From: Rana Vig (Mehfil Magazine)

FYI… Last week the national OMNI TV program, South Asian Focus, chose to feature Mehfil Magazine as its lead story. Some of you saw the program (thank you for your kind feedback) many who missed it but had heard about it through the grapevine asked if we had recorded it and to send them a DVD. To make it easier for everyone we asked our friends at Shift On Line to render the show for the web – attached below is the link for the Mehfil segment.

Thank you for your continued good wishes and support. Thank you for making Mehfil Magazine a huge success!

Link to the high bandwidth version:
http://mehfilmagazine.com/mehfil_vid01.cfm

Link to the low bandwidth version:
http://mehfilmagazine.com/mehfil_vid02.cfm

MM

The Canada-India Business Council was responsible for holding this event. Attendance was pretty good considering the last minute notice that was provided. I especially enjoyed navigating rush hour traffic to drop the cheque off at the organizer’s office but it all worked out in the end. I even got a chance to have a friend show up, the multi-talented and really cool Ron Bozzer of local fame for those who know what he’s about.

I’ve included a copy of the agenda for the event for those who weren’t present:

Canada-India Business Council (B.C. Chapter)
Canada-India Business Forum/Luncheon
with
Her Excellency Shyamala Cowsik
High Commissioner of India to Canada

Thursday, July 7, 2005, 11:45 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Metropolitan Hotel
645 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Agenda

11:45 a.m. — 12:05 p.m. Registration
12:05 p.m. — 12:15 p.m. Welcoming remarks by Valli Chettiar, President, CanadaIndia Business Council (B.C. Chapter)
12:15 p.m. — 12:25 p.m. Greetings from His Excellency Dr. George Joseph, Consul General of India, Vancouver
12:25 p.m. — 12:30 p.m. Introduction of Her Excellency Shyamala Cowsik by Valli Chettiar
12:30 p.m. — 1:00 p.m. Presentation by Her Excellency Shyamala Cowsik: “ Canada and India — Partners for the 2l’ Century�
1:00 p.m. — 1:15 p.m. Question and Answer session
1:15 p.m. — 1:25 p.m. Comments by Valli Chettiar on the Federation of Canadian International Business Associations
1:25 p.m. — 1:35 p.m. Closing remarks by Mr. Stewart Goodings, VicePresident, Canada-India Business Council (B.C. Chapter)
1:35 p.m. — 2:00 p.m. Networking

** C-IBC (B.C. Chapter) Membership Forms available at the event **

The event presented great value – alot of good content. Ms. Cowsik spoke for an extended period (approx. 45 minutes) without notes and all of the content was unique to the room and quite relevant. I was thouroughly impressed.

I’ve also included a few video clips and photo images of the event. One item, Dr. George Joseph, Consul General of India in Vancouver was also present as part of the panel. It was somewhat an emotional event since Dr. Joseph’s posting here in Vancouver ends soon. A new Consul General shall be coming into Vancouver before the end of the year, I’m sure.

Videos may require either Apple Quicktime to play or a suitable decompressor. In this case, I reccomend the mpegable DS decoder.

You can download the DS decoder here in .ZIP format or .EXE format.

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Dr. George Joseph introduces Ms. Cowsik, 58s

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Ms. Cowsik speaks – microphone blocked during speech, 1m 22s

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Mr. Yvon Dandurand of the University College of the Fraser Valley speaks about the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies and Research. It was great to hear Ms. Cowsik so vocally support the Centre. 3m 33s

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Mr. Stewart Goodings, gives closing commentary on the event. 5m 03s

Lots of activity in India as of late. When I initially arrived, Richard Branson and Cherie Blair were hanging out in Delhi, Vladimir Putin was sighted in and throughout India (he followed me to Hyderabad and Bangalore on my trip there but we didn’t get a chance to meet) amidst the possibility of enlarging the UN Security Council, and Aishwaria Rai was hanging out in Agra promoting the Taj Mahal as one of the new seven wonders of the world. Have you cast your vote yet?

Excerpt from the Hindustan Times for December 1st, 2004:

Ash to vote for Taj Mahal

ON WEDNESDAY, Aishwarya Rai will click on www.new7wonder.com to vote in favour of the Taj Mahal as part of a campaign for redrawing the Seven Wonders Of The World list. A Swiss NGO is mobilising public opinion to re-draw the list. The Taj Mahal does not figure in this list and is termed the eighth wonder. HTC

There was another article which I found equally interesting – a piece about a book created by a team of UK scientists entitled 100 things to do before you die. Amongst the items which were cited, I found the following items to :

EXTRACT YOUR DNA
Spit gargled salt water into dilute washing-up liquid and dribble ice cold gin down the glass’s side. DNA appears as white lumps.

ATOMIC NAME
Write your name in atoms at IBM’s Almaden research lab. Also, go look at an atom. Many univ labs have the equipment ot trap and cool atoms.

DIAMOND MAN
LifeGem of Chicago will take a few grains of your cremated remains, subject them to pressure and make you, 18 weeks later, into a sparkling, one carat diamond.

LEARN CHOCTAW
A Native American language with two past tenses – one for giving info which is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else.

The other thing I like about India is that the newspapers with bigger distribution also have different editions – daytime edition, morning edition, evening edition, etc.

If you’re a news junkie like me, you can relate. I’m currently missing my Economist subscription.

I’m back in Delhi. I initially arrived here and found that outside of the marked decrease in air pollution, not much has changed. Traffic is still killer, the old ‘hood is still the same, dogs and cattle still roam freely in the street.

Auto-rickshaws have changed the black portion of their colour to green – presumably to show that they’re a bit greener now that they use natural gas. I find that in my travels outside of Delhi, they’re all still black and yellow – except for the government rickshaws which are all painted white.

One thing I love to do in Delhi is shop – there’s so much to shop for – the ladies can shop till they drop for fabrics to make their Indian suits and sarees, I can shop till I drop for fabrics to make shirts and business suits. On this trip, I picked up about seven suits and I look forward to seeing the results. I’ll be picking them up during the next couple days and given that I’ve purchased made-to-measure suits from India before with great success, I can’t wait to sport some of the new stuff when I’m back home.

Every time I come to India, I also get inspired to try out the women’s fabrics to make a bitchin’ new shirt for myself. When in Bangalore, I thought of purchasing some Mysore Silk (Mysore in the South of India is quite famous for their silks) with some gold embroidery but firstly, they want to sell 6 feet of fabric and secondly, I didn’t find a set of colours to work with.

Back to Delhi, during my last trip here, I visited a couple of monuments – the Ba’hai Lotus Temple and the India Gate monument.

The Lotus Temple (pictured above) is quite a monument. Tonight over dinner, I spoke with a Canadian from Ottawa who is volunteering there. He said the accomodations are quite nice. I found out that they have running water and electicity there 24 hours a day. I found out today, the hard way, that I have no such luck at the place I’m staying at in Delhi – electricity, yes – running water, no. I recall a time, though, that electricity was scheduled to be shut off during the day in the area, tho.

The India Gate was erected as a war monument. I recall seeing a similar structure in Mumbai (Bombay) but perhaps I’m mistaken. Last time I was in India, the monument was not accessible by foot as it was consistently surrounded by moving traffic. A couple years ago, they decided that it made sense to have this tourist attraction actually become accessible to tourists.

One thing I get a kick out of is how much pride people have in their vehicles. People put the silliest things on their vehicles from “War Car” to “Pawar Break” (Pawar is a common Indian surname), etc.. I also get a kick out of the funny signs, Metrosexy, Firearms not allowed in restaurant, etc.

So, after spending a couple days (mostly non-stop shopping) in Delhi, I went to Hyderabad. Nice place – nicer than Delhi. The traffic is still a bit nuts there comparatively, though but then again, the best way to avoid traffic here, as stated before, is to travel by helicopter. Below, traffic when coming in to Hyderabad, traffic from some high-up vantage points in the old city (the new city is actually referred to as Secunderabad).

You’ll have to forgive me from here on in – the connectivity is so poor today that I’m having a hard time opening up web pages. You can always hit my photo archives under 200412 (December 2004) to see the images in fullsize.

During my time in Hyderabad, I got to see some great places – Golkunda Fort which used to be the main place of rule for South India, The Buddha Statue which was erected in 1992 after numerous attempts and deaths in trying to do so in the 80′s, the main drag which features statues of the various philosophers and saints of the region), and a Rajasthan theme park (don’t ask – I’ve been to Rajasthan before, I didn’t really feel the need to go to a theme park related to the state but…).

Seeing livestock in the middle of the street, watching how the drivers so skillfully dodge the animals on the road is always a blast. Sometimes dogs get cocky enough to chase cars but mostly they’re scared of people – unless you happen to wind up with a pack of 20 – 30 dogs in the middle of the night and nobody else in sight as I had the chance to do when I was in India last in Mumbai. North of Delhi, in the smaller towns, I’ve had a chance to glimpse pigs (really big guys) roaming the streets. You can also catch the occasional rooster, monkeys, goats, etc. roaming the streets in different parts of India. On this trip, I’ve had the chance to see monkeys near the parliament offices in Delhi (go figure), cows, goats and dogs.

One thing about the South of India. I find my Hindi to be ineffective. It seems that southerners who speak languages such as Telugu or Tamil, hate light-skinned northerners. I found that even though in some cases, people could understand what I said, they’d pretend like they didn’t. Kinda reminiscent of Japan where the locals play this sort of game too.

Bangalore

Bangalore is an anomaly. In central Bangalore, the streets are paved (properly), the air is clean, there is access to Internet services almost everywhere, water is available in both cold and hot forms (no more cold showers or bucket baths – yay!) and there is actually some night life going on. One thing I find consistent in Bangalore is that the Kerala and South Indian foods are served on a banana leaf. Presentation is always good, food is always delicious. The first row of images is lunch at Bheemas on Church Street (Bangalore Central) and the bottom row is from another restaurant, Karavalli, at the Gateway Hotel accross from the Galaxy Theatre on Brigade Road (Bangalore Central). In the central area you also have a number of pubs which is really anomalous for India.

On my last night in Bangalore, we went out to a cabaret. A fun place to be if you’re a money lender or CEO, apparently. The cover was 300 rupees to get in and funnily, this actually paid for 300 rupees worth of drinks. This night, the place was full of money lenders and the whole scene was a bunch of girls dancing in the middle of the club while the men gawked. No nudity, guys, this wasn’t one of those types of places. We stayed for a drink but I was exhausted and looking forward to 1.5 hours of sleep before having to return to Delhi by plane.

Speaking of which, almost midnight now, here in Delhi. Time to pack up and return home before it becomes impossible to transportation back.

I still wear a handkerchief over my face when in a three-wheeler (aka auto-rikshaw) as not to inhale all the crap floating around in the air. Of course, within 12 hours, I noticed that when blowing my nose, it all came out black – this is standard fare for some pretty polluted places on the planet – unfortunately, I happen to be in one of those places – I can see my life expectancy decreasing.

I have to buzz through this entry as I have someone who will be picking me up in a moment to go back home – Internet access is sporadic – I go to five star hotels to get WiFi access. In Delhi, I used the Intercontinental Park Hotel in Nehru Place and now that I’m here in Hyderabad, I’m using the Taj Krishna hotel. They both have pretty good access – everywhere else, ADSL is sitting at about 40kbps, this hotel has a 512kb pipe but the cost is pretty high. I paid about 500 rupees (about 40 rupees to a dollar) for three hours of access in Delhi, I’ll be paying about 1500 for the last six hours.

Hyderabad is way less polluted than Delhi, the streets are nice and I like the weather but that’s all for now. I have to buzz. More later with pics (which are already up in my photo album starting here).

Ciao.