voices that might matter
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Workshop in Subathu : Pinegrove School
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Travel to Indo - China Border and Andaman's Cellular Jail
By S Preet Kaur
Travel to Nathu La through pictures. Nathu La means "pass of listening ears". It is on a route which is an offshoot of old silk route. It is in state of Sikkim, India. India shares this border with China occupied Tibetan region. Its six hours drive from Gangtok, capital of Sikkim. See its photo feature on BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/multimedia/2013/11/131015_nathu_la_pass_pic_gallery_sks.shtml
2) Travel article on Andamans in leading daily Hindustan Times, Delhi in March 2014.(below)
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Travel Diaries 2012 and 2013
In July 2012 we visited Gopalpur to conduct photo and film workshop. The place where we were doing the workshop was surrounded by tea gardens on one side and pine trees on the other. After that we saw Palampur, Kangra and Dharamsala for the third time.Most beautiful was Kangra Fort and Bhangsunath Falls. We were above the clouds.
The year 2013 began with travelling to Solan, Dharampur, Kasauli in March. We went there to conduct photo and film workshop. The place is six hours from capital of India, New Delhi. It is a beautiful place and such a relief from heat of Delhi. It's not as crowded as other hill stations of India.
In November we went to Suja, another hill station, where we conducted photo and film workshop with Tibetan kids. It is beautiful place which does not have many tourists. Close by are Dharamsala, Bir Billing and Dharamkot. We did paragliding here. You also see a lot of monasteries and also see ancient Shiv temple.
In second half of November it was time to explore South India and its Konkan Coast. We went to Pune, Kohlapur, Malvan and touched Goa. It was a total road trip which was beautiful. We did para sailing and scuba diving here at Devbag Sangam Point where river meets the sea. The journey of Pune to Malvan was extremely beautiful. We also saw forts of Peshwas and Shivaji (Sindhudurg).
In December we saw historical cities of Gwalior, Jhansi and Orchha. A trip that will take you back in time.
These cities have historical and heroic stories from India's first Independence freedom struggle, Mutiny of 1857, against the British.
In December again we visited Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A trip that will leave you speechless. Beautiful beaches, coral Island, mud volcanoes, scuba diving, ferries, food, hermit crabs, voyager, mangroves, limestone caves, cellular jail- endless memories. This trip needs separate section.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
films and videos made
2) The film "What Lies Ahead"(below) screened at various film festivals across India, including Mumbai International Film Festival . (http://library.wobook.com/WBry1lT1l83T-203)
3) Second film ,"entertaining tibet"(below), screened at global film festival.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Royal adventures at Neemrana Palace near Delhi
by S Preet Kaur
Barely two hours from the Indian capital, this centuries old fort, now a resort, is a perfect plan for your weekend. Live like a royal, enjoy the quiet surroundings and even try a little bit of adventure.
Neemrana, here we come
During the drive you will have mustard fields and the Aravalli hills range to give you perfect scenery. After some time, you will find Neemrana village on your right. A few minutes drive into the village and you will spot the resort, up there in the mountains. Perfectly camouflaged in the hills, this pale Neemrana fort seems very small from a distance. But looks can be deceptive.
Drive up to the fort
Now come rocky winding roads. The bumpy ride up the hill is fun . You see small century old houses, as if straight out of Hindi films from the sixties. All the dialogues and scenes come alive- the poor village girl being tortured by the munim (accountant) of the village, the young village boy swearing to avenge the death of his parents by a dacoit (you might hum songs from the Hindi movie Karan Arjun, if you have seen it, you’ll know what I mean).
Anyway, back to the trip, a few twists and turns and you are there. Park your car and get ready!
Blast from the past- enter Neemrana
A big entrance welcomes you and you know- it ain’t that small. The fort is much bigger than it seems. As you enter the Fort, it suddenly dawns upon you that your surroundings are now different. The honking of cars has been replaced by the chirping of birds and call of peacocks. The hustle and bustle of the city is far away and you are in the lap of nature. There is a sense of calm all around. Just after entering, you see relics from the past- the vintage car of the
You go back in time the moment you step inside a small room with old but fancy furniture, doors with carvings and inlay work, antiques and paintings. Overwhelming! This room overlooks the green mountains, the Aravallis. The room is attached to an open terrace with a lotus pond and a few chairs to enjoy the view. Sit there and relax. Your reverie of thoughts is stopped by screams echoing in the mountains. Well, these are screams of excitement and you know it's time to have some fun. Let the magic unfold.
The fort is built on nine levels or sections, each having a different name and wide range of views. It is a 14th century fort. The place was ruled by Chauhans till India’s indepence in 1947. It got its name from a local chieftain named Nimola Meo. It turned into a heritage resort in 1986. Many royals have turned their forts and palaces into resorts, after India became a democratic country. This was a move to maintain these big palaces and have the money coming in. So did Neemrana. The staff at the palace told us that the royal family that owns this place lives abroad.
After you have had your share of adventures, go and relax by the pool. Enjoy the scenic beauty and munch on the snacks being served in silver cutlery by typical royal helpers in uniform with big moustaches. Watch the sun set behind the Aravallis, sipping wonderful coffee, listening to melodious folk music and enjoying the dance by folk dancers. Here, time stands still and royalty prevails.
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(also publshed in global website- suite 101.com- south asia travel)
Dum Duma Lake- A perfect getaway from the Indian Capital
The routine life of office and home can get to you. When parties and dinners offer no respite and peace is what you seek, then Dum Duma Lake is just the place for you. Located near Gurgaon, Dum Duma lake is barely two hours from New Delhi. It offers a number of options such as camping, boating, rock climbing, para sailing, amidst jungles, at affordable prices.
Reaching the lake
Hop on a bike or get in the car and be ready to have a great time. As you leave New Delhi and cross the Gurgaon region, you see skyscrapers and tall buildings that tell the story of the country's development. Drive another ten minutes and you begin to see a steady contrast. The images of fast paced city life, from which you wanted respite, start to dwindle away and soon you feel you are in a small town out in the country. After a two hour drive, on the Delhi- Alwar highway, you see a sign that says "Dum Duma Lake", and you know the excitement is just around the corner.
Destination Dum Duma
Enter the village and you find fields, cows and goats, huts and people carrying wood to burn on their stoves. Two hours drive and you seem to have travelled back in time. After passing through villages and riding on mud tracks, you reach the lake. Around you are the Aravalli hill range, a jungle and the lake . Park your vehicle here and get on the boat. These boats take you to the camp site and are very safe. Row the boat yourself for a while, it's fun. The skill can be picked up easily.
In the Aravallis, you will spot villagers with their grazing goats, peacocks on the land, cranes on the lake, standing on one leg - fishing and seeming to keep an eye on you, and maybe a flying kingfisher to add to your delight. No honking of cars, just the chirping of birds and the noise the water makes when the oar hits the calm surface of the lake. Music to the ears. You don't want to talk, only listen to the silence. And soon, your boat reaches the bank. Go and unburden yourself in your cottage or camp. The facilities here are good.
Activities at the lake
So after a nap and lunch, gear up for some fun. Activities here, in and around Dum Duma Lake, include rowing, fishing, bird watching, nature walks in the nearby Aravalli mountain ranges, rock climbing, trekking , air rifle shooting, para sailing, Burma bridge, spider web, trampolin jump, zorbing, zig zag bars, barrel crossing, jumps, tarzan swings, fishing, flying trapeze, paint ball game and so on. So what's your pick?
One day and night at the camp along with these activities and food and drinks can cost you around four thousand rupees(around 40 dollars). You may have to make your own arrangements for activities like para sailing and zorbing, as they may not be available at your camp site.
Bonfire under the stars by the lake
The night here is equally exciting. The best time to visit the lake is from October to March as the temperature is cool. The sky is clear, unlike the city sky, and you enjoy seeing the stars. Set up a barbecue and make sumptuous tikkas, an Indian snack, yourself. Keep warm with a bonfire and drinks and in between, munch your snacks.
Well, if you have not planned any trip or party, you can plan your New Year here. The camp will have a DJ for your dance party, bonfire, snacks and drinks to welcome the New Year in a perfect way.
Calling it a day
Even when voices die down as people start returning to their tents, you may want to take a stroll and enjoy the silence of the night, all by yourself. Go for a walk, hear the animals calling in the jungle, see the trees silhouetted against the sky, feel the cold wind pinching your cheeks, and maybe you'll take a trip down memory lane. Only good memories will flash by. You will feel all rejuvenated and fresh. You have left the city's hustle and bustle far away. Enjoy and feel positive about life!
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Sunday, August 1, 2010
Smell the Coffee
Published in October edition of Hardnews , http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/10/3270
For new-age cafés, it's big business. Unlike the dying coffee houses of yore, these swanky joints are a different cup of coffee
Sumiran Preet Kaur, Delhi
The story of the coffee homes reflects the ever-changing socio-economic dynamics of India.
Ram Shastri, a journalist, has been coming to the Indian Coffee House at Mohan Singh Place in Delhi for the past 30 years. From the open terrace of this café in Connaught Place (CP), he has seen Delhi's skyline change. New, fancy restaurants have come up and swanky cars are all over. Another café regular says, "Earlier, I used to catch the first shuttle tempo (phutphatia) from my office at Shastri Bhawan to come here." He still comes here every evening.
Here in the café, time stands still - torn seats, the muggy lobby, familiar faces. A turbanned waiter in dull white uniform serves the coffee. He, too, seems a relic of the past. The only change, a minor one, is in the price of the coffee: from 75 paisa about 30 years ago, it has climbed to Rs 10.
Shastri and others have grown old with the coffee house. But that is threatened to be disrupted now. Anytime this year, the café could close down following a court ruling. To stall that, the café regulars, most of them above 50, decided to form the Coffee Consumers' Forum.
Thinking man's haunt
The history of this café can be traced back to 1957. A decade after Independence, retrenched Class IV employees of the Coffee Board started the café. It is run by The Indian Coffee Workers' Cooperative Society (a workers' union) which was founded during the price-rise resistance movement in Delhi. They had decided to run the coffee house on a no-profit-no-loss-basis. It originally existed in the Theatre Communication building, where today's Palika Bazaar has come up.
Continuing with tradition, the café still hosts dialogues and reading sessions with writers, poets and artists. It was common to hear people get up and recite poems. Nobody was a stranger here. Anybody could join any group or sit solitary nursing a cup of coffee. Civil society and human rights groups would hold meetings. This was a place to fix future appointments, plan a spontaneous resistance, write a letter, conceive a poster/hoarding/wall paper, exchange/read a book, meet friends and foes.
Gossip was a ritual. If you had your ear to the ground, you could catch news breaking in those radio days. One day in the mid-1970s, somebody leaked that emergency was about to be clamped down. This was bad news. The emergency saw fundamental rights crushed. The original coffee house at CP, where there was unbridled freedom of expression, was bulldozed in 1976 by Sanjay Gandhi. After emergency, it got a new lease of life. The NDMC helped it shift to its current address at Mohan Singh Place, behind Regal cinema, next to Rivoli, in CP.
Shastri recalls: "It wasn't just about coffee. It was a home away from home. We sat till the lights were switched off," he tells Hardnews.
Winds of change
The 1990s saw liberalisation of the Indian economy. Private players brought in snazzier options. Around 1995, year-long renovation work by the NDMC added to the woes of the coffee house. Its sales dipped rapidly. To balance the losses, the management pumped in funds at its other branches at Kamala Nagar and Badarpur in Delhi. The café also has branches in Shimla, Chandigarh, Dharamsala, Ludhiana, Jaipur and Allahabad. The Shimla coffee house at the Mall, for instance, is always jam-packed.
In 2008, the Kamala Nagar branch in Delhi downed shutters due to sealing. In 2009, NDMC refused to extend the lease at Mohan Singh Place and asked them to vacate the place in June 2009. The court ruling on September 8 also asked them to vacate the premises. Now, the coffee house management claims there's no choice but to close down. "With a monthly expenditure of Rs 60,000, we cannot afford to run this place. We also have to pay our staff and run the kitchen," says CS Baiju, secretary of the cooperative.
The café is gasping for breath. Coffee vans of the Coffee Board of India that served steaming cups at CP and ITO have disappeared. Now, the board runs only four coffee depots in Delhi. Just across the road from the Indian Coffee House, there is the Coffee Home run by Delhi Tourism at Kharag Singh Marg. It still sells coffee at Rs 10. The official in charge of this café, on condition of anonymity, tellsHardnews, "It's a matter of time before this garden restaurant-cum café shuts down. People come here early in the morning, grab seats, keep talking for hours and order nothing. This is a no-profit place."
It's not just the lack of profit and business, these old cafés in Delhi are also threatened by land sharks since they are located on prime property in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi. The odds are skewed against them.
In a new avatar
For coffee though, the scene is not all that grim. The simple cup of coffee, or kuppa as it is known in south India, is now a measure of your cool quotient. It's now über cool for students and professionals to hang out in new-age, affluent cafés.
The snacks accompanying coffee have changed from the earlier idli-sambhar to pasta and desserts. It's not just crushed chicory anymore. Now there is a wide range to choose from. You can have a cappuccino, a latte or a frappe. You could also ask for Italian or Arabic coffee.
VG Siddhartha's family is in the business of growing and exporting powdered coffee for 139 years now. During one of his foreign trips, Siddhartha came across beer bars doubling up as Internet parlours. He wanted to replicate a similar model in India with coffee at its core. So, in 1996, he opened the first new-age cafe in Bangalore. This was the precursor to the Café Coffee Day (CCD) chain. By 2000, Barista came in with its cosmopolitan café chain.
Even foreign players like Costa Coffee made forays in the Indian market. Italian Lavazza came in 2007 through the acquisition of Barista Coffee Company Limited. According to a spokesperson of Lavazza, Italy, "Today, people have disposable incomes to spend on food and they are hanging out more often. This has given rise to a contemporary café culture. India is a potential market."
Now big players like CCD, Barista Lavazza and Costa Coffee are venturing out of the metros and setting up cafés in cities like Jaipur, Agra and Chandigarh.
With coffee and delectable bites, these cafés offer customers a comfortable seating, prompt service and stylish store design. They keep changing the look and feel of their stores along with the menu to keep up with changing taste. What's more, complements to coffee - music, art, books and even wi-fi connectivity - are on offer.
It's big business
The new-age cafés or coffee bars have got their economics right. They are marketing, selling and brewing a brand. They "sell" the "concept" of coffee. "The USP is 'chill out while you eat," says Santosh Unnikrishnan, CEO, Costa Coffee India, a UK-based café chain. So, how does he see the coffee culture evolving in India? "India has always had a strong coffee culture like the famous filter coffee down south. What has changed is the marketing, branding and packaging of coffee. Now you get high quality coffee, freshly ground from beans in front of you in hygienic conditions. Along with the coffee, you also have a place to unwind," he says.
So, it is old wine in a new bottle. Most of the companies including the Indian Coffee House get their beans from Chikmagalur in Karnataka. But, companies say that the blending and roasting gives each brand its uniqueness. It's the blend that makes the difference.
According to Alok Gupta, director of Café Coffee Day, "India's young and the young-at-heart are exposed to global culture through the media and popular sitcoms like Friends where the café is an integral part of people's lives. The media, too, have made the world a smaller place. So, the need of a young man or woman in Florida is not much different from his/her counterparts in any Indian city," he points out.
For new-age cafés, it's an outright business proposition. Unlike in the coffee houses of yore, here you don't have the luxury of sitting for hours without ordering anything. As soon as you have polished off the last crumbs of a brownie and finished the coffee, a waiter will politely ask, "Anything else, please?" That's the signal: he is telling you to get up and leave, if you are done.
Pricing in these cafés are not uniform either. It is driven by the socio-economic profile of the area it is located in - rent, location and saleability. For instance, a cappuccino costs Rs 49 in Barista Connaught Place while you have to shell out Rs 84 for the same in the chain's posh Khan Market outlet - one of the most upscale markets in the world. All the café chains admit doing it.
According to a Barista spokesperson, "We have divided our cafés into two categories or formats. The outlet at CP is a regular espresso format while the one in Khan Market is the Barista Crème format. The latter has a kitchen attached to it to prepare fresh food. Hence, prices vary."
Though the coffee experience in these cafés comes at a high price, they are usually choc-a-bloc with customers. "With time, preferences and taste of people change. Earlier people wanted an Ambassador for a car. Now, they aspire for swanky, comfortable cars. And, we give them what they are looking for," points out Unnikrishnan.
Customers shell out Rs 100 for a cup of coffee while meeting friends, business associates or spending time with a fiancé. For the daily dose of affordable coffee in Delhi, you can still go to old coffee joints like Depauls at Janpath who brought in the concept of bottled coffee. Its cold coffee priced at Rs 25 is popular among the young and the old.
It is unlikely that this coffee culture will fade away since the new cafes are trying to make their presence felt in various cities and small towns. The cafes are full of youngsters, considering that the target of the cafes is Gen X. "The food here is good and so is the ambience. We have a lot to choose from and we do not get such stuff to munch at home," says Prabhsharan Arora, senior Marketing Manager, Planet X. It is also a place with professional nomads go with their laptops.
Barista managers suggests that with increasing income and the rising tendency to spend within the affluent urban society, their have been an unprecedented growth in the trend of "out of the home segment eating and drinking". Barista is now planning to open high-end liquor bars in select places, beginning with posh Khan Market.
No wonder, the new concept is a big hit among the rich and upwardly mobile, especially the young. Indeed, Cafe Coffee Day boasts of 65 per cent of India's Rs 400 crore 'coffee bar market' with its 800 outlets, while Barista commands 25 percent with 230 outlets across the country.
Swan song?
So, why do people still go to the musty coffee house behind Regal? Says Shastri: "The new cafes are doing well. But can they inspire an intellectual environment? Wo jazbaa nahi hai (The passion is no longer there)."
The forum led by Shastri wants the government to declare the Indian Coffee House a heritage site and allow it to run. However, by the time you read this, it's possible that it might have served its last cup of watery coffee. A legacy would have ended. Or will the Coffee Consumers' Forum fight a last-ditch battle for victory?