Mumbai's Athena: The popular hotspot plans to reinvent itself by February next year

The half-life of a pub in Bangalore is just around three months. Some time back, Urban Edge was the pub of choice. For a brief while it was The Park's i-Bar, then Opium, and now Spin. 180 Proof? What's that? The risk in writing about Bangalore's pubs is that the dive picked as the prevailing hotspot may well be oh-so-five-minutes ago by the time the article comes out. Attribute that to the predominantly younger-than-young crowds that frequent pubs (yes, this writer is aware that coffee, not draught beer, is the preferred drink of several techies).

Mumbai's nightspots do better. Velocity is 18 months old, Athena, 35 and neither is showing signs of ageing. That, says Wasim Khan of Velocity, is because the average age of a nightclub in Mumbai is three years. "But in three years, you are absolutely dead," he says. "And even during the period, you constantly need to change and reinvent yourself to keep the crowds coming." That could range from thematic parties that change every five to eight weeks (Bollywood Night in Velocity and Fashion Fridays in Athena are currently the rage). Vikrant Choughule of Indage Chateau, the winemaker behind Athena echoes Khan's point of view. "As clubs keep coming and going, you have to give the customer something different, if not reinvent completely."

That could explain why Athena is going in for a completely new look that will be unveiled in February 2004. Mumbai's obsession with its old-favourites hasn't come at the cost of new dives. The promising ones are Hawaiian Shack (think retro music and faux Hawaiian waitresses), Rain (think Bollywood types), Circus Circus (think a new circus act every night), Brew Bar (think 22 brands of beer), Red Light (think slick bartending) and Provogue Lounge and Lush. And everyone is looking forward to the imminent launch (it may have happened by the time you read this) of Indage's new nightclub Zaha. Will all these places be around in 2006? Your guess is as good as ours.

-Dipayan Baishya

WHERE IS FASHION MADE IN INDIA?

Tokyo's streetwear may well be the inspiration for European designers, but the fount of fashion in India is the desert state of Rajasthan. Not convinced? Listen to the hottest designer around, Kolkata's Sabyasachi Mukherjee, then. "Rajasthan is the place where fashion starts in India. The people there are not fashionable, but they wear bright clothes to break the monotony of the desert." Adds Kodaya (Karnataka)-based designer Aarti Monappa, "Bangalore and Mumbai have style, Delhi has glamour, but Rajasthan is definitely most designers' inspiration when it comes to traditional designs."

And you thought sand-washed denim was the desert's only contribution to fashion.

-Ananya Roy

TEST DRIVE
T610: No It Isn't Arnie Redux

Advertising works, believe you me. There I was, suffering from acute thumb fatigue, taking in the tube's evening shows when the ad for the Sony Ericsson T610 came on. It was cool. It was edgy. It was funky. So was the phone when I finally managed to lay hands on one for a test drive. The T610 (the first phone jointly developed by Sony and Ericsson) is one sexy beast.

Now for the phone. The T610's anodised aluminium body gives it the class moulded plastic phones can only dream of. The camera is recessed and less prone to scratches. The keypad takes some getting used to, but I simply loved the five-way joystick (force-feedback while gaming, no less), and the large (128 x 160 pixels) screen. Great design, yes, but the T610's usability was something else.

Actually, its user-interface wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't Nokia-like. I'm on my fourth Nokia phone and can vouch for the almost-intuitive interface the company's phones sport (save the 3650; to operate that you either need a degree in engineering or have to be five years old). Can I say the same thing about the T610's interface? No, but maybe, with time, I could get used to it. I didn't really get around to using the ringtone editing function (much like a DJ, I could have created by own midi ringtones of almost any piece of music), but it seemed a nifty add-on.

The T610's camera is as good as those on other phones. It boasts the same resolution as the camera on Nokia's 7250 (288 x 352 pixels). And Quickshare does make it easy to send pictures (as the ads claim it does). My problem with the T610 has to do with its primary function. It looks good, sports a great camera, and impresses potential-dates, but hey, what's the use of all that if you can't really hear what's being said on the phone. I put the problem down to the specimen I had been sent but one fellow-sufferer I unearthed had lots to say about the voice-quality. "Use the hands-free," he advised. "It makes things better." That it did.

Would I pay Rs 18,999 for this phone? The look, the feel, and the camera are clear turn-ons, but-call me conservative-I believe phones are primarily meant for talking. That should give you an idea of my answer.

-Kushan Mitra

CEO CELLPHONE QUIRKS

Most Indian CEOs seem to prefer 'private numbers' (the number doesn't show up when they call), one CEO we know has given out his number only to his family and his secretary (if you have to speak to him, call his office; his secretary calls him and if he wants to speak to you, he calls back), and another who is very free with his number actually switches on his phone only when he wishes to make a call.

HEALTH NOTES
That Triglyceride Thing

BREAD: Takes the cake in terms of starch-content

ROOMALI ROTI: Low on roughage, high on starch

RICE: Lowest on the threat index

Let's sock it to you: the major cause of coronary artery diseases (cads) in Asians isn't a fat-rich diet, as one would expect it to be, but a condition termed hypertriglyceridemia. Triglycerides are the chemical form in which most fats reside in the human body. They're present in blood plasma and in association with cholesterol form plasma lipids (bad news). Science tells us that the triglycerides in plasma come from fats; now, new research has revealed that in the case of Asians, they are made in the body itself, from carbohydrates.

This could well be the missing link. Conventional risk variables do not explain the high incidence of cads among Indians. "We are so used to carbohydrate-rich diet," says Rekha Sharma, the Chief Dietician at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), "that we do not even think of attributing our high Body Mass Index (BMI) to it". "A low fat-intake doesn't automatically translate into good health". Carbohydrates, you see, can do as much damage as fats. There may be other factors-an errant gene, for instance-that predispose Indians to cads, but there's no denying the fact that our carbohydrate-rich (think rice, chappatis, rotis) doesn't help.

The triglyceride thing also sheds light on that enduring Indian mystery of how Indians, especially those from the southern part of the country, who live on a moderate-fat vegetarian diet, manage to reach weights one would normally associate with steak-eating occidentals. Does this mean the Atkins diet-created by the late Dr. Robert C. Atkins who believed that if the body were starved of carbohydrates, it would start burning fats for energy-is just the thing for triglyceride-ridden Indians? There's no research to buttress this opinion, but the answer to that question may well be yes. Several Indians who have moved to a variant of the Atkins diet- variant, because even Indians who are non-vegetarians do not eat the same quantum of red meat as Americans-speak highly of it.

This writer hasn't really come across a working version of a vegetarian Atkins diet, but is reasonably sure that any halfway-decent dietician should be able to draw up one. Remember, too much of anything, even carbs, is bad, bad, bad.

-Ananya Roy

HEALTH SNIPPETS

SATED ON SOY
According to a recent issue of The Journal of Nutrition, Cholecystokinin (CCK), a substance produced by endocrine cells "suppresses food intake by inducing a feeling of satiety". Soy, apparently, accelerates the release of CCK. That's another reason to gorge on Chinese food.

POISON PILL
Were you aware that botox (short for botulinum toxin), the wonder cure for wrinkles, is derived from the same bacterium that causes a form of food poisoning? And that the wrinkle-removing and life-threatening properties, both stem from the bacterium's ability to cause muscle paralysis?