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METROSCAPE
CAMERA KIDS: Tanya Singh, 12, sports an
attitude that complements the digital camera propped on the tripod in
front. She adjusts her headset and waits for a nod from the floor manager-another
schoolmate-before rolling. In a control room adjoining the studio, four
other students of Delhi's Ryan International School, Rohini, are pressing
buttons and editing shots online. It's a regular day at school.
 Every
day for half an hour, students from Class VI onwards produce and beam
talk shows, music videos, online biology lessons for the in-house Ryan
Channel as part of the school's new Education Through Lens project. And
they are bursting with big ideas. After a documentary on pollution in
the Yamuna and a Nandita Das interview is a spiel on female foeticide.
-Methil Renuka
Kabab & Couture
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| A CASE FOR KAKORI: Kazmi at his kabab
tasting session |
The Kakori kabab, an ultrafine sausage of mutton
with 23 exotic herbs (including powdered sandlewood root and clove flower)
was born in 1943 out of a culinary exigency. The Nawab of Kakori, a talukdar
from the outskirts of Lucknow, had a British guest with fragile teeth
who wanted a dish that wouldn't require much oral labour. The Nawab's
rakabdars, or super speciality chefs, immediately responded with a char-grilled
pate that had meat extricated from the sinewless sections of the goat's
upper thigh, thus making mastication almost redundant. "The kakori
is also mixed with papaya and khoya (cream) to make it even smoother,"
explains Hyder Kazmi, the late nawab's grandson who had come down for
a special tasting session at Delhi's Chor Bizarre restaurant.
Kakori's vegetarian specialities, which the
Englishman probably missed, are even more appetising. The vegetarian kakori,
made from herbs and lentils, is still relatively unknown and the extraordinary
jimmikand kababs, served during the evening, have a delicate pocket of
figs inside. The kababs are eaten tepid, along with a mild lemon sherbet
or shikanji. Gourmands at the tasting drill, which also attracted Deepti
Naval and adman Mohammed Khan, said white wine went just as well.
Kazmi's other love is chikankari and kamdani
embroidery-he has a workshop of 400 weavers and says that he makes 90
per cent of Tarun Tahiliani's cloths. "Some of the stuff at the LIFW
has been made in Kakori," he says, "but sadly, most of the traditional
embroidery is in danger of disappearing." Just like the kababs.
-Anshul Avijit
The Last Dance
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| DEATH OF A DISCO: Ghungroo's final moments |
They call it "the Ghungroo years" in
a kind of cultic nostalgia. Mostly in reference to its heyday in the 1980s.
Big men in suits stood grimly at the entrance of the subterranean discotheque
at Delhi's Maurya Sheraton waiting to screen a bubble of entrants. It
was easy go if you knew the manager (and everyone claimed that they did)
or if you had frequented this strobe-lit sanctuary of revelry about a
thousand times before. Once past the dreaded drawbridge and you could
go wild till pre-dawn... like most did since 1978.
It's closing down now-" reinventing itself"
as the officials at Maurya call it. It's going to be bigger and more spacious
and completely refurbished ... but it obviously won't be Ghungroo. At
its last official party on August 8 (for which the dress code was "Bohemian
70s") two generations of old faithfuls danced and mourned the passing
era in Delhi festivity. The next one will begin in February 2002.
-Anshul Avijit
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