote itself as a film friendly State, working relentlessly to lure big Bollywood banners which won Uttarakhand the ‘Most Film Friendly State” award at the 66^th National Film Awards, 2018.

Speaking to the media, Actor-Producer Jackky Bhagnani said, “Uttarakhand has the perfect shot no matter which way you turn the camera. We hope that suggestions that we put across today, are worked upon.”

Welcoming all, Chief Minister Uttarakhand asked those who had gathered to voice their suggestions in order to ensure that Uttarakhand’s Film Policy could further woo the creative fraternity.

Union Minister Smriti Irani laid stress on regional talent being showcased along with national and international clients. Ensuring that content creation, production and management skills along with the digital media in regional languages were worked with in harmony.”

Thus far, over 200 movies, documentaries and serials been shot at its scenic locales with a continuous flow of talent from Bollywood, Mollywood and even Tollywood.

Post the three sessions, what new changes in favour of regional talent the Film Policy will see is anyone’s guess. But for those present, the Conclave was a step forward in the right direction.

Uttarakhand’s first all-women Ramleela

By

Tania Saili

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November 7, 2019

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Chamoli: Women between the age group of 9 to 54 years old are creating history in Uttarakhand. Coming together from five hill-districts they are making their mark on a creative platform. Maa Nanda Ramleela Manch an all-women theatre group is enacting Ramleela, which has for centuries been considered as a traditional male domain.

Five years ago, Maa Nanda Ramleela Manch a dream-child of Lakshmi Shah, Aarti Gosain and Beera Pharswan came into existence and is now making waves in the interiors of Garhwal.

What started as snippets from the Ramayana and regional folk stories such as Ma Nanda, Savitri, Tilu Rauteli and Angad-Ravan Samwaad being performed by the all-women troupe in various village fairs, they gradually started garnering support and fame, and has to-date witnessed four, eleven-day Ramleela.

Beera Pharswan, one amongst the three who started this initiative, remembers with nostalgia the first Ramleela they staged at a wedding point in June 2017, in Agastyamuni. “When we first started this initiative, we never dreamt we would reach this height. We faced a lot of difficulties and opposition, but we grew stronger and more motivated with every woman who joined us, from 3 to now 35, is how we have grown in numbers.”

And the rest as they say is history. Lakshmi Shah, a teacher by profession, and a mother of two tells us, “We are trying to give middle-aged women, housewives a platform where they can showcase their hidden talent. Except for the role of Hanuman, (which village elders objected to being played by women) all the other characters of Ramayana are played by us.”

The Director and actors have found a way to work out the distance and the busy schedule of all the characters. They make sure that their jobs and household chores are not ignored at the cost of rehearsals.

Multi-talented Lakshmi Shah, who has been the Cultural Secretary of HNB Garhwal University, can play the role of Sumanta or Sabri or Kevant or Ram, with graceful ease.

The 35 women actors spread across five districts from Almora to Chamoli onto Rudraprayag, Pauri and Tehri, translating Bhavani Dutt Joshi’s Ramleela on to the screen, hasn’t been easy. Lakshmi recalls, “my husband a lawyer by profession was aghast when I was to play the role of Sita. He sent my daughter to talk me out of it, but I did not relent,” But all that has changed, “ today he is my biggest support. He saw what this meant to me and how encouraging our women elders of the village were.”

Dr. Dataram Purohit who set up the Department of folk performing art and culture, in Srinagar, Garhwal. And has been archiving and propagating Garhwal’s rich tradition with courses like theatre, folk music and folk forms speaks with a visible sense of pride, “Maa Nanda Ramleela Manch is making their place in the creative world. This is a 180degree role reversal and is a positive sign that our womenfolk are coming into their own.” Adding, “There is a renewed sense of awakening and coming of age, which is very heartening to see.”

Like any other theatre group, Maa Nanda Ramleela Manch has one more dream to accomplish and that is to perform live in Mumbai in front of none other than Superstar Amitabh Bachchan himself. Lakshmi speaks for the entire troupe when she signs off, “Dreams come true for those who dare to dream.” And who are we to doubt!

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