Super Sweet Sixteen

Everything from coming adulthood to mark of passage to the more responsible teenage years has been the cause for celebrating your sweet 16^th. If you are looking for a wonderful 16^th birthday party ideas there are quite a few things that you have to consider before starting your party plan and printing out your invitations.

A sweet sixteen can be as simple or as grand as you want it to be, but there are just some things that a good party cannot be without.

If you planning to execute an excellent sweet 16^th , you have to keep in mind that enjoyment is the core of any party. Before going through with any kind of Birthday party details it is important to plan ahead. Putting your thoughts into paper would be a great way to keep yourself organized. Here are some integral things that you cannot be without in every good and amazing sixteenth Birthday parties:

A) Food – any rocking party has to have some grub. If you are out to create an atmosphere of formality, a full-fledged dinner is a good idea. If you are down for something informal, especially if you’re thinking about sixteenth birthday for boys, finger foods or a eat as you go affair is a better option. Always have extra food on hand for guests that like to eat.

B) Drinks – Drinks are “tres important”  feature for parties. Most 16^th birthday party ideas tend to focus on alcohol-free drinks and beverages, and also cocktails, soda-floats, root beer, or even home-made drinks, which follow a certain party theme. There are hundreds of recipes online for different types of fun and delicious party drinks!

C) Music – Music is what livens up the party and sets the mood for some truly memorable nights. More formal affairs usually demand that you have slow, easy-to-listen to music. While this formal air can be maintained all throughout the party, one good tip is to create a mixed playlist which have a variety of songs or tracks. Lively ones, ones for dancing, and ones for tear-jerking times can be choreographed by Deejays which you can hire. Better yet, let one of your family members try their hands at being your DeeJay, thus integrating a little bit of family participation into your birthday and creates a better atmosphere among your relatives and friends.

D) Ambiance/ Theme – A lot of good birthday parties revolve around themes. This can be planned to suit gender, hobby, preference, or religious and cultural belief. The theme is what brings both the entrees and music together, although this can be somewhat overly formal means of celebrating one’s sweet 16. Formality is just not a trend in sweet sixteen. You can be as creative or as unpredictable with the theme of the party..just be sure not to go overboard. Otherwise, it might be the ruining factor you feared for your special day.

E) Guests -  The guest number is just as important as any of the four above mentioned necessities combined, as they amount to the overall amount and cost  of food, drinks, and utensils (cups, plates, cutlery) that have to be served. You have to have a clear list of who is to be invited and who not to in order to calculate the exact number of food and drinks to have. If you want smooth sailing with your 16^th birthday party ideas, be sure to plan the guest-list and invites at least a month prior to the event. Print out the invitations and disperse them at least a week and a half before your big event to make sure that everybody is able to meet the theme (if any)  of the party or to confirm their un-attendance if ever.

These precautions ensure that your memorable day is hassle free! With those five necessary things in mind, it’s time to focus on the party proper. Most 16^th birthday party ideas revolve around the themes. While this helps set the mood for the party, theme parties aren’t always necessary. You can pick a theme depending on your preferences, but here are some themes for both boys and girls that you can incorporate:

For Girls:

Parties for girls have become a stereotypically formal affair often involving ceremonies that mark the young lady’s entry into a near-adulthood. While making a formal party is a great way to do about it, informal sweet sixteen’s can also be fun and just as sentimental! Whether you opt to throw your sweet 16 with friends and family or if you spend it in a little girl’s –night-out at the theater or carnival, there are literally hundreds of different ways to enjoy yourself. Don’t limit yourself to stereotyped themes. Be creative in your ideas!  Seasonal themes or fantasy themes (like represent a country, retro-look , music icons, facebook meme, movie/television show/cartoon character/Disney princess), are also great 16^th birthday party ideas worth trying. Overall, any party should be fun-centric and hassle free!

For Boys :

Parties for boys can be riotous and downright fun affair  where you can go crazy with the planning. You can choose to keep it informal by simply having a get together with food, drinks, and fun games with close family friends, friends and relatives. A more formal and sentimental way to throw a boy’s 16^th party is if you bring together family and close friends for a full-course dinner over which you get to recount the moments you’ve had with the celebrant. Still better, going out for a full dinner course at an excellent resort and having fun rounds of go-carts or bowling afterwards will guarantee you a smashing good time!

I hope that with these simple tips , you enjoy your sweet 16^th!

Compiled by:

Isha R Ganatra

SANTACRUZ - Mumbai's Wedding Market

Bandra is known as the “Queen of Suburbs” in Mumbai. But if you go further North, you arrive in Santacruz – let us say, “The Wedding Market” of Mumbai.

You will find almost all things which are usually needed in a wedding – ethnic and designer clothes, wedding invitations, jewellery, trousseau, accessories, etc.

There are innumerable stores selling wedding and bridal dresses. And they also come in a lot of varieties. If you want something at a certain price point, you will find quite a few shops selling incredible designs at that price. But if money is not a concern, then, as they say, sky is the limit. You will find shops selling them at upwards of `50000. Also, many of the known designers have their showrooms in or near Santacruz – Neeta Lulla, Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani, Avesh Dadlani and so on. Not only these, many of the shops have their in-house designers to help you get the perfect wedding dress for your dream wedding. There are even some designers who render services on a clientele basis. There are even shops selling men’s ethnic wear such as Kora, Raymond and Louis Phillipe. You will also find tailors catering to special requests.

And since there are so many ethnic clothing stores, the jewellery stores are not left behind either. One of the most trusted brands of jewellery in the Indian market – Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri – has a showroom in Santacruz. There are others too, such as Manini jewellers, Minawala Jewellers, Dadabhai Jewellers and Dalichand Kapurchand Jewellers. There are even designers who operate from their homes and give you authentic, certified jewellery. And if you are looking for art jewellery, the shops are uncountable. You will find not only ones which sell as a stall but also big brands such as Sia Art Jewellery. No need to say that you get all kinds and types of jewellery in various designs. And if still not satisfied, the jewellery hub of Mumbai, Waterfied Road in Bandra, is just 5 minutes drive from Santacruz.

Jewellery and clothes are not the only things needed in an Indian wedding. To cater to this need, there are even stores selling things such as flowers, trousseau packing, envelopes, wedding invitation cards etc. Not to mention, there are stores selling wedding shoes such as mojari, bags and clutches. Brands such as Esbeda and Caprese are all present. You also have salons such as Enrich present. You will also find cosmetic showrooms such as Inglot, MAC among others in and around Santacruz. There are even innumerable sweet shops and cake shops present. There are even caterers around. There are even beauty clinics and spas such as VLCC, Kaya Skin Clinic, Dr. Batra’s, Kenia Eye Hospital, Iosis, Aura Thai, Sabai Spa in Santacruz, who offer bridal packages.

So you need anything related to “The Great Indian Wedding”, you will find in Santacruz (Station Road and S. V. Road). And if it’s casual shopping, Linking Road is not far away.

Deepali Mehta

LOVE TO HATE

Humans feel numerous emotions. Basic emotions such as excitement, happiness, sadness, anger, tenderness, scariness; as well as multi-dimensional emotions such as boredom, stress, calmness, nervousness, tenseness, upset or depressed.[1]

Certain emotions overlap two “black-and-white” emotions. For example, emotions that face a policeman when arresting his own relative; emotions that face a person whose loved one has betrayed him; or even, feelings a person is confronted with when about to do something he has been forbidden to. These “grey” emotions not only confuse one and the others around, but also force one to choose between the two overlapping emotions.

One such emotion is “Love to Hate”. On the surface, you hate someone but in your heart, you are infatuated with him/her. It is such an emotion that you cannot help but get obsessed with someone you utterly dislike.

You detest him/her, yet when something regarding that person comes up, you can help get curious. And when the news is “good”, you simply roll your eyes and go “Tch!” Yet, you are impressed by that person. A strange kind of respect is aroused within you. (That is what they call, seeing things objectively, without any bias). And when the news is “not so good”, a sarcastic chuckle escapes you and you go, “Ha! Another reason to hate him/her” or “See, that’s why I hate him/her.” Yet you want to know more about him/her.

People around you have different opinion about your feelings towards that person. “You like him/her”, “You hate him/her.” But one thing is clear; you cannot remove him from your thoughts. Passion, obsession, love, hate, thrill; you feel all this at the same time. It causes a certain emotional high in yourself; your heart goes through a certain adrenaline rush and thrill even when you hear or write that person’s name. Your breathing is hard, your mouth has gone dry and you see only two persons in the world - him/her and yourself. You need great strength to focus on the topic and not on the person. Even when you calm down, it takes time to be yourself again; you need something to catch your attention so that you can ‘move on’.

On hearing this, anyone would take it as a compliment. You hate me, you love me; but I am constantly on your mind. I have occupied a piece of it.

This feeling can be stressful and disparaging to anyone’s emotional well-being. We need to be careful and clear in our thoughts. So just meditate and relax!

Deepali Mehta

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion

City Dynamics -Mera Mumbai, India

Mumbai is basically a story of unused spaces. Air, land, sea, underground, we’ve wasted all of them. Air we should have gone vertical, we are starting to do that now but we’ve wasted 40 years and that too because of reasons like convoluted slum redevelopment , tdr etc..which were important , but certainly did not require that much time. On land we don’t have enough freed up paths or commons. Sea and underground could have been used for transportation. In a way we’ve wasted spaces , wasted ideas which were common three or four decades ago.  Imagine what Mumbai could have been had we made the right decisions in early 70 -80’s. Lot of these are workable ideas, solutions have been known through the decades but we ignored them.

For all these years, Mumbai has been my home, very little has changed, few taller buildings have come up. Life is built on memories of our neighborhood, in the homes, in the city that we live in. One starts wondering, why we did not worked hard enough to make Mumbai a great city.

What has been missing is the vision and will, from both politicians and us citizens. We all are responsible for this mess. We've created our little islands, our little cocoons, a gated world of Home, Office, some of us Schools, Colleges, and malls on weekends. We've paid very little attention to the building of the city and demanding a city with livable communities.

THIS is what has to change. Transforming Mumbai and other cities is going to require us to change policies and politics. Because bad politics is what has created this mess, and good politics can get us out of this. As good politics mean good policies and voting. Change has to come through our votes; the reality is many of the citizens don’t vote. So who really votes? Our contribution at the ballot box is only 55% to 60%. It is very little wondered then, that we get the policies we do. And the outcome is no surprise, we are writing off our own future.

Why we need urbanization? Urbanization and development are conjoint twins, one leads to and means the other. In India we’ve had this misplaced notion for a long time, this rheumatics of villages and that has does us harm from pre-independence days. The future of India is urban, if you don’t believe me try going out and living in a village for more than a week, it just doesn’t happen. But everyone likes this, that India lives in 600-1000 villages. The reality is India needs to live in hundreds of cities. Cities are growth engines. They are there for wealth creation, innovation hubs and much more; we’ve seen it through the history of mankind. Now around 50% of the people in the world live in urban areas. For India to develop it has to urbanize. Today around 60% of India involved in agriculture. If some part of this agricultural labour shifts to urban city’s labour intensive manufacturing. India has a unique opportunity here, just like China had 30 years ago. 

Labour costs have been rising in China. China has moved up the ladder. In late 70’s India and China had pretty much the same per capita income, today China’s per capita income is 3 times that of India. Both started off in 1947-48, and we could have done what China did in late 70’s onwards, we lost a lot of opportunities out there. China itself needs a China that was there 30 years ago in case of low cost labour in large numbers. Chinese companies have been looking at Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam and other such countries and are trying to move some of their manufacturing out there. India can be that, that’s the way development, if we move some of the people move from agriculture to low-cost manufacturing,  we need people in manufacturing as we need to produce stuff for consumption.

India has a unique opportunity to kick-start a 30 year old cycle, like China did, if it can solve its land, labour and infrastructure problems. But what how can this be achieved?  As I said before, if we move at least some percent of the people in agriculture to new cities. We do have migrations daily, but in small numbers , but that’s not good enough to get millions of people out of poverty. We need to move them to manufacturing. This would be one of the greatest migrations in history, other than what happened in China. And what do we have to offer them? We have existing but legacy cities like Mumbai. We are bursting at our seems ,look at Mumbai , Delhi or Bangalore or any other major cities, and what’s the plan for renewal , it goes by the initials JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission),  the only time you see these words are painted on buses. – A plan for renewal, that’s our plan for revamping cities. In reality, nothing exists, the number of Urban planners for Mumbai is just One as opposed to China , who has a whole institute producing urban planners for the country. 

We seem to have forgotten the art of planning, looking 10 – 20 years ahead, what cities will become? What’s the evolution of neighbourhood? What’s the progression we need to have? The fact is our existing cities cannot accept more people, what India really needs are new cities, atleast a hundred new cities, movable, sustainable, well managed cities. A lot has been written, solutions are all there , there’s a Romer’s concept of charter cities where people come together based on certain rules, there are designer cities, that are planned according to a purpose. But the first problem we have to solve when we look at the cities is the governance, and what’s needed out here is vision and will for good policies. And it’s not going to happen automatically , we’ve seen 65 years post independence and nothing has changed, it’s almost development , whatever change happens is by default and accidental, Urban Governance is our greatest challenge , we need good policies and for that we need good politicians , for that we need to vote.  The challenge in India is that only 55 percent of voting happens in urban India. The reasons are like , what difference one vote will make it’s a combination of ignorance I don’t know where my polling both is ? It’s a question of complacency, apathy- all are equally bad so it doesn’t matter whom I vote for, waiting in the queue at the polling booth. And the answer is not voting for independent candidates , what they do , is they end up being vote cutters.

Compiled by:

Isha R Ganatra