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The Hindu : Nick is presenting “Avatar – The Legend of Aang” — an adventurous tale of a 12-year-old boy named ‘Aang’, torn between fulfilling his fate as the long-awaited avatar on whom rests the responsibility to restore harmony to his world and his desire to be just a regular kid. The story is set in an Asian influenced world of martial arts and elemental manipulation wherein humans, animals and supernatural spirits coexist. The world is divided into four nations: Water, Earth, Air and Fire. Within each nation is an order of masters who possess the ability to manipulate their native element. For 100 years, the ruthless Fire Nation has waged war against the Water, Earth, and Air Nations. The Avatar is the only person who can stop the Fire Nation and bring the world back into balance.Aided by a young Waterbender named Katara and her warrior brother Sokka, Aang sets off on a perilous journey to save the world. Premiering on January 1, the series will begin with a three-hour New Year special from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. After that, the show will be aired as a book series, with each episode serving as a chapter from Monday to Friday at 5 p.m….More

The Hindu : They’re both icons in the fashion world. Former Miss India and fashion journalist Meher Castelino and designer Krishna Mehta share an association of over two decades. Other than sharing a common professional platform, they strongly believe in the need for a more serious agenda for the growth of fashion in India and that fashion journalism will fill that void. They also share apassion for travelling and exchange notes on the difficulty of being a vegetarian while travelling. Renuka Vijay Kumar listens in…Krishna Mehta: I was travelling in Scandinavia recently and it was beautiful, we went on this speedboatand since it was freezing cold, we were dressed up in woollens and ski outfits andwaterproof jackets. When water got into the boatit wouldturn to ice. But the whole experience was beautiful. The fjords, flying over the Norwegian terrain….Meher Castelino: Sounds beautiful…but must be freezing cold now.Krishna: Yes. But they eat only fish, which is considered vegetarian. This trip reminded me of my first experience in Sweden. I had gone for some business meetings and for breakfast I was given a huge salad, nicely arranged and in the middle of it was a huge boiled egg!Meher: Oh, you don’t even eat egg?Krishna: No. Not at all. I’m fully vegetarian. I had to send it back and ask them to make me a fresh plate. I think they removed the egg and sent it back. After that, for the remainder of my stay I ate the same thing - a plate of salad arranged the same way, morning, noon and night! Meher:I’m vegetarian by choice. Many years ago, I was at a talkand the speaker said, ‘When you eat non-veg food, you’re putting dead stuff into your mouth.’ That comment mademe shudderandI completely gave up eating meat.At a lavish sit-down dinner I was served beef and potatoes. I told the chef I was vegetarian and didn’t eat meat. He…More

The Hindu : Penaz Masani She confesses she is in love with singing simply because it allows her some unforgettable interaction with her fans. It is indeed laudable that this gorgeous singer has cut more than 20 discs.Discovered and promoted by legendary composer Jaidev in 1978, Penaz was born into a family that prided itself for its association with classical music. Penaz stresses the importance of ghazal and its status in society today. “Ghazal singing has achieved a status of being classy, which is very good for us singers. The form has been given a respectful place in society and that is what every singer looks forward to. There is no medley, no pop, just plain soulful singing.” She blushes right through the conversation. You seek her impressions on the relevance of ghazal singing in contemporary music, she blushes, saying, “It is very relevant. It is not just another three-minute song. Ghazal can be nice and crisp and its beauty is still there. I don’t think it can ever be tainted because it is a tradition that has been kept alive through generations.” It is also fashionable to listen to ghazal.Penaz does not blush when she recounts her wonderful interaction with the youth during her formative years of ghazal singing.“I can say with pride that I took ghazal to the jean- clad generation. I would perform at colleges and would always vibe with them delightfully.”It must have been a pleasant experience for a jean-clad audience to be held spellbound by a mellifluous jean-clad ghazal singer.Her album, “Dil Mein Ankhon Mein” was a hit with the youth for its nice blend of traditional and western music.Reflecting on her career, Penaz, with that infectious smile, confides, “It has been a wonderful journey. God has been kind and the audience has been so loving and caring. After God, my mentor (Madhu Rani) has been the biggest influence and source of encouragement….More

The Hindu : Both as a tree and as a fruit, custard apple is generally rated as mediocre or as “the ugly duckling”. The tree is not especially attractive. It is erect, with a rounded or spreading crown. Its trunk is 10 to 14 inches thick. The tree grows up to a height ranging from 15 to 35 feet. The ill-smelling leaves are deciduous, alternate, oblong or narrow, four to eight inches long and 2.5 cm wide, with conspicuous veins. The flowers which grow in drooping clusters, are fragrant and slender with three outer fleshy, narrow petals three-quarter to one-and-a-quarter-inch long; light-green externally and pale-yellow with a dark-red or purple spot on the inside at the base. The flowers never fully open.The compound fruit, eight to 16 cm in diameter, may be symmetrically heart-shaped, irregular; or nearly round, or oblate, with a deep or shallow depression at the base. The skin, thin but tough, may be yellow or brownish when ripe, with a pink, reddish or brownish-red blush, and faintly, moderately, or distinctly reticulated. There is a thick, cream-white layer of custard-like, somewhat granular, flesh beneath the skin surrounding the moderately juicy segments, in many of which there is a single, hard, dark-brown or black, glossy seed, oblong, smooth and less than 1.25 cm long. A fruit may have as many as 55 to 60 seeds. A pointed, fibrous, central core, attached to the thick stem, extends more than halfway through the fruit. The flavour is sweet and agreeable.Custard apple is believed to be a native of the West Indies but was cultivated in early times through Central America to southern Mexico. It has for long been cultivated and naturalised as far South as Peru and Brazil.The tree needs a tropical climate but with cool winters. In India, it does well on the plains up to an elevation of 4,000 ft. This species is less drought-tolerant than the…More

The Hindu : The setting is Indonesian. Various artefacts representing Bali, decorate the shelves. The interiors are further enhanced by the view of the setting outdoors, featuring quaint huts set amidst pebbled pathways and luscious trees. No, this is not a scene from a nature resort but the décor of a newly opened spa, Asian Woman which promises the ultimate luxury in beauty treatment.With treatments ranging from Maharani of the day where you will be pampered like a queen starting from a herbal scrub to ending with the ultimate soak in milk, petals and aroma oils leaving you at the end of it feeling more like Cleopatra, to yoga and meditation, the spa attempts to address every aspect of beauty in the most natural way.The Bali influence does not stop with the setting but filters in to the beauty treatment too. Says Huri Vaxani, the spa’s beauty therapist: “The treatments that we offer have their origins in Bali. We use the herbs and oils from Bali and incorporate stone therapy on a large scale. Under stone therapy, special massage stones which are predominantly volcano stones are used and pressure is applied on vital pressure points. This helps in lymphatic drainage and improves blood circulation.”These stones, besides being used for massage, are left to rest on different charkas of the body to relieve stiffness and pain.Thus, a facial like Mangala Chi would include a hot stone back massage with the scrub made from herbs, specially sourced from Bali. The body massage Balinese Royalty treats you on par with Balinese princesses where you are treated with a scrub made from a special rice. After the body massage you soak in a luxurious bath made of milk, flowers and aroma oils. You then indulge in a body polishing with sandal wood.You could alternatively opt for the Asian Empress where, after the massage, a special body mask made of herbs leaves your…More

The Hindu : The stuff of channelsThe TV of the future will be an all new entity, says Praveen KrishnanMy most recent trip to Chennai for vacation, involved a little bit of everything that is usual – catching up with relatives, old friends and a sedentary existence on home cooked food, when not in the bed.Of course, one couldn’t completely savour the indulgence without the television viewing ritual.However, it was mighty unsettling (shocking?) to discover that the plethora of Tamil language channels had now increased to a whopping twenty in number!That wouldn’t have been so bad if there were really twenty different options to choose from, but it mostly seems to be the same content, same ‘cinematic’ themes, same news stories, same reality shows and the same soaps famous for their family (anti) values – multiplied twenty times.This seems to be quite true of other vernacular channels too, though not to the same severity. One really wonders where this is leading to.An increasingly common trend is the concept of having more than one television in the house so that multiple tastes can be satiated.The television of the future might no longer be the glue that brings the family together – a personal television, much like the personal computer might be the future concept.What about the channels then? Merely speculating, the overdose of channels is likely to continue for some more time before (like all other business) there will be a spate of mergers among television channels. Until that happens, these will be stressful times for the viewer – and the remote control.Do you have anything to say? About the state of the world, the city, your angst? Pen it stylishly and you might get it published.And dash off your piece with your photograph. Email it to bangaloremetro@thehindu. co.in or post it to MetroPlus, The Hindu, 19 & 21, Bhagwan Mahaveer Road (Infantry Road), Bangalore 1….More

The Hindu : It must have been around 1990, when I hadn’t heard all that much jazz, that I became aware of Oscar Peterson. The album was “Oscar Peterson Plays Jazz Standards”, and the first track, “Swingin’ till the Girls Come Home”, stunned me with the speed and dexterity with which Peterson’s nimble fingers ran across the piano keys.I later heard Peterson described by a BBC jazz presenter as the man who sounds as if he has 22 fingers. Only Peterson came close to Art Tatum, whom he adulated, a man who literally sounded like two pianists. In fact, some critics thought he played too many notes, but he could make each note count and sound just right.Peterson was always in awe of Tatum from the time his father brought home a record of Tatum’s to challenge him. In fact, he once stopped playing at a private party when Tatum walked in. Apart from Tatum, one of his early influences was Nat King Cole, who was thought a talented jazz pianist before he found success as a pop singer.Peterson was born to black West Indian parents in 1925 in Canada, where he died of kidney failure on December 23 aged 82. Although he won a talent contest at 14 and started gaining recognition, he faced some racial bias. Later, when he moved to the USA, he encountered a different bias: Americans had difficulty acknowledging how good a Canadian jazz artist could be.Ultimately his prodigious ability won through. In 1949 he became a fixture in the record producer Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) series of concert tours. Granz, who also founded Verve records, made him the pianist of choice accompanying a variety of jazz luminaries on this renowned label.Peterson became one of the busiest pianists in all jazz. He had two parallel career tracks going in the 1950s and 1960s. On the one hand he led a…More

The Hindu : Video watchThis fortnight at seventymm.comA Fistful of DollarsDirected by Sergio LeoneCast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Gian Maria VolonteStory by A. Bonzonni, Victor AndresScreenplay by Sergio LeoneFor a movie that started it all — from launching Clint Eastwood’s career to arguably the greatest mainstream Hindi film ever, “Sholay” and also perhaps the worst remake (RGV are you listening?) — “A Fistful of Dollars” is a spare, minimum-fuss movie.Shot in Spain and Italy, “A Fistful of Dollars” tells the story of an anonymous drifter who comes to the wasted town of San Miguel where two ultra-violent gangs — the Baxters and the Rojos fight for control. However, why the two gangs fight for this impoverished dustbowl is anyone’s guess.All the men folk have died, there are no women in this town - only widows - and the only person who does good business is the undertaker. It is to this place that the magnificent stranger (that was the movie’s original name and it was changed to “A Fistful of Dollars” three days before its 1967 release) comes to stir things up. He sets the two rival gangs against each other and rids the town of all anti-social elements and rides off into the sunset.The movie, the first of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy and is a little rough around the edges for it. The good thing is the stuff that characterised the following two movies — “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” — from a laconic anti-hero whose sharp shooting is matched by a sharper tongue, the psychotic villain, the wide shots showing expanses of shrub land as well as the tight close ups, the shoot outs and the atonal music has a novel feel to it.There are urban legends aplenty about the film from the fact that Leone was not impressed with schoolmate Ennio Morricone’s earlier work but became a…More

The Hindu : The year 2007 has yielded a rich harvest for Hindi and English cinema. While rating these films, not only isthe primary function of Indian cinema – that it has to entertain a diverse audience — is taken into account but also factors such as intention of the filmmaker, originality, repeat viewing and fatigue, grammar of cinema, quality of writing, inventiveness of story-telling, devices employed, experience of the filmmaker, scale of production and star appeal. Since different people look for different things from cinema, it is impossible for any two people to agree on the same list. With that disclaimer in place, let’s start from the bottom.No.5: Jab We Met: This is Dilwale Dulhaniya’s sequel in spirit. If Dilwale tried to define Indian-ness by procuring parental consent for love, “Jab We Met” goes deeper and tries to understand relationships in the context of a highly self-centric India where love blurs right and wrong. Fine writing and top-rate performances ensures the film’s place among the top five films of the year.No.4: Om Shanti Om: Has there been a more irreverent film in the history of Indian cinema? One that does not take anything, including itself, even abit seriously while sincerely paying tribute to an era of implausible plots, melodrama and revenge themes. “Om Shanti Om”, in spite of the silly twist in the tale towards the climax, is a colourful musical that is shamelessly entertaining as a celebration of cinema.No.3: Chak De India: Because Shah Rukh Khan is not Shah Rukh Khan, only for the third time in his career after Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and Swades. Because, the girls are amazing. Because Jaideep Sahni has written a script that combines girl-power, women’s liberation and the importance of team-spirit in a convincing underdog drama with authentic sporting action, gorgeously shot.No.2: Johnny Gaddaar: Here comes a quality suspense caper after ages. What’s more, it’s slick and stylish. Not…More

The Hindu : A group of men and women walk into a sprawling mall. Their shopping list is a carefully planned one. From clothes and accessories –for the bride, the groom and the family – to the jewellery, the list has been scrutinised.The shopping centre that promises to offer varied services under one roof throws up a few surprises, like having an in-house astrologer and a gemologist. A few from the group find their way to the astrologer for some horoscope reading and of course, indulge in match fixing. Sure, marriages are made in heaven but shopping centres have become catalysts.Most malls give one a clear indication of what to expect in each floor. After listing out the placement of women’s and kids wear, stores tell you where to find the in-house astrologer.Seethamahalakshmi, an astrologer who has been with a mall for a while now, points out that most customers walk-in for horoscope analysis and match making.“We analyse horoscopes and check if two horoscopes match. Since the facility is available at the store, people want to give it a try. There are many cases of couples who’ve got married after matching their horoscopes here,” she says. “Others pose queries on employment, opportunities to go abroad, property disputes and at times divorce cases. Some people hesitate to approach us in the beginning, others are more forthcoming and come to trust us over time and visit us repeatedly.”Prem Kumar, another astrologer associated with the group, states that not disclosing the identity of their customers is a prime concern.“Those who visit us don’t like their identity to be revealed. Hence we do not maintain a database. We respect their privacy. We are there to help out if they seek our help,” he says.He concedes that it takes time for customers who come to shop to be convinced of consulting the in-house astrologer.“When the facility was introduced, people were not sure if…More