Merry Christmas! Get into the Yuletide spirit with Queen’s “Thank God It’s Christmas” sung by Freddie Mercury. The band did not release a video after the song came out in 1984, but that hasn’t stopped fans from making their own inspired videos on YouTube, like this one.
A look at the global Christmas feast. The Independent asks five chefs what people eat around the world for Christmas, and shares the tasty answers, photos and recipes. Gymkhana London’s head chef Karam Sethi and his sommelier sister Sunaina share their family’s British-Indian traditions, and lay out an enticing feast, also pictured in the article:
For the Magazine, he has laid on a festive if not obviously Christmassy feast: kid goat legs and tandoori guinea fowl alongside potatoes with chickpeas, tamarind and sweet yogurt, baby aubergines with sweet and sour masala, and steaming biryanis sealed with puff pastry lids. Mince ‘pie’ samosas are another speciality. [The Independent]
Spicing up that holiday turkey for India. The Wall Street Journal reports that Dan Turk Farms & Services Pvt. Ltd., India’s first turkey supplier, hopes to entice people in India to eat more of the big bird. Launched in September and based in Gurgaon, the company sells ready-to-cook spiced turkey products to restaurants, and its “Dancing Turkeys” brand has more turkey offerings. The company’s founder Sameer Mathur, has a blog on the website where he writes about turkey’s nutritional benefits and advises how to “turk that dish” (Chettinad turkey anyone?) [WSJ]
Doc Bollywood on 100 years of Indian cinema. Rajinder Dudrah (aka Doc Bollywood), author of Bollywood Travels, Culture, Diaspora and Border Crossings in Popular Hindi Cinema, talks to NPR about the world’s most popular film industry which got its start 100 years ago. The interview includes clips from Mother India and Shree 420, plus Doc Bollywood explaining to the host Scott Simon what makes a film Bollywood.
DUDRAH: Well, Bollywood is actually cinema, so you know, there’s a number of genres. But I think the most favored genre is the masala genre, and within that there’s a bit fighting, so you’ve got your dishum dishum action, spectacle stunts; you’ve got wonderful heroes and heroines; you’ve got melodrama often centered around the family or obstacles that are placed in the family, and then obviously there’s a love interest. The hero and heroine has to overcome social obstacles, sometimes mediate the family and come together. There will also be suspense, thriller. There also might be a kind of a cut and paste or a quote to Hollywood film within that genre itself. So it’s a kind of an all-singing, all-dancing melodrama family affair.
Pavani Yalamanchili is a co-founder and editor of The Aerogram. Email her at editors@theaerogram.com. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram.
