The city - sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Leadership, Gandhian style?
People may have differences of opinion about the way Rahul Gandhi is leading the Congress party, but he has his own style of taking it ahead. This was underlined during his informal chat with editors from the print and electronic media on Thursday in the city.
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Amidst the barrage of questions was one, inevitably, about the Gujarat model of development and the leadership of Narendra Modi, arch rival to the Congress. Gandhi went on a, well, Gandhian path, saying there are two types of leadership. One is the draconian “one thought is the thought for the nation”, and the other, he said, is the style of Mahatma Gandhi, who believed in discussion, deliberations with his colleagues and then decision.
But when it came to a question about his sister Priyanka Gandhi, he parried questions in style. A senior journo asked why the Congress was not projecting Priyanka, and Gandhi retorted with gusto, “Because she doesn’t like to be projected. I am her brother and I know about that,” he said.
Happy meal
It was lunch with added sweetness for 200-odd kids of St Catherine of Siena and Orphanage (Bandra) on Thursday. Following mid-day’s Sunshine Story last month, ‘Why a bunch of young kids, who lost 0-10, are real winners’, a patron of the orphanage organised the lunch, where mid-day staffers were participants as well as contributors.
One of the children at the orphanage, delighted at the very sight of the banana-leaf spread. Pic/Satyajit Desai
The children were served a south Indian thali meal on banana leaves, and got to relish about 20 different items, served in the traditional manner. Orphanage volunteers and participants helped serve the meal, which was satisfying in more ways than one.
Serving the food was as enjoyable as consuming it. Pic/Datta Kumbhar
As the space did not permit all the children to be served at once, the little ones (ages 4-6) ate in the first batch and the older kids had to wait. But they did not mind, and merrily swapped tales as they waited. One of the children remarked, “Many of us in the orphanage wait for a day like this when we get to eat so many delicacies at a single meal. It is a completely different experience to eat food on a banana leaf. This feels like a Diwali feast or some other festival season.”
People who would also like to sponsor similar lunch and dinner treats for the children of the orphanage can call Alister Fernandes 09930572218 or Patricia Furtado on 09833822124. Contributions can also be made for events organised by the orphanage, such as a sports camp planned in April. A good deed leaves a sweet taste!
LGBT landmark
IT IS a red-letter day for gender equality in India, as Humsafar Trust celebrates its 20th anniversary today. Humsafar was the first organisation that stood for the rights of the “unequals among the equals”, that is gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people.
Founded by Ashok Row Kavi, Humsafar today is a full-fledged NGO that supports, counsels and runs programmes on HIV awareness for LGBT people. Though they have been let down by the Supreme Court judgment upholding section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, they are still celebrating the completion of 20 years of a trust which has stood by those who have sometimes been abandoned even by their families.
Black and blue
With the lawyer who threw ink at Sahara group chief Subrata Roy having been sent to jail, can we say that he has blotted his copybook?
Copping a plea!
TOO much publicity seems to have taken toll on the service record of Mumbai’s once much-talked-about anti-nightlife crusader, ACP Vasant Dhoble.
Dhoble, who used to be in the headlines practically every other day during his stint at the Social Services Branch of the Mumbai Police till 2012, asked the media on Thursday to stop “using him” for their TRPs (Television Rating Points).
“It is because of your TRP that I have been posted here,” he said to the bunch of reporters lined up outside his office to hear from him, over an economic offences case cracked by Dhoble and his team.
Contributed by: Ravikiran Deshmukh, Bhupen Patel, Sundari Iyer, Varun Singh, Vidya Heble
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