Currently showing in London's West End is the award-winning musical, Rent, which originally hails from New York's Broadway. The story centres around a group of Bohemian residents living in Alphabet City in the 1980s. The poor and dangerous neighbourhood debates the issues of homelessness, loss of housing and rent control. The audience are shown the lives and loves of the seven diverse characters from one Christmas to the next. Writer Jonathan Larson has based the real issues of homelessness and aids based on his own real-life experiences.

A DIFFERENT SET: Kurup is a rare Asian to appear in a West End production with Rent

The female lead is played by Debbie Kurup, who plays the role of Mimi Marquez. Apart from playing the main love interest, her role is that of a Latino wild child and night-club dancer with an addiction to heroin. It is a rarity to see an Asian stage actress appearing in a West End production. Has her background made her chosen field more of a challenge? She says: "My dad is from Kerala and he's very liberal and totally supports my profession. I dealt with racial prejudices when I was younger but don't face any difficulties these days."

Kurup is a seasoned theatre performer but has also previously worked as a model and made numerous tv appearances. She revealed that had she not chosen acting as a profession she would have become a psychologist. Talking about her current role she adds: "Rent is not the kind of show where you could go into autopilot-it's like being on a roller-coaster. One minute the emotions are high and you're happy, and the next it's really dramatic. It's absolutely amazing and so hard not to put your heart into it."

Rent is showing eight times a week at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Piccadilly, until the end of January.

-Karen Bans

Idols of Jesus Christ and the Laughing Buddha

The Idol Gift

For Indians abroad looking forward to sending gifts home, Reachhindustan.com has launched http://www.reachhindustan.com. A London-based gifting and shopping company, it has started its online operations for the new year, primarily to serve the Indian community to enable it to send gifts all over India. It claims to have received a tremendous response from the huge Indian diaspora. The gift range includes, flowers, cakes, sweets, jewellery, leather wallets, silver items, candlestands and much more.

Now Reach Hindustan is delivering its ethnic Indian gifts in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Middle East. Specially for Christmas and new year, Reach Hindustan introduced 24 ct gold-plated images from the pantheon of Gods, which are manufactured in Switzerland. The images include those of gods from all religions.

Damn the Cassandras

Long, serpentine queues outside Next, Wallis, Kookai across London was the main feature of Boxing Day. Bargain hunters besieged shopping centres as the pre-Christmas spending surge continued into the sales. It boosted the confidence of the Government and brought a smile to the faces of gloomy business forecasters and city analysts. London shoppers who flocked various outlets even before the first ray of sunlight lit across the sky have boosted consumer indices and consumer confidence. Shopaholics woke up early in the morning to queue outside various boutiques in north, west, east and south London. As the clocked ticked away and the queue seemed to grow longer, shoppers had to hide potential purchases in a corner and run to work. Asians never let a good bargain slip from their fingers. Post-Christmas sales has them running around for a cool deal. Its clear the British Asian shoppers are ignoring the doom and the gloom prophets.

Architect of Peace

Hume bags the Gandhi Award

The Gandhi Prize 2001 was awarded to John Hume, a dominant figure instrumental in heralding a new era of justice, peace and reconciliation in Ireland. The award, given for outstanding work and contribution to social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods, carries an amount of Rs 1 crore and a citation. As the main architect of the Northern Ireland Peace Process, Hume has unequivocally opposed violence as a means of resolving conflict. As a young man, he founded the Credit Union in Ireland, building it into a large financial institution-the poor peoples' bank, which offered accessible credit to individuals and for local community development. A leader of the Civil Rights Movement, he provided vision and a philosophy of peacemaking which involved reaching out across religions and political barriers to build trust while working for economic and social development. Hume has made a unique contribution to the formulation of the principles and strategies which underline the historic Good Friday Agreement. His stature has been recognised by the award of numerous international honours, including the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1998 jointly with David Trimble.

-Ishara Bhasi