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The Hindu :

HOTEL RIVERSIDE RESORT & SPA

KUMBAKONAM

USP: For some quietude

Photos: Soma basuJust like home Riverside Resort and Spa

Food, films, fitness and fun… these are what you are sure to get at “Riverside Resort”. An added bonus would be an occasional glimpse of a film star. This property, once with the Tamil Nadu Government, is now under the Chennai-based PGP group, and has become a hotspot in the holy town of Kumbakonam, rich with history, culture and greenery.

“This place feels just like home,” is the comment in the guest book from actor Nayanthara. That, perhaps, says much about the hospitality and service.

Four km off the town, this four-star property spread over two acres has beautifully-landscaped gardens. Quietude is a hallmark, but there are quite a few surprises for the guests, such as film screenings in the open air, fun games and magic shows, a food festival or a special Sunday lunch. The rooms are spacious and neatly done. Fourteen of them form a ring around the swimming pool, and overlook the multi-cuisine restaurant, Mayuri, and the vegetarian eat-out, Cauvery.

The chef is a local boy who goes out of the way to please your palate.

SOMA BASU

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The Hindu :

Abhishek Majumdar and Jeeva Raghunath on initiating children into the magical world of stories

Photos: K. GopinathanFestive mood Children’s day out with storytellers

O n a bright and sunny morning, Cubbon Park was brimming with energy. Young students in uniforms held hands with tiny tots nattily turned up for the occasion, giggled and chattered away, as they snaked along to the venue at Bal Bhavan.

They live a packed schedule. From dance and music classes to swimming and tennis coaching, balancing studies and extra-curricular activities is a tough challenge. And the event gave them an opportunity to let loose and immerse themselves into the world of stories. They turned out in hordes at HOOs tales, an international carnival of stories, organised by Hippocampus — the reading library. “Children need a break and stories let them unwind and de-stress,” says Jeeva Raghunath, the storyteller from Chennai. “What’s the big rush?” asks storyteller Abhishek Majumdar. “Parents should just let the children be. They want the children to learn many languages too. Learning one instrument, a sitar, takes more than 16 years and it can teach you everything,” he adds. “There has to be a time when the child is not doing anything, the ‘idle time’.”

Abhishek, who is into theatre, grew up on a diet of Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English literature, relishing stories of Tagore and Premchand to Ruskin Bond and Somerset Maugham. Stories open up a magical world and give wings to active imagination of children. And, the storytellers insist that it should begin at home. “My sister, eight years older to me was a non-stop story teller,” Abishek recalls and says, “Parents should keep at least 15 minutes aside to tell stories. You need to pick a story that can take a journey with you. Children can smell stories and they like listening to them again and again.”

“It gives them joy, letting…More

The Hindu :

Better memory, creativity and intellectual performance seem to get a boost from sleep

Take a breakFor better performance

Get enough sleep — whatever that means for you — and you’re likely to ace that test, think more creatively, have better long-term memory and preserve important memories. That’s the bottom line behind a spate of recent studies.

But why sleep has those effects and how that information can be used to your advantage are questions still under study, says Dr. Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“The sleeping brain is not stupid,” says Jessica Payne, an assistant professor of psychology who has researched the effect of sleep on memory. “It’s smart, and it’s making sophisticated decisions about which memories are important and should be held onto.” Yet why sleep is so crucial for memories remains a big mystery, Payne and Stickgold agreed.

Sleep helps in the whole information-processing part of the picture. “It might be that sleep is an amount of time to give the brain a chance to go offline and shift into a different psychological mode that’s evolved to perform certain types of memory processing,” Stickgold says.

Though there’s still much to be learned, research suggests that REM sleep — the stage of sleep involving rapid eye movement — seems to be the phase that resolves the issue, or tells you what to do with new information. Someone who can’t decide whether to take a new job, Stickgold says, opts to sleep on it. Payne says, she’s found that a good night’s sleep can lead to better inferential ability.

“Sleep is not only important for your ability to remember,” she says, “but it also helps you be more creative, find more interesting and distant connections and be more innovative.”

As for how to convince us that a good night’s sleep is a worthy goal?

Stickgold says that no one has “come up with…More

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Version One Dot Oh! Presents its latest play “The Actor’s Nightmare” a comedy written by Christopher Durang.”

Venue: Kyra Theatre, Indiranagar

Date: February 28, March 1 and 2

Time: 11.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m., respectively

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The Hindu :

The Zheng adds a zing to Chinese

SIZZLING STARTERS Fit for a king

The Zheng in Koramangala promises to dish out an emperor’s meal and it delivers the goodies.

The restaurant is quiet, with some clients talking, eating and watching a cricket match on TV. It is fairly bright and does not warrant any artificial lighting during the day. The bearer sets the table quickly and hands you a pair of chopsticks, which you could use for the food.

A gamut of tastes

We start the meal with a portion of pineapple Schezwan chilli, fried just right to make the pineapple flavour tingle your taste buds — it is sweet, with a hint of tanginess. Then we munched into the crackling spinach, a combination of crispy spinach mixed with chillies and spices. Offering a wide gamut of tastes, this starter would be a must try for any vegetarian.

The non-vegetarian starter menu is more extensive. We started with a sampling of wontons, chicken and prawn.

The chicken wontons were soft and tasted great with the sauces on offer, but special mention must be made of the prawn wontons, spiked with oyster sauce. We also try out the fairly spicy Mongolian lamb preparation, comprising shredded lamb in oyster sauce and chillies.

The lamb is tender and cooked well, and manages to absorb the tangy taste of the sauces.

The Shanghai garlic prawn spring roll is also excellent, with the oyster sauce adding to its flavour.

In the main course, we attack the burnt chicken garlic fried rice, a preparation that would help reluctant non vegetarians overcome any inhibition about the smell of chicken. The garlic balances the taste of the chicken and makes it a good standalone dish.

The Hong Kong chicken, served with chillies and cashew nuts is also a must try.

We also particularly enjoyed the stir fried fish, served with greens in garlic sauce. The peach mocktail is refreshing and…More

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There will be art workshops – Little Explorers—for children aged between four and 12.

Date: February 27

Venue: Maya Art Gallery, Nandidurga Road

Contact: 23532546

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The Hindu :

Have your chips and eat it too

Health-conscious people have a fear of frying — one certainly would have felt the aversion at some time. You have to use fat to fry, and many of us think of fat as a root cause of poor health.

But there are fats … and there are fats. Saturated fatty acids, like those found in dairy products and meat, contribute to heart disease. Substituting monounsaturated fats, like those found in olive oil, may help prevent heart disease, and research shows that certain polyunsaturated fats may be beneficial as well. As for obesity, studies increasingly suggest that simple, low-quality carbohydrates are driving the epidemic. Not dietary fats.

Frying is nonetheless a high-calorie method of cooking, and one does not advocate eating fried foods frequently. But occasionally frying in healthier oils can make fibre-rich, nutrient-packed vegetables more palatable, helping to satisfy cravings for French fries or snack foods. Just watch your family tuck into an entire platter of batter-fried vegetables or sweet potato chips, or a pound of Brussels sprouts seared in olive oil. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Sweet potato chips

If you deep-fry properly — allowing the oil to reach 360 to 375 degrees, letting it return to high temperature between batches, and not crowding the pan with items — your food will not absorb much of the oil. It is easiest to make these addictive chips in a wok or a deep-fryer. The contrast of toasty and sweet flavours is delightful. Use a slicer to get uniform, paper-thin slices. Seek out organic oils.

Ingredients

Sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced paper-thin: 500gm

Organic canola oil (or enough for about three inches in a wok, deep-fryer or wide saucepan): three to four cups

Salt: to taste (optional)

Method

Prepare the sweet potatoes while you heat the oil in a wok 360 to 375 degrees.

Use a deep-fry thermometer to measure the…More

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Watch the play “Middle of Somewhere” directed by Anish Victor.

Venue: 169, Rest House Road

Date: February 27 and 28

Time: 7 p.m.

Tickets: Available at Pecos, Blossoms and Ants café

Tele-bookings: 90089 33996

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Sage and British Council will launch the book “Bengaluru, Bangalore, Bengaluru – Imaginations and Their Times.” The book will be launched on February 27 at British Council, Kasturba Road, at 6 p.m. The book is edited by Narendra Pani, Sindhu Radhakrishna and Kishor Bhat. This will be followed by a discussion on “Does Benguluru’s History Matter”, led by U.R. Ananthamurthy and Ramachandra Guha.

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Art Bengaluru, a contemporary art fest is on at the UB City. It continues till March 4 with a series of programmes and the art works will be on display between 11.30 a.m. and 8.30 p.m.

“Unveil Young Talents” by Anjanna Kuthiala and live art by Artistree, a kid’s art contest by Ruchika Kawira Motwani, talks and screenings of short films, works by budding artists from leading schools in the city and a fashion palette with Rocky S. sequenced by Priya Sanghvi will be a part of the fest.

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The Hindu :

Dev Benegal, director of the film Road Movie, talks of how we are all escapists at heart

Life’s a wonderful journey Travelling cinema was Dev’s (below) inspiration

For Dev Benegal a recurrent nightmare is about making the worst film possible. “I feel that whenever a film is completed. Every time I go to bed, I get this feeling that I will be the only person watching the film in the theatre,” he says in all seriousness, obviously not wanting to rest on his 1995 National Award winning film “English, August” and the critically-acclaimed 1999 film, “Split Wide Open”. After a decade-long gap, the nephew of acclaimed director Shyam Benegal is now ready with his third film “Road, Movie” starring Abhay Deol, Tannishtha Chatterjee and Satish Kaushik.

Contrary to his fears, the film, about a young, restless boy, a travelling cinema, and escapism, has wowed audiences across the world at various film festivals (the Berlinale, Doha Tribeca Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and the Cannes). It will be theatrically released in India on March 5. “It was amazing when audiences gave it a standing ovation. I had never really expected that kind of response. In Toronto, an old lady started dancing to the music of a special version we have done of the classic Hindi song ‘Sar Jo Tera Chakraye’! There is not one bit of Bollywood in the film nor does it have any masala to draw the global audience. But people even from Japan and North America have identified with it.”

Abhay Deol plays Vishnu, son of a businessman dealing with hair oil, who hates the prospect of joining his dad’s venture. An opportunity to drive an old, battered truck across the desert where it has to be sold to a museum comes his way and there starts his wonderful road journey. The antique Chevy is also carrying…More