MONTH THAT WAS

‘Dry’ Sundays in God’s own country

Thiruvananthapuram: Liquor sale outlets and bars in Kerala will remain closed on all Sundays as part of the Congress-led UDF Government’s liquor policy which seeks to lead the state to total prohibition within a decade.

Under the new policy, nearly 400 retail liquor outlets of State Beverages Corporation, the sole distributor of Indian Made Foreign Liquor, will remain shut for 52 days a year, reports PTI.

Apart from Sundays, holidays like Gandhi Jayanthi, Sree Narayana Guru birth anniversary and Good Friday are already dry days in the state.

The Government has ordered closure of bars attached to hotels, except in the five-star category, as part of the policy of reducing availability of liquor to the people. Also, 10 percent of the retail outlets will be closed each year.

Over the years, Kerala has earned a reputation of being one of the top liquor consuming states in the country. The state had a foretaste of partial prohibition when the ministry headed A K Antony banned sale of arrack in mid- 1990s.

The Kerala High Court is expected to deliver the judgement on the plea of hotel owners challenging the government decision.

Post Nobel Peace Prize – A story from across the border

Lahore/Quetta/Islamabad/ Peshawar: Fourteen-year-old Zeba wakes early in the morning with her younger siblings Saira and Hina. The girls get dressed, comb their hair and leave their home at 7.30 am; they are not headed to their school, but to help their mother who works as a maid at several houses in the capital.

“There is a girls’ school here in Bhara Kahu village, but our parents believe that girls should not be sent to school, but should be trained to do household chores,” Zeba said. “We work from 7.30 am until 6 pm, and we eat roti with leftover curry during this time.”

Their village is located on the northeastern outskirts of Islamabad, not too far from Parliament House and Prime Minster Secretariat. Zeba’s mother is the sole bread-winner in the family as her father is a daily wage labourer and it has been many days since his last job. “We want to go to school, we want to drink milk and eat an egg in the morning and we want to play with our friends,” Zeba says. Education, health and nutrition – the right to access these fundamentals is denied to millions of girls in Pakistan like Zeba, Saira and Hina, largely due to poverty and a lack of awareness.

“In a conservative society like Pakistan a girl usually has to face discrimination right from the moment her family learns that a mother-to-be is pregnant with a baby girl,” said Country Representative Rutgers World Population Foundation (WPF) Qadeer Baig as Pakistan marks the International Day of the Girl Child, commemorated annually by the United Nations on October 11. The theme for 2014 is focuses on empowering adolescent girls in order to end the gender-based violence.

Mahatma inspired jail inmates

Mumbai : In an indication of Gandhian thoughts continuing to inspire prisoners, 92 inmates of the Taloja Central Jail near Mumbai appeared for the Gandhi Peace Exam, PTI reports.

TRK Somaiya of the Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal, which conducted the exam, said the exercise was carried out to evoke a sense of regret for the wrong deeds in the minds of jail inmates and to reform and help them be a responsible citizen of society.

Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal and Saksham jointly conducted the exam.

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, prizes and certificates were distributed to the inmates who appeared for Gandhi Peace Exam. Most of the inmates passed the exam.

The topper got 76 marks out of 80. A Nigerian inmate got 65 marks. Jail Superintendent of Taloja Central Jail presided over the function.

Gandhi’s autobiography ‘My Experiments with Truth’ and other books written by Mahatma Gandhi and on his thoughts are made available to the inmates free of charge, Somaiya said.

One of the inmates said, “After reading Gandhi autobiography, I have decided that I will never choose the path of violence under any circumstances.”

VIP & aam aadmi – a celluloid effort

New Delhi: The hassles and challenges faced by ordinary people during VIP vehicular movements in the streets, and fight of a man against such restrictions is the subject of a new film set in the national capital.

Tentatively called ‘Project R’, the political drama puts a spotlight on the “hardships” that people undergo on account of being stranded on the roads so that beacon-carrying vehicles can have an “easy passage”.

“It is a common practice in our country to be sidelined so that big-ticket, batti-wali gaadis (beacon-carrying vehicles) ferrying politicians or some VIPs can easily pass through. What the government doesn’t realise is that many people in medical emergency situations are caught in that melee end up being ill-fated,” its Line Producer Amit Sharma said. “The film’s plot revolves around one such case, where a man challenges this ‘VIP system’ in a court, after his ill son dies, as a result of being stranded in the streets,” he said. Starring Raima Sen, Deepak Dobriyal and Parvin Dabas in lead roles, the 130-minute film has been shot on a “shoestring budget” in a duration of a little over one month.

“The shooting of the film was done in a period of 35 days with just two breaks. We are now on the editing table and expecting to release it by this year,” Sharma said.

The film, which has been largely shot in Delhi with some scenes being filmed in Gurgaon, possibly for the first time would also’showcase’ on screen the nearly 150-year-old Town Hall in Chandni Chowk. “The heritage Town Hall doubles up as a Supreme Court in the film, with both the inside and outside of the premises extensively shot. Besides, we did some scenes in Chhatarpur farm houses and the Gugaon sessions court. We did the traffic-stranded scene in Vasant Kunj area,” he added. 

The male protagonist is essayed by Dobriyal, who fights a legal battle in the wake of his son’s death. Sen plays a city-based lawyer while Dabas dons the avatar of a VIP politician.

Municipal authorities also see this as a good occasion to “celebrate and showcase” the heritage buildings of the city, which otherwise go unnoticed by    many people.

 “About 10 years ago, a film was shot in the Town Hall campus, headquarters of the then unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in which actresses Sushma Seth had played the role of Aruna Asaf Ali, freedom fighter and first mayor of Delhi,” a senior official of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) said.                                                                                                                                       

He said though the Delhi government has been trying to establish a full-fledged Delhi Film Commission to allow a “single-window clearance” to productions houses for shooting purposes, the plan has not come to fruition. “But, we try to give shooting clearances as soon as possible. In the film ‘Fukrey’ for instance, the Hardinge Municipal Library (now Hardayal Municipal Library) was dressed up as a police station for a night shot,” the official said.

The Town Hall, built in the 1860s as ‘Delhi Institute’ has already been proposed by the NDMC to be restored into a heritage complex, but change of guard at the Centre has put this project in a limbo.