Craftsman Suresh reinstates Nettoor Petti to the living rooms of Kerala

Nettoor, a village in Thalassery district was once famous for its Nettoor Petti used for keeping jewelleries and gold in temples and palaces. Since the modern lockers are safer to keep the jewelleries, this box slowly became obsolete. Now, Nettoor petti has taken back its place in the living rooms of Kerala through the efforts of a craftsman named V V Suresh Kumar.

“There is no one known to be making this box in Nettoor and it may have vanished when its importance faded away. I learned this art from my father G Vishwanathan Achari who was a master craftsman and a recipient of Kerala State Government’s award for the best handicrafts in 1987”, said Suresh.

Taste of Trivandrum: Nirvana Lounge, a place more than a restaurant

To quit a job and start a business is not an easy task unless one has some original ideas and confidence. When a group of friends known as KC Boys decided to start a new restaurant with innovative ideas, they never thought it would become a huge success. ‘Nirvana Lounge’, at Golf Links Road is the innovative restaurant in the city with their speciality Thai dishes and authentic Momos at its best started recently by Midhun, Vidhun and a team of friends.

A brightly lit casual eatery, the restaurant has been designed to take the diners into a culinary journey through China. The menu includes Momos, Cocktails and other Chinese, Malaysian, Thai and Nepali dishes. The initial idea of these friends was to start a coffee shop since they missed a good place in Trivandrum to meet up with everyone. “We were searching for a good place for the coffee shop and it was then that we heard about a house for rent. Our ideas went beyond a coffee shop to a restaurant. The name Nirvana doesn’t relate to Hinduism or Buddhism and it means self realisation. We never thought we would one day start our dream project which we thought was never possible”, says Midhun, one of the owners of Nirvana Lounge.

Autonomy in Colleges

The UGC (University Grants Commission) has decided to give autonomous status to seven aided colleges in the state which includes St. Thomas College, Thrissur, Fatima Mata College, Kollam, Mar Ivanios College, Trivandrum, Sacred Hearts College, Thevara, St. Berchman’s College, Changanassery, St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam and Rajagiri College of Social Science, Klamassery. These colleges will have the right to implement their own courses and syllabus, appoint teachers and fix admission criteria. They can conduct examinations and declare the results but the degree certificate will be issued from the respective university. This decision of making these colleges autonomous would create many difficulties among the students. The equality of the students will be at stake.

Tastes of Trivandrum: 'Ajwa' With Thalassery Palate

The North Malabar town of Thalassery is famous, not only for its nice and friendly people, but also for its delectable food. Many of the leading bakeries all over Kerala are owned by people from Thalassery. It was in this town, where cakes were baked for the first time in Kerala, for the Europeans. Now, ‘Ajwa’ has brought the taste of real Thalassery Dum Biriyani to the Capital city of Kerala, at affordable prices.

‘Ajwa’ dates are high quality dates from Saudi Arabia. The signature dish of ‘Ajwa’ is Dum Biriyani served with ‘Ajwa’ dates pickle. The lingering taste of this combination is unique and superb. So when they started a new restaurant at Trivandrum, the owners decided to name it ‘Ajwa’. 

Tastes of Trivandrum: Kallaikada with Malabar Taste buds

The name ‘Kallai’ reminds us of Malabar and its old capital city Kozhikode that flourishes on both sides of this famous river. Kallai was once world famous for its timber industry, and even now, one can see timber mills on the banks of Kallai River. When they decided to open a new restaurant serving specialty Malabar food, the owners of ‘Kallaikada’ decided to give a suitable name, synonymous with erstwhile Malabar. The new restaurant was thus named ‘Kallaikada’.

Tastes of Trivandrum: Koonpura, The House Of Mushrooms

When we hear the name ‘Koonpura', we think it is a place where only mushrooms are grown. I was delighted to see the different varieties of snacks, pickles, and other items made here. The cutlets, samosas and bondas made with mushrooms are tastier than the cutlets made with other vegetables. The lists of food products made with mushrooms are much more than these snacks.

Functioning at Kuttikadu Lane, Kaimanom, Koonpura was started by Mushroom Farmers and Byproducts Producers Welfare Society headed by Jose Prakash. This society imparts training in mushroom farming to its members and also helps them find self employment. Snacks and other food items are made of mushrooms grown in Koonpura. 

SHASHI THAROOR- A CELEBRITY STUDY

This particular post is a thesis done by me during my college days which was part of my academic syllabus. It is a celebrity study of  Shashi Tharoor, the renowned writer, politician and peace maker. I hope this thesis would help many to have a good idea of Shashi Tharoor as a celebrity.

      Chapter One

      Introduction

 Author, peace-keeper, refugee worker, human rights activist and Minister of State for HRD – these epithets that describe the writer-cum-diplomat-turned-politician Shashi Tharoor on the homepage of his website  <http://tharoor.in> bear testimony to the fact that Tharoor straddles several worlds of experience. A spectacular career at the UNO, an array of eminent books of fiction and non-fiction, justly famous columns in newspapers and journals, and a nascent but tumultuous political career, have all catapulted him into a significant celebrity status in India. The present study entitled “Shashi Tharoor and India: A Global Profile” undertakes a study of celebrity culture vis-à-vis the celebrity-dom of Shashi Tharoor, tracing the course of a high-flying career that has traversed the domains of literature, diplomacy and, more recently, politics.

A celebrity is an individual whom the public watches, someone who is recognized by a large number of people. High positions, wealth, looks or power produce celebrities who are abundant and ubiquitous in today’s world, from movie stars to television personalities, from politicians and sportsmen to notorious scamsters. The celebrity status may be the consequence of the recognition of certain qualities possessed or deemed to be possessed by a person. An individual therefore becomes a celebrity only when he or she is acknowledged in the public realm as possessing something special. Celebrities become heroes or heroines, villains, youth icons, role models, and have a cultural function for society to look up to, emulate, be inspired by, despise or criticize. “Celebrities give the public pleasure, pain or suffering with their actions and win adulation or opprobrium accordingly” (Nayar 4). It is important to note that the circulation and consumption of celebrities occurs from below – at the level of real people who are well below the celebrities in terms of class, social and cultural power. There is no celebrity without an audience. The audience is an integral part of the spectacle of celebrity. Celebrity culture is a transaction between the mediated image and the audience.  Hence celebrity culture involves not only celebrities and media productions but also the public, the consumption audiences who feed on celebrity data.

Celebrities are created by a public awareness of the actions of certain individuals and, this public awareness is made possible by the mass media. One way of understanding the production of celebrity is to classify her or him as a spectacle that focuses on individual or collective abstract desire, a process that Chris Rojek terms ‘celebrification’ (cited in Nayar 68). Ours is an age that celebrates fame through media productions and circulation. Well-known is often a tag that is synonymous with fame. Increasingly, fame, renown and celebrity are used interchangeably, though there is a fine distinction between them. If fame is the consequence of deeds and achievements of a person worthy of emulation, “celebrity is the consequence of publicity and well- knownness” (Nayar 6).