SRINAGAR: The historic Hotel Lala Sheikh on Residency Road in Srinagar may be small and unassuming, but it serves up more than just a fine cup of tea. Lala Sheikh, the face behind this historical tea shop on Wednesday lost his life to cardiac arrest.
With a history that spans over 133 years, this quaint tea shop survived as a cultural icon that has stood the test of time. Despite the challenges of time and family divisions among its inheritors, Hotel Lala Sheikh remains the preferred choice for all seeking a taste of history and a delicious cup of tea.
The shop has a huge history envisaging migration of a worker from city periphery and making it big within Srinagar at a time when situations and system were not supportive of a “start-up”.
Lala Mohammad Sheikh, a young man from the Budgam village of Handjan, founded the shop and quickly gained a reputation for its bakery items. Presently, fourth generation of Lala Sheikh that include three brothers namely Sheikh Altaf, Sheikh Javeed and Sheikh Mehboob Ali are running the shop.
The bakery was very popular for its pastries and chicken patties, with many people visiting the shop, especially during the time when an English Resident lived at the Residency – now the Emporium Garden. It was this residency that made the road Residency Road. Politicians and foreigners also used to visit the shop to taste the bakery items. Lala has been serving customers since 1890 and has become region’s iconic restaurant.
Besides, serving delicious patties and fine tea, the restaurant has witnessed some of the fiercest literary, political and journalistic discussions in Kashmir. The cafe’s history and popularity have made it a must-visit destination for those who want to learn about Kashmir’s oldest tea room.
According to popular belief, the likes of Dina Nath Nadim, Bansi Nirdosh, Mirza Arif, Akhtar Mohiuddin, Amin Kamil, Pran Jalal, and other notable writers would congregate at Lala Sheikh in the evenings, engaging in discussions on poetry and politics while sipping endless cups of tea. Sometimes, these conversations would continue until past midnight.
Additionally, due to its proximity to the Doordarshan TV station and Radio Kashmir, famous singers such as Raj Begum and Ghulam Ahmed Sofi, as well as prominent broadcasters like Makhan Lal Saraf and Prana Shunglu, would frequent the establishment in the evenings.
Kashmir’s noted raconteur Zareef Ahmed Zareef attributes cafe’s success to the dedication and passion of its founder, Lala Sheikh. “This place always served pure food and that too with love. As I worked around that shop only, I used to regularly visit the shop. Lala never compromised on the quality of food” Zareef recalls. “They maintained their fame till today with its food filled with love.
Zareef said he was particularly fond of the restaurant’s tea and butter toast, which he describes as unmatched in their flavour and texture.
While the restaurant may have changed in some ways over the years, its commitment to serving delicious food with a side of history remains as strong as ever.
New Delhi: Indian diet rich in iron, zinc, and fibre, regular consumption of tea, and use of turmeric in meals lowered severity and death due to Covid in the country, according to a study published in the April edition of the Indian Journal of Medical Research by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the death rate was reportedly 5-8 fold lower in India which is densely populated as compared to lesser-populated western countries.
The study, conducted by an international team of scientists including from India, Brazil, Jordan, Switzerland, and Saudi Arabia, aimed to investigate whether dietary habits were associated with the variations in Covid-19 severity and deaths between Western and Indian population.
“Our results suggest that Indian food components suppress cytokine storm and various other severity-related pathways of Covid-19 and may have a role in lowering severity and death rates from Covid-19 in India as compared to western populations,” said the researchers including from Centre for Genomics and Applied Gene Technology at Institute of Integrative Omics & Applied Biotechnology, in West Bengal, and Policy Center for Biomedical Research at Translational Health Science & Technology Institute in Haryana.
“However, large multi-centered case-control studies are required to support our current findings,” they added.
The findings showed that the components of Indian diets, which maintain high iron and zinc concentrations in blood and rich fibre in foods, played a role in preventing carbon dioxide (CO2) and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-mediated Covid-19 severity.
LPS is a common inflammatory mediator to induce inflammatory processes in the brain.
Further, regular consumption of tea by Indians helped maintain high HDL (high-density lipoprotein), also called “good” cholesterol. The catechins in tea also acted as a natural atorvastatin (a statin medication used to prevent cardiovascular diseases) in lowering triglyceride in blood.
Importantly, they said, regular consumption of turmeric in daily food by Indians led to a strong immunity.
The curcumin in turmeric may have prevented pathways and mechanisms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and Covid-19 severity and lowered the death rate, said the researchers.
On the other hand, increased consumption of red meat, dairy products and processed foods resulted in an increase in the severity and death due to Covid in the western populations.
These foods “activate cytokine storm-related pathways, intussusceptive angiogenesis, hypercapnia and enhance blood glucose levels due to high contents of sphingolipids, palmitic acid and by-products such as CO2 and LPS” they wrote in the study.
Palmitic acid – the most common saturated fatty acid found in the human body – also induces ACE2 expression and increases the infection rate, the team said.
Coffee and alcohol that are highly consumed in western countries also led to an increase in severity and death rates from Covid-19 by deregulating blood iron, zinc and triglyceride levels.
For the study, the team used blood transcriptomes of severe Covid-19 patients from three western countries (showing high fatality) and two datasets from Indian patients.
Gene set enrichment analyses were performed for pathways, metabolites, nutrients, etc., and compared for Western and Indian samples to identify the food- and nutrient-related factors, which may be associated with Covid-19 severity.A
Data on the daily consumption of twelve key food components across four countries were collected and a correlation between nutrigenomics analyses and per capita daily dietary intake was also investigated.
Climate change threatening tea sector globally: ITA (Representative image)
Kolkata: Leading planters body Indian Tea Association (ITA) said climate change is threatening the industry globally which is resulting in lower yields and rise in production costs.
A spokesman of ITA said climate change is also threatening the long-term viability of tea industry, which is also causing increasing pest infestations making pesticide residue management surfacing as a major challenge.
To mitigate this, ITA said that the industry needs to adopt a multi-faceted to address the climate change issue by way of sustainable farming practices and reduction in carbon footprint.
In this context, the association maintained the industry involving all the stakeholders to invest in research to come out with mitigating solutions.
There has also been a decline in rainfall and increase in temperature in the tea cultivating regions for the last several years, ITA said.
According to the association, future projections indicate a substantial reduction in suitability in tea cultivation in areas where the crop is grown.
The other major area where work is needed to be done by the industry is that optimisation in the use of chemical fertilisers and greater use of renewable energy.
In the latest data compiled by Tea Board, production in January 2023 in the country was 13.43 million kilogramme as against 16.22 million kilogramme in the same month of last calendar year.
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Guwahati: In a first-of-a-kind initiative, a special tea stall has been set up at the Guwahati train station by the Northeast Frontier Railways (NFR) to boost the transgender community, officials said on Saturday.
NFR General Manager Anshul Gupta inaugurated the ‘Trans Tea Stall’ at platform number 1 on Friday in the presence of Swati Bidhan Baruah, Associate Vice Chairman of the Transgender Welfare Board of Assam.
During the inaugural ceremony, Gupta said that the NFR has taken the initiative for the empowerment of transgenders.
This initiative is the first-of-a-kind in NFR as well as in the Indian Railways, he added.
“This is also the first such initiative in any Central government organisation and NFR will take more such initiatives in future,” Gupta commented.
NFR plans to operate more such Trans Tea Stalls at other railway stations in the region, an official statement mentioned.
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Fulbright Teacher Exchanges opens application acceptability for Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement Programme. It is a six-week long programme for international teachers for professional development. Applications will be accepted for the month of March.
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MOSCOW — Among the perks offered to those stamping their feet to stay warm outside Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium there were hot drinks, payouts, free food or a day off from class. Others had simply been told by their employers to attend, independent media reported.
“We’re from the Russian Post,” a young man with dark hair said glumly, burying his face into his coat. Minutes earlier, a woman in a white wooly hat had called out his name from a list and handed him a paper invite in the colors of the Russian tricolor.
“Invite to the festive program ‘Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland,’” it read.
The mass event at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on Wednesday could hardly be called spontaneous. But it was certainly a crowd-puller.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 and a symbol of its international appeal. Now it is a favorite location for staged patriotic rallies.
This event was timed for Defender of the Fatherland Day on February 23, a traditional holiday in Russia which this year acts as an upbeat to the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a day later.
The lineup included a number of pop stars who are regular faces at patriotic events, such as singers Grigory Leps and Oleg Gazmanov, both of whom are on the EU’s sanctions list.
Тhe singer Shaman belted out his ballad “We’ll rise,” dressed in a T-shirt reading: “I am Russian.”
But the real star was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants of: “Russia! Russia!”
“Right now there is a battle going on our historic lands, for our people … we are proud of them,” he told the crowd. “Today, in defending our interests, our people, our culture, language, territory, all of it, our entire people is the defender of the fatherland.”
Earlier, a group of young children described as being from Mariupol were brought on stage with footage of a destroyed city playing in the background. “I want to thank Uncle Yurya for saving me and hundreds of thousands of others,” one of the girls said before being encouraged to hug а military commander said to have “saved” more than 350 children.
Generally, public messaging has tended to avoid putting too much focus on Ukraine and the war — a term which in Russia is still a criminal offense — and more on a broader and less contentious narrative of patriotism and support for the country’s armed forces.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
At the stadium, some law enforcement officers, but few visitors, brandished Zs, the letter that has become a symbol of the war. Similarly, across the city, billboards featured veterans and modern-day soldiers and slogans such as “We stand together!” but rarely did they explicitly mention Ukraine.
Access to the concert was strictly controlled. There were no tickets for purchase and only a handful of media were allowed in. Attendants had to sign up beforehand via youth organizations, state companies and educational institutions.
“I was signed up by my university,” a young man dressed in a light gray hooded sweater said. Asked whether it had been mandatory, he nodded and looked away.
He declined to give his name and, fearing reprisals, others were similarly wary to talk. “We don’t speak Russian,” a woman of Central Asian appearance said, after being asked what had brought her there.
“It’s very cold today, and we’re just having a snack, thank you, goodbye,” said another woman in a fur coat, who stood outside with a group eating sausage sandwiches and pickles in the snow.
A similar rally in Luzhniki was held in March last year, when Russia marked the eight-year anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. And another in October on Red Square after a ceremony annexing four more Ukrainian regions, despite them not being fully under Russian control.
In fact, since 2014 the rallies have become a fixed feature of Putin’s leadership.
“After Crimea’s annexation, Putin went from aspiring to the legitimacy of an elected president to that of being an almighty Leader. And if you’re a Leader, you need a crowd to gather around you,” analyst Nikolai Petrov, a consultant at Chatham House think tank, told POLITICO.
But even the most fervent Kremlin supporter would struggle to portray the rallies as spontaneous. In fact, the traditional scenes of rows of similar buses transporting similar-looking people who then wave similar-sized Russian flags are more like North Korea than Woodstock.
However, said Petrov, the Kremlin is unlikely to consider this a weakness. “The Kremlin doesn’t need people to mobilize themselves, even in its support,” he said. “The whole idea of such events is to demonstrate loyalty, not some kind of fanatical love.”
Though the Luzhniki concert was the big showstopper, other festivities are expected across the country in the coming days.
According to the business outlet RBC, the presidential administration has sent out guidelines to regional authorities on suitable activities. Suggestions reportedly included painting military-themed murals, staging flash mobs with people lining up in the form of a star-shaped war medal, and arts and crafts workshops to produce, among other things, knitted socks that could later be sent to soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
The real star of the show was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
Russians who have family or friends involved in the “special military operation” have also been encouraged to record personal video messages and share them online under the hashtag #ourheroes.
In one such video posted on Instagram — a platform that has been banned in Russia as extremist but is still widely used via VPN — a teary-eyed woman from the town of Prokhladny in Kabardino-Balkaria dressed in uniform tells her husband: “You’re our rock, our defender. I wish for you to come back victorious, healthy, unharmed. I love you very much.”
Back at Luzhniki, ahead of the rally, loudspeakers promised attendants free hot tea, porridge and sausages.
Meanwhile, coordinators continued to call out names from their clipboards to groups of middle-aged women in mittens and fur coats and men in dark jackets and hats. “Smirnova, Oxana Pavlovna!” one such organizer yelled. Answering to that name, a woman walked forwards and accepted her entry ticket with little emotion.
After getting their names ticked, a trickle of people headed straight back to the metro, away from the grounds before the celebrations had even started, some of them with the Russian tricolor flags they had been given still in hand.
With another anniversary, the annexation of Crimea, around the corner in March, they are likely to be back soon.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Karachi: Ahead of Ramazan, the price of black tea (loose) in Pakistan has swelled to Rs 1,600 per kg from Rs 1,100 in the last 15 days as around 250 containers are still stuck at the port that arrived from late December 2022 to early January, local media reported.
A retailer said a leading brand has raised the price of 170-gram Danedar and Elaichi packs to Rs320 and Rs350 from Rs 290. The 900 and 420-gram packs now cost Rs 1,480 and Rs 720 as against Rs 1,350 and Rs 550. Other packers are set to follow suit, Dawn reported.
Zeeshan Maqsood, Convener Standing Committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) on Tea, said that imports are currently under crisis which may lead to huge shortages in March, Dawn reported.
He said banks say they have instructions from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to release documents on 180-day defer contracts or 180-day letters of credit (LCs).
He added that the situation is getting worse because if anyone gets these containers released on 180-day deferred payment then how he would calculate the cost of imported tea as nobody knows what would be the dollar rate after six months on the interbank market, Dawn reported.
Zeeshan, who is also an executive member of the Pakistan Tea Association (PTA), said the banks are not opening LCs saying they do not have any instructions from the SBP for new contracts.
He feared that tea price may hit Rs 2,500 per kg in Ramazan in case stuck-up consignments were not released, Dawn reported.
As a result, the welfare associations may not be able to distribute tea in ration bags due to shortage and high cost, he added.
Zeeshan suggested that Pakistan should sign a Prefrential Trade Agreement (PTA) with Kenya. “We import 90 per cent of Kenyan tea from a weekly auction in Mombasa where all African Origin tea are sold.”
Kenya is the gateway to Africa connecting seven landlocked countries. Pakistan imports tea worth around $500m annually from Kenya and exports only $250m of different items, Dawn reported.
Kolkata: As the fresh political equation in the hills of Darjeeling involving the trio of Bimal Gurung, Ajay Edwards and Binoy Tamang is becoming a major threat to the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM)-Trinamool Congress alliance, quick granting of land deeds to the people of the hills is going to be the tool for the later to combat the trio.
After returning to the hills on Friday from Kolkata after a series of meetings with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other ministers of the state cabinet, the BGPM chief and Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA)’s chief executive Anit Thapa told the media persons that the state government has assured him of quick beginning and completion of the process of granting of prajapattas (land deeds) to the tea garden workers residing on the land leased by the garden owners from the state government.
“The process of the review on this count will be completed in the next 10 days, following which the distribution of the prajapattas will start. The chief minister has personally assured me on this count. This is great news for the tea garden workers, whose demand for prajapattas was long standing,” Thapa told mediapersons.
It was learnt that since the majority of the tea gardens are located on land leased by the state government, there were some technical problems in granting land deeds to the workers residing there.
Before every election, there had been promises of granting land deeds in the hills, which were hardly fulfilled.
However, estranged Trinamool Congress leader, Binay Tamang claimed that this promise of granting of land deeds was yet another gimmick by the state government and BGPM before the panchayat polls this year.
Hamro Party founder Ajay Edwards too said that since GTA has failed in fulfilling each and every promise it made before, the people of the hills have no trust in the fresh promise, on granting of land deeds.
“What GTA and the state government has done is sheer politics and playing with the sentiments of the tea garden workers,” he said.
