RICH DIET: A handwritten cookery manuscript containing a glimpse of the menu from England’s first Indian restaurant has sold for $11,344 (Rs 7.6 lakh) at a London book fair.
It refers to dishes like “pineapple pullaoo” and “chicken currey” from the Hindoostane Dinner and Hooka Smoking Club, opened in 1809 at Portman Square, London, by Sake Dean Mahomed, whose roots lay in Bihar.
“This is the first known record of a priced menu from Britain’s first Indian restaurant – at a time when printed menus were rarely available,” said Brian Lake of Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers in London, which sold the volume at the ABA Rare Book Fair to an American institution last month.
The manuscript, titled Receipt Book 1786 on the front, also contains handwritten recipes and receipts. It includes a two-page “bill of fare” from Hindoostane, listing 25 Indian dishes with prices.
These include makee pullaoo (1.1.0 pounds), pineapple pullaoo (1.16.0 pounds), chicken currey (0.12.0 pounds), lobster curry (0.12.0 pounds), coolmah of lamb or veal (0.8.0 pounds), together with breads, chutneys and other dishes.
It ends by noting that there are “various other dishes too numerous for insertion”.
Towards the end is a recipe “to make a curry powder”, attributed to Lord Teignmouth (1751-1834), who was governor-general of Bengal between 1793 and 1797 and later became a patron of Mahomed’s restaurant.
Mahomed went bankrupt in 1812, and the eatery struggled on as Hindostanee Coffee House under a new management before disappearing in 1833.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> India / PTI / June 04th, 2018
Back from the brink: The western wall of the Ashoorkhana shows off tiles with intricate inlays. | Photo Credit: K.V.S. Giri
Telangana government and Aga Khan Trust are working to restore the monument ahead of rains
It is a race against the monsoon as Hyderabad’s 17th century Badshahi Ashoorkhana, famed for its resplendent tile work, is restored to its original finery.
The sprawling structure, which turns into a house of mourning during Muharram, is located in a narrow bylane of the old city. On Sunday, workers were busy plastering a high wall with brownish lime mortar in the blistering sun, using the cover of a blue tarpaulin. .
On another side of the wall where the restoration is taking place, framed by an arched entrance, is the 400-year old Ashoorkhana. It was built sometime in 1611 by Hyderabad’s founder, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah.
“We are consolidating the structure before the monsoon sets in. The documentation is also being done in parallel. Once that is over, we will decide on a conservation plan. The tile work has very fine detailing. At some points, the tiles have been painted over. This will require painstaking documentation,” says N. R. Visalatchy of the Telangana Department of Archaeology and Museums.
The documentation is being done by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture with which the State government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding. “We have to do the work before the monsoon, because there are points from which seepage might occur and that will affect the tiles,” says Prashant Banerjee of AKTC. The restoration is a challenge, because materials must be moved through a narrow lane.
Heritage recovered
The restorers are using a lime mortar mix for plastering, but that is not their only weapon. “Pulped and cured wood apple is injected into the gaps. It works like a silicone sealant that expands and contracts without letting the water in. Concrete sealants become rigid, and seepage happens,” says Mr. Banerjee.
The Ashoorkhana, turns into a pilgrimage site when alams (battle standards) are installed to commemorate the battle of Karbala in 680 A.D. Ashoora or 10th day of Muharram is when the battle took place. The monument was lost for several decades when Emperor Aurangzeb’s forces turned it into a bandikhanato keep wheeled vehicles. Much later, the September 1908 floods caused havoc, washing away some tiles. In a shocking turn of events, it was turned into a garage and parking space at one time. A legal battle waged by the Moosavi family made the monument accessible again, and conservation moves followed the eviction of squatters.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Serish Nanisetti / Hyderabad – June 03rd, 2018
In a first, an IIT-Kanpur startup, in association with a Lucknow-based food delivery firm, successfully flown in flasks of freshly brewed tea on the doorsteps of its customers in the city of nawabs.
TechEagle Innovations, founded and run by IIT Kanpur graduate Vikram Singh Meena, pilot-tested delivery of two litres of hot tea with the help of battery-powered and GPS-fitted drones on May 23. It has developed the specialised drone to drop-ship a consignment up to 2 kg within a 10-km-radius of its take-off station with just a single click of a mouse. TechEagle has joined hands with OnlineKaka, a Lucknow-based food delivery startup, for these test flights.
“We have successfully delivered world’s first chai via drone. Now, we would provide these mean machines to other food delivery startups like Zomato, Swiggy and Foodpanda. To begin with, we plan to venture out in north India,” Meena told TOI.
Talking about the drone-delivery model, Bilal Arshad, who founded OnlineKaka, alongwith friend Ahad Arshad and Salman, said: “It’s not like the customer will directly receive the order from the whirring gadget. The drones would be flown and received by our executives at different points and because they would not be commuting through the busy streets, it would cut down the delivery time drastically.” Although the cost implications would be known only after a full-fledged launch of the service, both Bilal and Ahad said they would try to ensure that there was no extra burden for the customer as they would be saving on commuting. At present, they charge Rs 59 per delivery.
Although the trial was conducted with DGCA’s permission, the firs is yet to get a nod for the regular service. “The DGCA had said the norms for drone delivery would be specified in January but it hasn’t come through. It is now expected sometime in July. In sync with the Civil Aviation ministry, the DGCA would mark zones for the drone flights and assign altitude, etc, besides issuing licence for each gadget. The pilots hired for the drones would be another factor to determine cost of operation,” said Ahad.
Interestingly, there are no active drone-based food delivery services in the world. UberEats, the largest grub-delivery platform which has recently opened shop in India, has recently tested a similar drone-based delivery in San Diego, US.
In October last year, global e-tail giant Amazon had filed patent for delivery of products via drones in India.
In 2014, an unmanned drone was used to deliver a pizza to a flat in a high rise in Worli, Mumbai. Another drone startup, based out of Kanpur, called Aarav Unmanned Systems, raised a bridge round funding In April 2016.
However, many firms and startups, who are raring to begin unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drone-based commercial operations (like door-to-door delivery, aerial mapping, infrastructure monitoring and product transport) across the country, have hit a regulatory roadblock as India’s sky watchdog, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), hasn’t yet formulated a final official policy for the same. Although, Goldman Sachs has estimated that drone industry will be worth $125 billion globally by 2020.
The founding members of TechEagle Innovations started designing and manufacturing since 2015 in the garage of IIT Kanpur hostel and formed the B2B tech startup only in January 2017.
“Our startup develops custom-made drones of both types — rotary wing and fixed wing — which can carry 500gm to 5kg payload. The wingspan ranges between 60cm and five-meter, flight time varies between 30 min and two hours,” added Meena.
“The drone-based delivery system came to our minds when we saw real-life problems like traffic jams affecting delivery services, especially food transportation. Then, we partnered with Online Kaka,” the TechEagle CEO said.
TechEagle plans to expand its services across the country based on need and resources. “We have analyzed that around 10-15 drones can be deployed in one city. Our drones can traverse 10 metres in one second and one single trip can last up to 20 minutes. So, it can fly up to 6km to deliver tea and come back to its take-off spot. We are doing research on batteries to increase the payload capacity and flight time,” Meena added.
On the likely cost of food or tea to be delivered via drones, Meena signed off by saying, “Quality and price of tea or any food items will be handled and decided by the food delivery firms, who will use our drones, instead of a bike or a motor van. We can’t disclose the exact selling prices of the drones at present. But when the service becomes fully functional, our drone delivery will definitely be cheaper than the current modes of transportation. We are in talks with quite a few food delivery startups.”
There was a time in the city when one could order little from home other than pizza. It was 2016 and while big names like food panda and zomato were foraying into the Lucknow market, a startup with just two delivery boys caught the fancy of locals, whose staple feast is the kabab-biryani fare. “Our shoestring budget did not allow a lavish ad campaign, so we relied more on word of mouth,” said Ahad Arshad, who founded OnlineKaka, along with friend Bilal Arshad, adding.
Founded in 2016, OnelineKaka is a popular service in Lucknow for delivery and is preferred for delivery from iconic joints from crowded Old City. “It saves people the trouble of commuting to the crowded, jammed areas and they could enjoy kabab-paratha, biryani, kulcha-nihari in the comfort of home,” Bilal says. Today, they have a 125-strong army of delivery boys and an equal number of vendors on their panel, with over 500 new joints in queue. From a turnover of Rs 20 lakh in their first year, they have notched Rs 5 crore and recorded a 15% growth per month, said the founders.
“There was a minimum-order rider in the beginning but now we deliver the smallest of orders,” said Ahad, adding that their latest offering was delivery of the city’s favourite chai and bun-makhan, anywhere. “The packing ensures you get your cuppa steaming hot but with a successful run of delivery by drone, we hope to pick up more orders in this segment,” he added.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Lucknow News / by Sovan Manna / TNN / June 01st, 2018
His was the hand behind the Arabic inscriptions on the Taj Mahal, which have captivated tourists from across the world.
But today, the mausoleum and the dwelling of Amanat Khan, the calligrapher of the Taj Mahal, lies in decay, neglect and encroachment.
Sarai Amanat Khan, about 29 kilometres south-east of Amritsar on Tarn Taran Attari road, was built by Khan in 1640, where he lived a reclusive life following the death of his elder brother Afzal Khan, the prime minister of Shah Jahan.
But here too, Khan, who came to India from Iran in 1609 and whose real name was Abdul Haq before being conferred the title of “Amanat Khan” by Shah Jahan for his impressive calligraphy, has left the imprint of his craft — the sarai has beautiful Islamic calligraphy inscribed on its fading blue and yellow tiles.
Sarai Amanat Khan was also a guest house, where travellers on the Lahore-Agra route on the Grand Trunk Road would stop for rest in the middle of a long strenuous journey. They would live in the small rooms inside the sarai, and pray in the adjacent mosque and large courtyard.
Today, Sarai Amanat Khan is dilapidated — the Nanakshahi bricks are falling off, and the eastern gate is in disarray; some 800 feet below it is Khan’s ruined tomb.
The sarai is in the middle of a densely populated village, also named after Amanat Khan.
With several shops in its immediate vicinity, the Archaeological Survey of India-protected monument is a site of rampant encroachment. Several families live inside the rooms of the sarai illegally, and claim to have been doing so since Partition. “I was born here,” says 50-year-old Ranjit Singh. “People have been living here since 1947. There had been talks about giving us alternative land and compensation, but those have not materialised,” he adds.
source: http://www.archive.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Archive / by Navjeevan Gopal, New Delhi / July 29th, 2012
Karim’s had transformed from a local purveyor of aloo gosht into a monument. It was visited by princes and prime ministers, eulogised by journalists, studied by historians, and patronised by tourists.
Haji Zahooruddin (extreme right) with Bollywood star Dilip Kumar.(Image courtesy Zain-al-Abedin,Zaeemuddin Ahmed and family))
When Haji Zahooruddin started working at Karim’s over 70 years ago, the business consisted of a single restaurant run by his father and grandfather. On January 27, when he died at the age of 85, Zahooruddin was the managing director of a small empire, with 26 outlets overseen by around a dozen other family members.
Karim’s had transformed from a local purveyor of aloo gosht into a monument. It was visited by princes and prime ministers, eulogised by journalists, studied by historians, and patronised by tourists.
Much though Karim’s success was the result of adaptation to changing times — with the addition of Punjabi butter chicken to the Mughlai menu, for example, and the establishment of small take-out joints throughout the city — Zahooruddin devoted himself to protecting Karim’s most valuable asset: its heritage.
“This is time-tested Mughlai food and we do it well,” he told an English daily in 2013, “so why should we change?”
Karim’s changed only as much as it had to. Striking this balance enabled Zahooruddin’s “number one contribution”, said Shahid Siddiqui, a regular at the restaurant who has written extensively about Old Delhi. “He introduced the food of the old city to New Delhi and to the public in general.”
The Karim’s family attributes their culinary lineage to Mohammad Awaiz, a chef in the royal court of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. When the British sacked Delhi and expelled the king to Rangoon, Awaiz fled. He settled in Ghaziabad and found other work, but taught his son, Haji Karimuddin, everything he knew about Mughal cuisine. During the coronation of King George V in Delhi in 1911, Karimuddin returned to the imperial city and set up a food stall. In two years, he made enough money to open a restaurant.
Karimuddin’s son, Haji Nooruddin, had four sons of his own, including Zahooruddin, who was born around 1932. He started working at Karim’s at the age of 12. The young boy learned the power of belonging to the Karim’s family when a particularly strict teacher demanded Zahooruddin hand over the food in his tiffin box every day at lunchtime. Zahooruddin may have gone hungry, but he was spared the beatings inflicted on his classmates.
He spent his whole adult life working at the restaurant, learning its traditions zubaani (orally) and mixing spices with his male relatives — the only ones allowed to know Karim’s recipes. In the late 1940s, he married Samar Jahan, also a resident of Old Delhi, and had four children, two of them sons who have spent their careers working at Karim’s. Four of Zahooruddin’s grandchildren now manage branches of the restaurant.
Zahooruddin’s son Zaid-ul-Abedin, his brother Salahuddin, and nephew Zaeemuddin, three of the current directors of Karim’s, say that his focus was always on Karim’s buniyaad, both in terms of values and dishes. (Burhaan Kinu/HT PHOTO)
Clients and business associates found Zahooruddin to be a commanding figure, and heeded his advice. For newlyweds, he recommended nahari; to the sick, thigh meat for its high degree of bone marrow; to one fat customer, Siddiqui remembered Zahooruddin making the suggestion, improbable for a restaurateur, that the man eat a little less. If a customer said something was wrong with their mutton or chicken, Zahooruddin would keep the piece of meat and show it to his butcher in disapproval. “Babu would scold me sometimes,” said Javed Qureshi, whose family has supplied Karim’s with meat for decades, “but he loved me like a son.” Qureshi is one of many people who refer to Zahooruddin as “Babu” (father).
As time went on, Karim’s business grew, and its legend along with it. The family opened a second branch in Nizamuddin in the years before the Emergency. The former Presidents Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Zakir Husain became devoted customers, the latter ordering his food to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Indira Gandhi was also fond of Karim’s, but had security guards oversee the meals cooked for her.
The obvious antiquity of Karim’s Jama Masjid alleyway, its family’s claims of royal patronage, their distinctive Old Delhi Urdu, their promotion of old-fashioned dishes such as mutton brains — all this was stimulus for myth-making and myth-debunking. Historians debate whether Karim’s famous ‘istoo’ is authentically Mughal or secretly British. Some trace the family’s origins to a Saudi Arabian soldier who became Babur’s personal cook, but Zaeemuddin Ahmed, Zahooruddin’s nephew, said the family does not know anything about their ancestors prior to Awaiz.
In 1988, when Karim’s registered itself as a company, Zahooruddin was made chairman. When his brother Alimuddin Ahmed died in 2007, Zahooruddin took over from him as managing director. A slim gentleman with a well-trimmed moustache, he became the public face of his venerable restaurant. He attended numerous award ceremonies and made an appearance on the NDTV show Foodistan. At such moments, Zahooruddin smiled with the discomfort of a dignified man in a flamboyant place.
The public image of him as an embodiment of Old Delhi customs was shared by those who knew him personally. When Faiz-ul-Islam, his friend of over 40 years, returned from Haj, Zahooruddin invited 200 of Islam’s friends for a free breakfast at Karim’s, in keeping with his sense of mehmannawazi (hospitality). “He did it without takalluf (hesitation) and without a single line on his forehead,” said Fazl-ul-Islam, Islam’s son.
Zahooruddin performed culinary experiments, sometimes inventing his own dishes, while also sampling the food from different outlets of Karim’s every week to ensure his standards were being upheld. He insisted that the core of the menu — qorma, nahari, mutton burra, kebab — remain untouched.
“Babu used to say, ‘If we let others own a franchise, will they give the same attention to the quality of spices we use?’” said Zain-ul-Abedin, Zahooruddin’s son. “For example, he would say that cloves are something most people don’t eat: they take it out and put it aside on the plate. So another restaurant owner may think, ‘What is the use of putting in the cloves or buying the best-quality cloves?’ But clove adds to the taste, its juices mix with the food and bring out the smell of meat.”
What he was selling, after all, was not just food. Visit Humayun’s Tomb, and you’ll find a silent testament to the dead. Visit Zahooruddin’s restaurant, and you’ll find traces of the past still alive.
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Delhi / by Alex Traub and Zehra Kazmi, Hindustan Times / February 01st, 2018
Could the Tiger’s position — now behind a glass case, its crank handle inaccessible to the public — be an apology for the disrespect permitted in East India House?
The artefact sitting in V&A was iconic, identifiable and far away from home
The day I saw Tipu’s Tiger behind its glass case at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London was a day of significance. That morning, after months of being cooped up in Oxford, some friends and I took the train to Marylebone and found the absence of dreaming spires refreshing to say the least. At noon, a friend from India was waiting for me on the other side of the busy Camden High Street. As we hugged amidst the crush of gliding Londoners, her muffled exclamation might have been: ‘It’s so crazy we’re meeting here of all places, so far from home.’
That phrase would be borrowed by me on two separate occasions during the day. In the evening, I stood before Julian Barnes at the Royal Institution and told him how I had read ‘A Short History of Hairdressing’ over and over again to teach myself the ‘architecture’ of a short story. I felt a potent urge then to parrot my friend. It was ‘crazy’ to see and hear Barnes in the flesh, so far from my bedroom in Kolkata, the only other place he had seemed real and, dare I say, attainable through his prose and through the material object, that is, his books in my hands, the only feasible rendezvous with the man.
I had never thought then it would happen: to have someone I studied so minutely sit before me and confess he didn’t think as highly of his short prose as I did.
Iconic meeting
The second occasion I was inclined to echo her words that day was when I stood in the South Asia section of the V&A before Tipu’s Tiger, which had always been relegated to the Did You Know section of our history books. It was not exactly like meeting an old friend or a revered author, but it bore all the characteristics of such a meeting. Like Barnes and my Kolkata friend, it was instantly iconic, identifiable from a distance, and a ready reminder of my distance from India. In fact, standing before the wooden automaton, slightly disconcerted, I addressed it and thought: ‘You are so far away from home.’
The possible inspiration for the mechanical figure seems fitting to some. Hector Munro Jr, whose father defeated Tipu’s father Hyder Ali in the Second Anglo-Mysore War in 1781, was mauled by a royal Bengal tiger at Saugor Island in 1792 and died from the injuries. This must have seemed like divine intervention to Tipu, a wrong set right. The carved and painted, almost life-size, wooden musical automaton was created for the Sultan, whose personal emblem was a tiger and whose hatred of the British was well-known.
The last laugh
With the fall, however, of Seringapatam and the execution of Tipu in the Fourth Mysore War of 1799, the Tiger travelled from the music room of Tipu’s summer palace to the Company’s East India House at Leadenhall Street in London, where the public was given access to view and play with it.
Its wooden body with a keyboard embedded in the flank was thrown open to the English masses who came in and played ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule, Brittania!’ upon it. If Tipu thought he had been mocking the Englishmen with the Tiger, they were now having the last laugh.
I deal with issues of empire and post-colonial anxiety almost on a daily basis, especially in a place like Oxford, especially on a course called World Literatures in English. Of course, when I first saw it, I silently demanded a restoration of the tiger to its previous owner, to its previous nation. My anger at seeing the Tiger in an English museum, so far away from home, was justifiable. The Tiger was not borrowed. Nor was it touring, as it had to New York’s MoMA in the 50s. Instead, it was a ‘permanent’ acquisition at the V&A.
Of collaborations
For every Indian schoolchild, the Tiger, just an artefact but nonetheless awe-inspiring, was not an affordable train or flight away, like Fatehpur Sikri or Sher Shah’s tomb.
For me, the Tiger’s distance from my home was a reiteration of the national and racial distinctions not only of the Anglo-Mysore variety, but also of the Jadavpur-Oxford type that I faced every day. Besides dodging questions like ‘If you’re from India, how’s your English so good?’ for the past few months, I had had to clarify to a white friend who subsisted on the chic-ideal of Zadie Smith that India has Bengalis too, and no, I did not have relatives in Brick Lane, not that I knew of anyway.
Seeing Tipu’s Tiger that day catalysed a recollection of an afternoon in 2016 in the Victoria Memorial Hall with Thomas Daniell and his nephew William. Their tranquil scenes of India, while in stark contrast to the ferocity of the Tiger, do something interesting.
The English hands of the Daniells reproduce the Indian hands of the architects behind the buildings and locations they sketch. Their canvas becomes a surface of Anglo-Indian collaboration, similar to how it is conjectured that the mechanics of the Tiger have an Indo-French history.
This recollection, and the subsequent contemplation on collaboration, made me think of several works of restoration that the V&A carried out upon the Tiger, especially after the bombing of London in World War II. Could this act of restoration be seen as an act of reparation? Could the Tiger’s position — now behind a glass case, its crank handle inaccessible to the public — be an apology for the disrespect permitted in East India House?
The Tiger, so far from home, is an icon that reminds me of a past based on plunder and pillage by the nation it sits in. Yet, its 18th century splendour has weathered war and wear so well. Do present acts of safekeeping obliterate the violent history of its, for want of a better word, theft?
I am persuaded to wonder if the Tiger is now a collaboration between Tipu’s Mysore craftsmen and its modern conservationists in England and if I should be thankful for the restoration. Are the acquisition and conservation of an Indian object in a British museum and the works of British painters displayed in a Calcutta museum an instance of transnational collaboration and exchange? But in the case of Tipu’s Tiger, this then also begs the question: how long is too long before we forget that what is ‘acquired’ is what was once ‘removed’ from its home?
The writer, a Felix Scholar, is studying World Literatures in English at Oxford
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture / by Rohit Chakraborty / May 05th, 2018
Four friends sat down to hang out one evening in 2016, a couple of months before Durga Puja. The idea was to discuss a plan that one of them had, to bounce it off among the other three. Fortunately, they were very excited at the idea… and thus started their project to feed Kolkata.
It started as one “ATM” to “ladle” out free food to the hungry. In a period of just nine months, it’s gone up to three ATMS. And, if things go according to plan, there’ll be two more before Puja this year.Together, the three Food ATMs, as the project is being lovingly called, feed at least 2,000 people each day. The first one came up on the EM Bypass at Uttarpanchanna Gram, the second opposite Ladies Park on CIT Road, and the third one inside Ramleela Maidan off Moulali. The fourth is supposed to come up at Bhowanipore, near Chakraberia, and then a fifth near the 8B bus stand at Jadavpur.
Restaurateur Asif Ahmed and his three entrepreneur friends Prakash Nahata, Rahul Agarwal and Nirmal Bajaj decided to start their endeavour as a sort of experiment by connecting with clubs that organise Puja. With the first letters of their names they formed Pran, a group to fight for a hunger-free Kolkata. Almost every club cooks and feeds bhog on all four days of Puja. “We requested them to cook some extra bhog, so that we could distribute it among pavement-dwellers,” Ahmed says. “We were able to convince 15 clubs, and they gave us immense quantities of food, which we were able to distribute among hungry pavement-dwellers. The gratitude and satisfaction we saw on those poor faces was the incentive that sowed the seeds of the Food ATM project.”
Ahmed first turned his attention towards the food that his restaurant was left with at the end of each day. At his Uttar Panchannagram outlet, he got his workers to cool, pack and refrigerate the food, so that it could be distributed. His friends got a real estate company to donate a specially designed refrigerator, kept outside his restaurant, packed with food. Twice a day, the food was distributed to the needy. “We started on August 15, 2017 to emphasize the freedom factor. What is the value of freedom unless we are able to give freedom from hunger to everyone in the city?” Ahmed says.
Bengali New Year’s Day was celebrated on April 15 a little differently at the Ramleela Maidan. Members of the Entally Yuvak Brinda joined hands with Pran to start the city’s third food ATM. A special room was built beside the park, where the refrigerator is kept stocked with food, water and cold drinks, to be distributed among the homeless twice each day. At least 10 restaurants in the vicinity have been sending their packed excess food to the food ATM. “We just had to visit the restaurant owners and tell them about our intent, and they readily agreed. If the city restaurants stop wasting their leftover food and refrigerate it, we will be able to eradicate hunger completely,” says Jami Siddique, theclub’s secretary.
Most restaurants have to throw away the food even after feeding their staff, as they do not have extra refrigeration facilities and also because they cannot serve it to customers the next day. They just needed an organised, hygienic and efficient collection and distribution system, which is why the idea of the food-ATM seemed so appealing to the donors. “Once in a while, restaurants also give away cold drink bottles, which we gratefully accept,” says Sujoy Banerjee, a member of the club’s Food ATM organising committee. Members are now going a step further and approaching households in the area, telling them not to waste food but to pack it up neatly and call a helpline number that the club has set up, so that it can be collected from their doorsteps. “Even one small container of rice and a little dal or dry sabzi, which is what we are able to collect from most households, is enough lunch for a hungry mouth,” Siddique says.
You have to be present at Ramleela Maidan around 1pm or 9pm any given day to see how the distribution is done and to see how happily the recipients — especially the kids — are, leaving with the food packets. “Khub bhalo khabar… we even get pieces of chicken, fish or eggs at times,” says Monua Patra, a 70-year-old woman who comes with her grandchildren for the food every day. “We share the food amongst us. God bless these good men,” she says.
Perhaps the most popular of all the food ATMs is the one opposite Ladies Park on CIT Road. “At this ATM, we are not only getting food from restaurants, but also get excess food and cakes from birthday parties, wedding halls and party organisers,” says Surjya Kanta Haldar, the points person for this ATM.
This ATM is also getting a lot of donations from schoolchildren of Don Bosco Park Circus and Mahadevi Birla Girls HS School, who keep chocolate, juices and cakes on their birthdays. “These happen quite often nowadays and we are able to happily distribute the goodies among the needy kids,” Haldar says.
Both in Bhowanipore and Jadavpur, Pran is in the last stages of discussion about starting the ATMs. The refrigerators come free from the real estate group in accordance with the agreement with Pran. “The real challenge is that the club members need to network with local restaurants and in the neighbourhood to get a steady chain of donors,” Ahmed adds.
At each partner restaurant, efforts are on to educate patrons about the initiative so that after they have eaten what they need, they can ask waiters to pack up the leftovers. Needless to say, the idea has clicked.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News> Civic Issues / TNN / May 05th, 2018
Miyan Sahab Ka Imambara in Gorakhpur sees lakhs of devotees around Muharram every year.
Not many might know that Gorakhpur, the epicentre of the Nath sect, is home to a two-century-old Imambara as well. Built with the help of Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah, the Imambara has been included in the list of places being promoted by UP Tourism.
Legend goes that once when the Nawab was out hunting in a forest in Gorakhpur, he came across a man meditating by the side of a dhuni (slow burning fire) deep in the woods.
Seeing the mystic wearing almost no clothes, the Nawab offered his expensive shawl to him as it was a bonechilling winter evening.
However, not welcoming of the move, the man, identified as mystic Hazrat Roshan Shah, threw it over the dhuni. But, instead of burning to ashes, the shawl did not catch fire at all, leaving the Nawab bewildered. Seeing his expressions, the mystic replied that the shawl was kept in the safest of places and he could reproduce it on demand. Then, the man took the unscathed shawl out from his ‘dhuni’ and offered it back to the Nawab.
Amazed at his spiritual powers, the Nawab offered him a handsome grant but Shah refused. When the Nawab insisted, Shah asked him to get an Imambara built for Imam Hussain and give some land for the Imambara’s waqf.
As ordered, Asaf-ud-Daulah granted 17 villages in Daud Chak area cash and promised to send gold and silver tazias to the saint. In a book titled Shahernama Gorakhpur, an article by Afganullah Khan notes that the land for the Imambara was handed over to Shah in 1796 and construction began soon after.
The saint died in 1805 and was succeeded by his nephew Ahmed Ali Shah, popularly known as Miyan Sahab. The Imambara came to be known as Miyan Sahab Ka Imambara. It is this name that has been included in the list of places being promoted by the Uttar Pradesh government to bring Gorakhpur on the national tourist map.
It found a mention in the ‘list of places of interest for tourism’ at Gorakhpur Mahotsava too. The government also plans to invite proposals from corporates for investment at tourist sites—including this Imambara.
With its impeccably white exterior, the grandeur of the Imambara can be seen only during the first 10 days of Muharram when azadari rituals are performed. “At least 1 lakh devotees visit the Imambara during Muharram,” says Nahid Shama, principal of a girls’ PG college run by the Imambara Trust.
Blogger Mazhar Naqvi has noted that the traditions of azadari came to the Imambara from Awadh. “Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula sent gold- and silver-plated tazias for the Imambara here from Lucknow. It is believed that the saint had promised to conduct azadari on behalf of the Nawab, and he kept his word,” Naqvi has noted in his article ‘Roshan Ali Shah and the Imambara of Gorakhpur’.
Local writer Prem Paraya stated that the estate grew manifold under the leadership of Roshan’s successors who took keen interest in administrative affairs of the Imambara and related property. “It is said that by then, the estate’s exchequer had lakhs in cash, many gold and silver blocks and a treasure of ‘asharfis’. The waqf was so wealthy that it gave a loan to the East India Company as well,” says Paraya.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Lucknow News / by Shailvee Sharda / TNN / April 01st, 2018
Danish Siddiqui and Adnan Abidi were part of the Reuters team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography announced on Monday.
A Rohingya refugee after crossing the Bay of Bengal. | Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
A sun-burnt woman sinks to her knees on the shore, fatigued and forlorn. In the distance, a group of men unload the meagre belongings that they have carried with them in a small boat as they have made their way across the Bay of Bengal from their homes in Myanmar to the safety of Bangladesh.
This striking picture is the work of Danish Siddiqui, one of two Indians in the seven-member Reuters team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for their series documenting the violence faced by Myanmar’s minority Rohingya community and their mass exodus to Bangladesh starting from August 2017. The prestigious awards, given out by Columbia University in New York, were announced on Monday.
“A photo should draw people and tell them the whole story without being loud,” Siddiqui told Scroll.in. “You can see the helplessness and the exhaustion of the woman, paired with the action that is happening in the background with the smoke. This was the frame I wanted to show the world.”
Adnan Abidi was the other Indian in the team that won the prize. The other members of the Reuters team were Mohammad Ponir Hossain, Soe Zeya Tun, Hannah McKay, Damir Sagolj and Cathal McNaughton.
The Rohingyas, who are mainly Muslim, have been fleeing their homes in Rakhine state for several years, alleging that they are being discriminated against by the government of Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Myanmar maintains that the Rohingyas are illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
The exodus in August was prompted by an intense campaign of violence in Rakhine. Myanmar’s military said that it had launched “clearance operations” against Rohingya militants. It denied that civilians had been targetted.
Smoke is seen on the Myanmar border as Rohingya refugees walk on the shore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat through the Bay of Bengal, in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh, in September 2017. Photo: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Complete chaos
Siddiqui was one of the first international photographers to be sent to the field at the outset of the crisis. The photographer had been on vacation in August when he saw the crisis unfold on the news channels. “I told my editors that I wanted to cover the story and within 48 hours I was on the first flight from Mumbai to Dhaka and then to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh,” Siddiqui said. “Since I was one of the first wave of journalists to land up there, there weren’t many restrictions, and I was permitted to even click pictures in no man’s land.”
Siddiqui spent around three weeks in the coastal villages of Bangladesh and in refugee camps. “It was completely chaotic,” he recalled. “Fishermen were carrying the refugees illegally from Myanmar to Bangladesh. The boats off coast were not going on the jetty and were landing in the middle of nowhere. Since the waves were really high, the boats were toppling and some people even died. Most of them were so traumatised. What they told me was that nobody should witness these kinds of things in their lives. For them, the first priority was to get food and water for their family.”
Adnan Abidi said that the situation was frantic. “Everybody was in pain,” he said. “We knew it was our job to shoot, but I did not want to randomly go in and click pictures. So I spoke to them and then started shooting. Everybody has lost everything and were living in a 10 by 6 plastic sheet for shelter.”
Abidi spent about 15 days in Bangladesh between late October and early November. “I have worked at Reuters for over 14 years now, but this is the most challenging story I have done till now, including the Nepal earthquake” of 2015, he said.
Rohingya refugees scramble for aid at a camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
Right place at the right time
Each of the 16 photographs in the series portray a different aspect of the vast human tragedy. A great news photograph, says Siddiqui, the result of both knowledge and chance. “You have to be at the right place at the right time,” he said. “It is also important to know the history and culture behind a place. You need to also know the history of the conflict. And in cases like these you have to do research on the monsoon waves. But again, news photography does not involve too much planning. We must think of what the readers want to see.”
Behind Abidi’s picture of a young boy bearing a scar, there is a Rohingya translator’s presence of mind, the photographer said. “I was very tired that particular day and was having tea at a small dhaba in the camp when my translator Mohammad Farooq noticed that this kid had a scar,” Abidi said. “I quickly went to them and spent some time with them. The father explained that the seven-year-old boy had been shot on his chest.”
The picture speaks volumes. “I decided that I did not want to show the face of the kid and instead show just his chest and the father’s hands because that image says everything,” Abidi said.
Mohammed Shoaib, 7, who was shot in his chest before crossing the border from Myanmar in August, is held by his father outside a medical centre near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh November 5, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi.
A story to tell
But not everything can ride solely on coincidence, the two photographers noted. When Abidi was in Palong Khali, near Cox’s Bazar, there was an influx of more than 3,000 refugees across the Naf river on November 1. Covering such sudden events needs quick thinking, Abidi said. “We could see a thin line of people crossing the river from around 2 km away from a village,” Abidi said. “So we walked to the river and when we reached there the light was really good. But there was a guard standing at the bank of the river who did not let us go inside to shoot. We pleaded with him to not send us back. He finally let us in and we kept shooting till 11 in the night.”
For Siddiqui, the biggest challenge was physical. “We had to sometimes walk hours to get to a point,” he said. “One day I had to a climb a mountain and walk for six hours barefoot, with leeches on my leg. But you could see that the refugees are also coming from the same side. As a journalist you want to be strong in front of them because I had to tell their story. They should feel that connection with me. If they see me walking by with a bottle of water before them, it will not be nice. You have to be like them.”
Rohingya siblings cross the Naf River along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Palong Khali, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on November 1, 2017. Photo: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
The seven members of the Reuters team each spent about two weeks in Bangladesh on rotation. “We had photographers from different language backgrounds from Bangaldesh, India, Northern Ireland, Britain and Bosnia,” Siddiqui said. “We had a complete story. We also had pictures from the other side in Myanmar as well, which many don’t. Also as a [news] agency, we are very fast and work on getting raw emotions in a photo.”
The rotations helped the photographers cope with emotional exhaustion, Abidi said. “I followed around this kid who had lost his father and was living with his mother and eight siblings,” he recalled. “This kid was taking care of his family. There were people from NGOs and religious communities who were distributing food and money at certain camps. This kid used to follow them for many kilometers and knew where to find them just to get supplies for his family. A week of following the boy broke me down and I then decided that I could not shoot after that.”
Rohingya refugees are reflected in rain water along an embankment next to paddy fields after fleeing from Myanmar into Palang Khali, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Finding new eyes
Siddiqui hopes that the Pulitzer Prize will attract new attention to the tragedy. “I just hope that this award makes a positive difference in the lives of these refugees,” he said. “I hope through these pictures and recognition, more people would get to know about the problem. Because it is not over yet. The crisis is not over yet. These makeshift camps are built on muddy hills which are prone to landslides when the heavy monsoon starts.”
Adnan Abidi (left) and Danish Siddiqui.
Siddiqui added that his field experience had opened up his mind to the various narratives about the Rohingya community and its displacement. In August 2017, the Indian government announced that it was planning to deport all 40,000 Rohingya refugees living in the country, telling the Supreme Court in an affidavit in September that the refugees posed a “serious national security ramifications and threats”. The Supreme Court did not allow any deportations.
“How the narative in India is played out is totally different from what I saw on the ground,” Siddiqui said. “You do not know what is happening unless you are on the ground. Another big takeaway was how too much nationalism can destroy a community of more than one million people. The narrative in Myanmar is totally different. When I went there I could see how helpless people were. They had to fight for a bottle of water. Reading news reports on the crisis was completely different from being on the field and experiencing it first hand.”
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> PhotoJournalism / by Sruthi Ganapathy Raman / April 18th, 2018
International artist Wajid Khan, famous for his ‘iron nail art’, is making the tallest statue of Swami Vivekanand in India that would be installed in Uttar Pradesh.
International artist Wajid Khan, famous for his ‘iron nail art’, is making the tallest statue of Swami Vivekanand in India that would be installed in Uttar Pradesh. The statue made of ashtdhatu (alloy) will be 170-feet tall and will be installed either in Lucknow or Agra, said Khan.
He said the statue will be completed in six months. Khan is here to take part in the four-day International Art Festival being organised at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Though Wajid Khan has not studied in any university or college, he has made a mark for himself by his craftsmanship in metal statue making. He is also making a sculpture for FIFA 2022 to be held in Qatar. The project will take five years to complete.
“A 40-feet statue of Swami Vivekanand is installed in Kolkata and that is his tallest statue. Now, the work on making his 170-feet statue has started in Indore,” said Khan.
“The project is being financed by some businessmen from UP, Delhi and Gujarat. They will decide on the place where the statue will finally be installed. As of now, the first preference is Lucknow and the second is Agra. Due to any reason, if the statue is not installed these cities, the third option will be Delhi,” he added.
“The statue is being made from eight metals including iron, zinc and copper. For the time, the total cost of the statue cannot be revealed,” he said.
Wajid Khan said he is also making a 10×8 ft statue of British Queen Elizabeth, which will be installed at the Royal Palace in London.
Khan has embarked upon a new venture. A proposed retro Bhopal city will be established in 40 acres area in Bhopal and the artist will give it a 2,000 years old look. The project is being financed by some businessmen.
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Cities> Lucknow / by Pradeep Saxena, Hindustan Times,Aligarh / March 15th, 2018
