Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2010

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Ankur

3D Artwork at the Kala Ghoda arts Festival

A few months ago, a friend of mine, a Xaverian (hope thats how they are known as) told me not to miss the Kala Ghoda Arts festival. I was less than enthusiastic about it, afterall Mumbai has its fair share of concerts, theatre and art events. What I didn’t realize was that no other event could blend all of this together and cook it into a delicious offering served to you within a few square miles in South Mumbai!

This is the 10th year of Kala Ghoda Arts Festival (or KGAF), it is a week long street festival where visitors can be a part everything for free! I visited the festival area on the first two days, and cannot wait to go back this weekend for more. There is so much happening there that you cannot be bored…concerts, workshops, film festival, plays, photography, street plays, heritage walks…okay thats all I remember.

Handmade accessories at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2010

There there, enough of advertising, I’d just summarize what all I did and missed too! I missed being a part of a literature workshop on getting one’s work published…well, was waitlisted for the workshop, I couldn’t go for the heritage walk, missed the plays as well!

I did go for the Heritage bus ride across South Bombay(Mumbai!) which had a dash of history, architecture, British India and of course heritage. Never knew that Nariman Point and the likes is on reclaimed land, or that VT Terminus was built over 10 years at 16 lakh bucks!

I absolutely loved the photo exhibits right next to Jehangir art gallery and Museum Gallery. �The pictures of Project Dharavi, Blind Photographers, Diti Kotecha and Shekhar Sidaye were absolutely amazing. I wish I could take pictures like that.

The festival has plenty of visual art as you move around in the Kala Ghoda area, the themes are focused on nature, water conversation and education for children. Unfortunately, I did witness extremes right there in the vicinity which took away the true essence of the messages.

I’ll just add up the pictures below, for words cannot describe the atmosphere…the colors and the creativity which flow freely during Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

Used a bit of my camera's defect for this image

Odd one Out!

Its on till 14th Feb 2010, do visit.

iPad or a bigger iPod touch

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Ankur

Since half of the world and almost all of twitter was in a iPad/iSlate frenzy yesterday; I have decided to bank on the internet trend and get my blog a few hits today

To the�uninitiated�(really? You haven’t heard of the Apple iPad yet? Wake up!), an Apple iPad is a 9.7″x7″ touch device which is barely half-an-inch thick and allows you to play audio, watch TV, video, run applications off App Store and surf the internet on 3G, cellular networks and of course Wi Fi. It comes in capacities of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and runs a 1 GB processor.

It also boasts of a finger print resistant coating (oh yeah, now i could kill someone with an iPad and not worry about those nasty prints for CSI) on the screen.

Well the price is pretty high $499 to $899

Honestly, I feel that my 16GB iPod touch is just a smaller iPad!! Features aren’t too different, maybe applications later would make all the difference!�Carrying the device maybe a pain, afterall it isn’t a netbook and it can’t fit in your pocket.

On the marketing front, Apple got plenty of free Internet Buzz…lucky them! But naming could have been different iPad sounds like a sanitary pad!

Even though it doesn’t have a camera, is over priced, cannot multitask, is just a bigger iPod touch…i’d still want it ‘coz its cool and its from Apple (sigh! I can already head Admiral Ackabar screaming: It’s a �’Marketing’ trap!)

Chasing flavours – Malai Makhan

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Ankur

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The traditional Malai Makkhan in Lucknow

Malai Makkhan or cream butter�is one of the most amazing sweet snacks sold during the winters in Lucknow and Kanpur (and also some other parts of UP). While the name may scare the diet conscious, the true product is much much lighter and devoid of any noticeable fat content.

I normally had trouble describing how it looks like, and thus the picture above. Incidently, I have been buying this amazing sweet from the same seller (who comes on a bicycle singing along makkhan malai on the streets) for over a decade!�

The best description of the recipe of this treat is��- saffron flavoured frothed cream, made by hanging unsalted butter overnight in dew and then aerating it by beating it.

Dew being an important factor to manufacture this delicacy, its only during the winters and early spring that we Lucknow-ites are blessed with this. I has a slightly sweet flavor of �frothy cream which just vanishes in your mouth tickling your taste buds wanting for more.

Ghajini – Review

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Ankur

So I managed to grab tickets for the special preview of Ghajini. After the confusion of the court order on its release, I was pretty anxious whether it shall be released or not…and it did!

For those who have seen Memento, it is a nicely inspired version where Aamir takes up the role of Guy Pierce. However, while Guy was much more icy in Memento, Aamir has brought human anger and emotions to Sanjay Singhania’s character.

I guess the next fashion fad after his hairdo would be the rolled up sleeved shirts (already being sold by a leading fashion label). Anyways, so Sanjay aka Sachin suffers from antiretrograde amensia and forgets his memory every 15 minutes. He is searching for his beloved’s killer with all the tatoos and Polaroid pictures helping him add up the clues to find the man.

Asin could have waited for a meaty role, all she does in this movie is being chirpy and a good samaritan…which is quite unbelieveable at times. But she has done justice to the role and has looked pretty in all the right places.

What the movie lacks is pace and bad placement of songs which drag it down in patches. Another element worth mentioning are the action scenes which look unbelievable and are shot in a unique fast forward way…may remind you of Rajnikanth action style even.

All in all I liked the movie and would recommend it..its better than the current fare available and Aamir, as always, has delivered the goods.

Get Google Chrome-ified!

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Ankur

I am sure that plenty more bloggers have already posted their reviews of Google’s new web browser Chrome, many of them might be more technically erudite than me; but what the heck! Here’s my take on Google Chrome which I have been using since the last 14 hours now!

The striking observation on the first start of the browser would be the placement of Tabs on the top, there is no File Menu (hidden or otherwise) instead you have a file icon on the right side of the Address Bar.

The interface is uncluttered and sleek, and the browser opens in a jiffy quite faster than Internet Explorer 7.0 or Flock on my computer, which is very admirable.

Another great feature is that every tab exists as an individual process, so in case of an application crash (which IE seems to have often with Adobe Acrobat) only that tab dies and the rest are saved from annihilation.

There is no search tab �you do it only from the address bar, also I cannot figure out where to change my default search engine. Apart from this, this baby is loaded with all bells and whistles like Popup Blocker, Icognito tab (the browsing history is hidden in this case, something which we can notice in IE 8 BETA).

What it lacks is that most Advanced Options are so well tucked away that it can be a bit uncomfortable for seasoned users. It also has this constantly running process GoogleUpdate running in the background all the time, which seems utterly not critical to be running all the while.

I could also not see any support for add-ons the way Firefox does, hope its still on the cards.

Would I use it regularly? Well, I dont know…atleast till the honeymoon’s over. I do love the fact that this browser opens up in a split second.

The verdict is that Chrome shows a lot of promise, but then it doesn’t offer anything out of the world which would make you switch. Also, I am tired of Google’s perpetual BETA versions of services and software like Gmail(since 2004), Gtalk(2005) and now Chrome(2008)…what if they never cross the beta stage again?

You may download Chrome from�http://www.google.com/chrome