Utilities for Yuletide?!
Shop till you drop... and then shop again!

(column by Neha Sarin)

Meet the stud at Stuttgart!
Christmas in Germany? It’s got to be BIG, for one! In the heart of the Swabian Mountains lies the affluent Stuttgart and its visible prosperity. And in extravagant air, the winter months unveil the largest Christmas markets in Europe from November 30 to December 24 with over 200 decorated stalls offering a wide range of goodies. Find all from Christmas décor to exquisite jewellery along with finger licking food. Besides, carol concerts, fairytale sessions, merry-go-rounds and puppet shows bustling amidst the sweet smell of cinnamon and vanilla makes the trip worth saving for! The chic street cafes serve the city’s beautiful view as a free side dish with your order! Home to automobile aces Mercedes Benz and Porsche, Santa may think it early to graduate to anything better than a sleigh but what if he is ‘driven’ to dole out some novel gifts..?

Everyone’s going...!
Tell us you haven’t been waiting for this the whole year, Miss Shopper Inveterate!

The shopaholics’ mecca holds its annual ritual between December 20 and February 2 when the Dubai Shopping Festival makes an affordable convenience of every imaginable luxury under the sun, courtesy its super-duper sale! The fever will officially set in at the Heritage Villages where are exhibited craft s and art most associated with Bedouin traditions. At the Festival, you’ll be spoilt for choice to pick up from favourite designer wears to electronics to eye-blinding gold at throw away prices on the man-made Global Village spread out over expansive acres. While the night sky finds the fireworks giving the stars a run for their money, you’ll have plenty of dazzle to take back home for Christmas! And in between hopping from air-conditioned malls to souks or open-air markets in Dhow-land, don’t let yourself be tired out enough to miss out on dune-bashing or jet-skiing in this paradise of the Middle-East.

A Cruise-Mas?!

When the Christmas Fairy officially opens the Christkindlmarket in Chicago post-Thanksgiving (November 23), one wonders if the rejoicing is more about X-Mas or the holiday season! A dazzling Tree Lighting ceremony for a highlight at one of the largest holiday markets set up for until Christmas eve, Christkindlmarket Chicago at Daley Plaza is a perfect family bonanza in the truest spirit of the season. Or just watch the whooping joy on the faces of the kids when they get to be a part of a Sunday Brunch with Santa at the Navy Pier, to know how! One site you can’t come off without a cruise down the heavenly waterfront...

Pas(ay) the Parcel!

Ground Zero of a different kind! At the World Trade Center Metro Manila in Pasay, there’ll be made big business of bargaining between December 7 and 17 at the World Bazaar Festival. A little too early to spot Santa but just in time to stack up on all X-Mas goodie bags for kith and kin of all shapes and sizes! Apart from the king-sized deals, feel completely at home with the musical stage shows, story-telling sessions, and fun workshops guaranteed to regale you with more than you ever bargained for! Of the 7000 coral fringed islands of Philippines, blessed with raw blue lagoons seeming to stand untouched from the birth of time, the uninhabited pockets of paradise are also what you could consider ‘picking’ up!

(End of Neha Sarin column)

Haggle across the street!

Beat the rush this X-Mas season at the Indian Shopping Festival in aamchee Mumbai between December 1 and 10! Streets converted into a stage for painters, sculptors, musicians and folk artists from the world over are to be the other highlights to catch while you count your savings from the great deals. Not that the Festival be an excuse to make it to the destination of the dreamers. A city to best experience by getting up, close and personal with (outside of curling up with Gregory Roberts’ ‘Shantaram’, that is), its Midas touch lends a magical allure to all it has including its glittering nightlife, omnipresent showbiz, active beaches and solemn Parsi Towers. In short, a world of opportunity on the other side of the ‘Gateway of India’...

Where do the dead go?
For some, the miseries don't end with death...

(column by Karan Karayi)

One death begets another and it's one death too many for yet another death. It's just another sordid saga, a forgotten sub plot in the tragicomic unfinished epic called India. In a strange cycle of death, dead cattle carrying traces of a hitherto popular veterinary drug become lethal agents of death for scavengers like the White-backed Vultures, which with its worse than a dodo fall in numbers can't do enough to help the Parsis in their final hour.

Zoroastrians, for spiritual purposes, aren’t allowed to bury or burn their dead. The bodies of those who have passed on are considered nasu (unclean) and are thus exposed to the raging sun along with swarming vultures that circle overhead in the Towers of Silence (or dokhma). A mute witness to this age-old tradition, the spires are raising some stink with not only those outside the fold of Zoroastrians, but also within. This “final act of charity” finds itself in grave danger with growing threat to the vulture population, courtesy spiraling pollution, urban development and the use of Diclofenac. A drug once widely used for livestock, it stood banned ever since it inadvertently started taking a toll on the big birds. “More than 99 per cent of the vultures in the country have vanished. They are dying at the rate of 30 to 50 per cent annually. Functionally, they are extinct,” said Dr Jakati, Chief Wildlife Warden, Haryana and Vulture conservationist.

The damage has been done, and the remaining vultures are struggling to dispose off the body count that is piling up at an alarming rate. Some Parsis are left aghast at the decrepit condition of their late relatives, while the purists are demanding that this generation-old ritual not be done away. The tug of war has thrown up a strangely probable solution; massive solar reflectors that use the power of the sun to keep the lamp of tradition burning. But come monsoons, and the rain gods shower alternate plans. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, they face Hobson’s choice.

Mumbai boasts 82,000 of the globe’s practicing Parsis, who find themselves presssed to look for alternatives to this deathly dilemma. Breeding vultures is one of the solutions suggested. An enterprising Parsi even went so far as to make an ozone-generating machine to put the stench of the decomposing bodies to good use. Talk about chemical overkill!

Dhun Baria (a Parsi social activist) very recently took refuge in subterfuge and captured videos and photos to highlight the plight of the Parsi dead; she found a larger posse of sympathizers than ever before, but not any less was the uproar from the conformists, questioning her act of blasphemy. The face-off between pragmatism and long-established norms is not going to go away any time soon, but irrespective of the fate of the tradition that has survived centuries, these winged undertakers needn't perish away with the dead...

(End of Karan Karayi column)