Dil Se

Glacial recession may be a worldwide phenomenon but New Zealand’s ice retreats are the fastest and thus most alarming.  MEENAKSHI RAO  reports about the worrying ice dwindle from the Aoraki/Mt Cook region that houses the island nation’s largest glacier, which is thinning down fast enough to vanish by 2100 Deep turquoise, still and mirror clean, this 7-km-long wonder lake adjoining the grime covered face of the Tasman Glacier is breathtakingly beautiful, what with some blue, some white, some small, some big icebergs dotting its ethereal expanse. You feel blessed to be floating over its icy waters, surrounded by imposing peaks of the stunning Aoraki/Mt Cook region. But wait! This celestial Tasman Lake is not good news. In 1973, it was not even a puddle at the foot of the mighty Tasman Glacier. Today, in 2017, it is more than 7 km long, 2 km wide and carries the depth of the nearby river-fed, 18-km-long Pukaki Lake. The fast expanding lake is the direct result of New Zealand’s

Stand-up comedy is on fire, spiralling up the ladder to fill the gaping hole in India’s live entertainment sector.  MEENAKSHI RAO  takes a look It’s a young sport, this stand-up comedy thing. You see these 25 to 35 somethings, more men than women, delivering funny ones as the people around them bite into a chicken leg or some such. They are like the restaurant singers of yore who sang some of the best — and the worst — music to an audience listening to the clinking of glasses more than to the artiste at helm. In pubs in and around metros, the good old DJ has given way to happening laughter rioters, some new, some somewhat seasoned, in dealing with audience disinterest as much as with pulling their interest back from those chicken wings. And that’s what powers the comedy sector in India where live entertainment is yet to come on a full roll. From hasya  kavi sammellans  which your father took you to some decades back in open parks, to  mushairas  in auditoriums and  qawwali juga

MEENAKSHI RAO  goes stargazing in one of the 11 dark sky reserves in the world at Mt Cook National Park & gets completely star-struck Temperature: Super shivery at 4 degrees. Backdrop: Blue, snowclad mountains on all sides. Job at hand: Tracking down none less than Jupiter, Saturn (with all its rings), the Southern Cross and, well, some butterflies in the sky. All this while you are trying not to get waylaid by a shiny white patch splashed across the twinkling sky, much like an artist’s wanton brushstroke to give his dark canvas its first break of art. That’s the Milky Way, upclose, upfront and breathtaking. As a workplace, it couldn’t have gotten groovier than this. At Mt Cook, Sir Edmund Hillary’s playground before he got the Everest bug, there are many things you can do, including merely gazing awestruck at the sky-kissing peaks from your unrestricted room window of the Hermitage Hotel, the only heritage property in the heart of the Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park.