Winners of the Health Tip!!

Winners of the health tip competition:

1. K.E. Priyamvada

. I drink a cup of Dahi (yogurt) every day. I started doing this after I suffered a back injury and was asked to increase the amount of calcium in my diet. Dahi tastes great and is rich in calcium which helps make your bones and teeth stronger. Dahi is also a probiotic food, it’s rich in good bacteria which help in maintaining good digestion, boosts immunity and a healthy body weight. Dahi (yes, there’s more) is also rich in protein, which helps build muscles and and essential vitamins that help keep your skin, nails and hair in good condition and looking great. So include a cup of dahi in your daily diet and you’ll be the richer for it!

2. Shoma Choudhary

AMLA!!!! The Indian Gooseberry. The wonder berry. My entire life I have lived from one cold-and-cough onslaught to the next. Then last year I discovered Amla – in capsule form – and have caught a cold only twice this year J The other unexpected outcome has been that my rather brown, limp hair – a colour/state I have had for the last 20 years – has suddenly turned black and shining. An excellent source of Vitamin C (very good for the heart), a great antioxidant and an immunity booster, this wonder drug can be taken as a capsule – Himalaya, Fabindia or other companies, or in liquid form – juices available from many companies at your local chemists. I try and ensure that I take a dose of this every single day. The freedom it has given me from the runny nose and weeks of staying up all night coughing has been so liberating. It’s so simple, yet so effective.

3. Rita O’Brien and Sabiya Ashraf

 Drink a glass of plain warm water the first thing in the morning everyday (remember empty stomach). This helps in keeping your weight under control, helps you in keeping your stomach clear and makes your skin glow.

Winner 4: Dr Gagandeep Singh

Best healthy habit I try to practice is to “make at least one person smile/laugh in a day” and when I am alone for a day, I just make myself laugh.

Simple as that! I acquired the habit it when I was attending the technology led entrepreneurship programme at Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad (June, 2009) where I realized that I have the quality to make other people smile and that’s what I can give to other people. Lessons learnt: No body objects if you make them smile

Thank you all for participating!!
 
Shafina

The 14th Nepal Book Fair 2010

I recently came back from the Nepal Book Fair and couldn't wait to share the pictures and details with all of you. The 14th Nepal Book Fair saw participation from various mainstream Indian publishers. This year, China also participated in the book fair.

 The Entrance to the 14th Nepal Book Fair

Taylor & Francis is better known as Routledge in Nepal. We are famous for our graduate and undergraduate books that have been adopted over the past year and a half for MA, M.ED, M.Phil, B.A. and B.Ed courses. Our presence in the Nepal market has increased substantially since the last year and a half and someof our RIO titles are quite famous there as well.
This book fair, our contention has been to do something different in order to increase our brand equity in the market. Along with the marketing department, we set out strategize and structure our presence in the book fair through various endeavours. At the inauguration ceremony of the 14th Nepal Book Fair, Taylor and Francis along with Cambridge University Press were the only two representations that were invited to take the honourable position at the stage.

The opening remarks at the 14th Nepal Book Fair Inauguration

Our inauguration speech included our commitment towards the student community and our passion to change the world through collaborative academic endeavours. This helped drive a lot of traffic to the stand.


The Book fair saw participation from over 2000 people. Our stall was widely visited by the Chief guest of the book fair, who picked up a few titles from us.

Our school books were greatly appreciated as well and to make things more attractive, we had a prize draw to increase traffic stand that worked out really well. Dr. Raghu Ji Panta, political adviser to the Prime minister of Nepal, announced the winner. His presence itself lent great credibility to the prize draw. 

In all, it was a very fruitful presence and my special thanks to the marketing team for helping create a buzz at the fair.

Pankaj Bhardwaj

Moving Forward in 2010 - Taylor & Francis India

Good morning everyone,

Taylor & Francis India prides itself on new initiatives; it’s our constant endeavour to be people friendly. This lends itself to our constant efforts to bring in small yet useful changes to improve life in office, little gestures that are kind and policies - which facilitate a better working environment.

After noticing that the quality of drinking water being used in office was not up to the mark, we’ve graduated to Bisleri and I am happy to say that the quality of water seems to have considerably improved. A small initiative but definitely a step forward.

On the corporate responsibility front, we’ve recently donated some amount of charity money to the Blind Organization of India; for children and their parents for whom the organization is building huts where they will stay. I am also happy with our visibility on the My Informa website for our collective effort towards Udayan Care. My heartfelt thanks to everyone for their efforts. A lot of charity material was also donated to Udayan Care for children living there.

The recreation club has been initiated and we’ve had our first party already. The desk decoration competition was wrapped up successfully and the committee members seem all geared up towards a productive year. I am looking forward to the picnic in November.

Recently, we rolled out CODA 10 – the group accounting software- training for select team members of Taylor & Francis India. The bills and invoices are now upgraded to online approvals and I’m hoping that this will lead to shorter processing time for everyone. I’d like to put on record my note of appreciation to Anand Goyal and team for shifting from manual processes to CODA 10 smoothly.

We are also in the process of implementing CAS (Course Adoption Software) for the India office. This software will ensure that all our adoptions that our sales teams so painstakingly bring in are recorded for better transparency. Gopi and Shafina will lead the way for this project.

I am very pleased that our Ansari Road Showroom is now ready to go live. I’ll announce a small get together to inaugurate the showroom soon. It’ll be nice to have everyone wishing the showroom well. My thanks to Aman, Shafina, Anand, Gopi and everyone else who’s been a part of its inception. The showroom would justificably showcase all our fast runners and backlist. The most important advantage that I see is that our customers would now be able to get better and faster service and increased response rate because of a centralized showroom. Rajeev Kant would be taking charge of the showroom and shifting base there.

As we endorse technology, new welcome changes can be seen around us. One such brilliant example is the Print on Demand option for our RIO titles that we have started. Aman and his tem have been instrumental in setting up the processes, which means that we will be able to conserve cash, save paper – contributing towards a greener environment and save hugely on inventory and inventory carrying costs. Customers can now simply ask for a title and it’ll be printed specially for them.

We are mid way 2010 and I can already see a lot of fruitful policies and surprises come our way. Keep logged in to http://www.taylorandfrancis.blogspot.com/ for more information.

It'll also be useful to see the response to the latest marketing survey circulated yesterday. Make sure all of you participate.

BTW – I look forward to more entries on the blog. I was heartening to read all the health tips coming in since yesterday. I participated as well. Let’s see who wins!!

Have a great day,

Shammi Manik

Varanasi from my eyes!!

As I took the train on my way to Varanasi, I was not sure what I was expecting to find. I had heard many different accounts of what I would feel when I arrived, and it turns out that the only one that was accurate was of the overwhelming heat. The experience was in fact different for each of my travel companions, as I realized that the beauty of India cannot be seen objectively: it is only a matter of looking in the right places. Varanasi has therefore been described as dirty, touristy, dangerous or by others as mystical and beautiful. I was eager to find out what my reaction would be.

The train itself eased me into this state of mind. The atmosphere, the possibility of sitting by the door with my legs hanging in the open air, watching the scenery with the sweet, milky masala taste of India made me think that there was no place I would rather be. I remember the quiet but excited atmosphere, the soft song of the chaiwallah late at night ‘chai chai garam chai’, the generosity of our neighbours when they realized we had no food and no blankets and their eagerness to learn from us that equalled our own. In India our eye is challenged, and it takes time to train to see what seems barely noticeable at first, yet once we succeed, once we enter that world where the poverty, the noise and the pollution are not the first thing we notice, I find that the calm within the chaos engulfs us.
Upon arrival in Varanasi, our guesthouse sent us a few diligent rickshaw drivers, and we weaved our way through the narrow streets. We were then dropped off at the entrance of the old city, and sent through its colourful and cow-filled alleyways. After a ten minute walk, which sufficed to have us all drenched in sweat and desperate for water, we were given it, and what a site it was! After having dodged the last few cows that were determinedly heading our way, we came upon the Ganges. This was a truly beautiful sight, and we all stood there watching as life continued. After ten good minutes of gawping, we were shooed out of the way and given directions to our guesthouse.
After having settled in and recovered from the various thrills of the journey, we decided to go off and explore the town. The burning ghat was our first stop, and quite a brutal drop into the basis of Hindu culture. A local guide/shopkeeper/boatwallah explained the different traditions around the incineration of a Hindu. I could not help but feel like I was in a different world, in which the binaries I had grown to see as universal made no more sense, where death was no longer the opposite of life. The odours, the colours and the sounds around us enveloped us and we were slowly absorbed into the atmosphere.
In the evening, we were able to get a boat to watch four Brahmins performing the puja. Once again, I felt completely taken in by the experience, as we watched without understanding, the colours, the dancing, the music and the candles floating along our boats kept me fascinated for the entire duration. After a good thali, we all headed back to the guesthouse completely exhausted for an early night, knowing that we would be getting up a few hours later for the sunrise. Once again, the atmosphere seemed of another world, as we headed towards the Ganga, everything was hushed and calm, somewhat of a rarity in this country. After one day only people recognised us and took us on their boat, from which we were able to see the morning ablutions of those there to wash away their sins. Compared to the hustle and bustle of my life in Delhi, this was a a different time. People started fluctuating towards the river, and began their morning routine of washing away their sins. I don’t their purity as they came out of the river, however I remain unsure of their cleanliness. The sun rose, we returned to the guesthouse and tried to get a few more hours sleep before the heat made it impossible.
It is in Varanasi that our eye is tested on its capacity to see the beauty of India. The choice we are faced with - similar to choice of seeing the Ganges as a dirty river or the foundation of an entire religion, the possibility of reaching heaven without an eternity of reincarnation – demonstrates our state of mind. It cannot be denied that it is dirty, a minefield of cowpats, of locals attempting to rip off naïve tourists, but it is also a sense of community, to which we are welcomed immediately.
Having spent the week end looking at the sights, the temples, the pujas, the ablutions, my favorite part of Varanasi would have to be the two hours I spent in an alleyway, having chai with a shopwallah, me practicing my Hindi and him his English. One of my friends was playing cricket with some children, another engaged in a staring competition with a cow which seemed devoted to stealing his spot, and the last one transformed into a photographer for a group of girls with aspirations to become models. It is in those alleyways of India that I see its beauty, in its people, however I think that next week end, I will take a leaf out of the British’ book and head for the cooler hills.


Clémentine de Montjoye

Growing up in the 70s........

Hi,


For those who grew up during the 70s in middle class India, here are some things that you can identify with – I identify with a few! Some of you may identify with a lot more… J


1. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 12-17 years,you were very proud of your first "Bellbottom" or your first "Maxi"or your first Apache jeans.

2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true heroes. The brainy ones read"Competition Success Review".

3. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Natraj/Flora pencil was your prized possession.

4. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your grandparents' or your cousins' houses.

5. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla stick – ora Choco Bar if you were better off than most.

6. You gave your neighbour’s phone number to others with a ‘c/o’ or “PP” written against it because you had booked yours only 7 years ago and were still waiting for your number to come.

7. Your first family car (and the only one) was a Fiat or an Ambassador. This often had to be pushed by the entire family to get going.

8. The glass windows in the back seats used to get stuck at the two-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you! The window went down only if your puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handle to pull it down. Locking the door was easy. You just whacked the other tacky, non-rotary handle downwards.

9. Your mom had stitched the weirdest lace curtains for all the windows of the car. They were tied in the middle and if your dad was the comfort-oriented kinds, you had a magnificent small fan upfront.

10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You "earned" yours after SSC exams.

11. You have been to "Jumbo Circus"; have held your breath while the pretty young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the "Mautka Gola" and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others bottoms!

12. You have atleast once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.

13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If you didn't have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered little if you knew the owners or not.

14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bi or even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with two side clips onto their Weston TVs. That confused the hell out of you!

15. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket was played in whites.

16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own (the family's; not your own own!) colour TV when the Asian Games started. Everyone else got the same idea as well and ever since, no one came over to your house and you didn't go to anyone else's.

17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning they would announce on the TV. After all how much "Shashtriya Sangeet" can a kid take? Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.

18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all you needed to know.

19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and possibly a mixer.

20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers.

21. Movies meant Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie you always had to watch the obligatory "Newsreel".

22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and Boney M.

23. Your hormones went crazy when you heard "Disco Deewane" by Naziya Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.

24. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you and it was all okay.

25. Photograph taking was a big thing. You were lucky if your family owned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation & "setting" & the "posing" for each picture. Therefore, you have atleast one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing at attention!

And we were really happy then....see what the new technology has brought you to...no piece of mind, only pressure and stress.


Neeti Verma

Mitticool - The Clay Refrigerator

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam called him a 'true scientist'. Mitticool, a clay refrigerator that works without electricity had turned the world's attention to its creator Mansukhbhai Prajapati, a craftsman based in Gujarat. Scientists and journalists from across the world have visited his unit to see how he makes eco-friendly products at a low cost.

A school drop-out, he has achieved a feat that many in the world envy today. The simple and unassuming Mansukhbhai is not keen on money. His ambition is to make more low-cost and eco-friendly products for the masses.

It takes 10 people to make a fridge in one day. Made from clay, the refrigerator can store water, fruits, vegetables for 8 days and milk for one day.

The upper part of the refrigerator stores water, while the bottom unit has space for fruits, vegetables and milk. At present, he sells the clay fridges at Rs 2,500 (USD 55) at his unit. Most of the sales outside Gujarat are done during exhibitions

Deepak Chhabra

A Day At Udayan Care Mayur Vihar Home

As part of T&F’s CSR, Samira, Nilanjan and I got the chance to visit the Udayan Care Boys Home in Mayur Vihar last week on 25 June. We started with introductions and a slideshow about famous historical monuments and places of Delhi. There were several questions but, no problems — Nilanjan had answers to most of them! We then took the children out to one of the sites shown on the slide show—Agrasen ki Baoli. This is a step-well (14th century, Tughluq monument) in Hailey Lane, in fact quite close to our office! As the shelter is conveniently close to the metro station, we took the metro to Mandi House and walked to Hailey Lane. The children had a lot of fun exploring the site and managed to scare away some bats who till then were peacefully drowsing away. There was hardly any water in the step-well and we could see the three visible levels of the step-well constructed with arched niches on both sides. The baoli has been designated a protected monument by the Archaeological Survey of India. The venue presented us with a lot of photo opportunities and the little ones were prompt in taking advantage of them. After spending an hour or so at the baoli, we decided to head back home for lunch. It was back to the metro station (this time Barakhamba because the boys wanted to go to another station). We reached Mayur Vihar at 2 p.m. and met Mrs Gupta (the mentor-mother) who told us about the children, their hobbies, education and career prospects. Post-lunch, we had a quiz session where the children managed to get almost every question. They were, however, a little stumped by the section on contemporary music (as was I).

Then it was time to relax. We distributed the gift packs (colouring books, crayons, geometry boxes) we had brought with us and the younger ones immediately started using them. The older ones were content to sit and chat with us. We talked to them about their aims and interests. While it is uncertain how much they benefitted from our visit, we certainly came away enriched by the experience.

Anindita

DEWY PIECES OF TORN PAPER, PANINI PUKHRAMBAM AND A NEW LANGUAGE

I knew the
We saw the
I feel eh
I will tell you the
                           Torn pieces of papers lie dew-drenched
                             in the windy harvested fields
This is not a children’s examination
He is an old man;
When the sentence is complete
The messenger from the big boat will reach this land
And the flood will go dry.

                   I is
                You am
                He are
        What the hell is your Yorick tongue prattling about?
                     
                 The dew is cold by the side of the mountain.
                   (Are you damn rats to burrow so quick
                    To follow me under the ground?
                    O I will move hence!)
                    English is a strange tongue to me
                    I am learning to string words mechanically together –
                    Nothing the I saws
                    The nothing I doesn’t knows
                    I will to say yous that
The rosy nose elongates, touches the walls
The point clattering about the rafters.
                   I wills to tell you
                                 The harvested fields are empty
                           Dewy pieces of torn paper fill the fields
      (O! Are they everywhere, the ghostly rats
     To such words from every lip, to knock things with their eye-balls
     To pluck the tongues if they prick, and hollow a cave out of the crowns?)
     I woulds to tell you note this

The linguist walks round reading the grammar of tangled roots and boughs
Parsing the morphemes of the wind through the leaves.
                 O lovely little girl
                    Who brought you here on this lotus leaf
                    In the middle of the sea of a puddle?

                The ugly mother toad and her obedient son,
                    I hate to be his bride in the marshy castle
                    So they intern me in this leafy cell without walls.
                        
                  I don’t love                 I love
                    I don’t want                 I want
                    I hate the                     I hail
The brown leaves sough confusedly without a gust of wind
They amputate the limbs of sentences.
Now waters do not flow from the springs to make meanings
The trees are brown and the air dusty.

He has many gurus who do not teach
But to learn worlds from.

A butterfly fluttered about a little auburn crow
                 Anne, Anne, Sister Anne,
                 You look so sad and homesick!

            No, no, not at all! I wait or look for none
                  Happy am I here on this tower!
                  (Set to trust none I do not know.)
Anne’s rosy nose touched the tear dampened granite floor
It could push out through the casement and knocking against the stars, The dragon at the dark corner blew fire at the winged creature
And a spark burnt the magic thread round his neck –
The grammarian had a long fall into the puddle
Frightening the little girl on the lotus leaf.
                 But
                 not happy
                 not pleased
                 freedom fighters

             (Did the earthen mouth move?
                  Do pieces of paper like in the vacant fields?)
                     
                 Mimics sing in any voice
                  They represent your voice
                   But you sing a different song to me
                   They know you sing a different song.

                  Let’s kill the rats for our moksa!

The emaciated flame dies off the dry lamp wick
The old grammarian is left in the musing darkness

Pukharambam Thoithoi