In Brief – August 2020
A restaurant chain in Madurai is using people’s love for parottas to spread awareness on the importance of wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus. The restaurant is dishing out parottas shaped like face masks at a cost of ₹50 for a set of two. When the restaurant had opened briefly after the lockdown was relaxed in early June, these parottas were given free to people who walked in without a mask. Since then it has became a huge hit, especially among children. Madurai has the second highest number of Covid infections in the State after Chennai.
As the Mont Blanc glacier in the Alps mountains melts, it throws up various collectibles. Recently it threw up copies of Indian newspapers The Hindu, National Herald and The Statesman, that were probably aboard an Air India Boeing 707 from Bombay to New York that crashed near the summit on Jan 24, 1966. Timothy Mottin who runs a café restaurant near the Bossons glacier on the Alps chanced upon these papers after the ice in which they were encased for nearly six decades had just melted. The papers will join a growing collection of found items from the crash that he has put on display at the café. The most stunning find was a box of precious stones thought to have come from the plane crash.
With wedding halls across the State remaining closed due to Covid scare, A Abdul Hakkim, an art designer in Udumalpet, a semi-urban town in Tamil Nadu, has designed a ‘mobile wedding hall’ to provide the wedding celebration experience. He has transformed a truck into a wedding dais and this mobile wedding hall is driven to the location preferred by the clients. He, along with his team, provides seating arrangement for 50 guests as mandated by the government. Masks and sanitisers are also provided for the guests.
Photographer Ravi Hongal’s newly built home in Belgaum, Karnataka, is an expression of his passion for his profession. The three-storeyed building shaped like a DSLR camera and named ‘Click’ has a glass window similar to a viewfinder; another window is shaped like a camera lens. The building also sports a wide film strip and even a memory card. The walls and the interiors are decorated with graphics related to photography. Hongal’s three sons are named Canon, Nikon and Epson after the iconic camera brands!
Australian PM Scott Morrison shared a drool-worthy image of samosas with chutney on his Twitter account with a caption: “Sunday ScoMosas with mango chutney, all made from scratch – including the chutney! A pity my meeting with @narendramodi this week is by a videolink. They’re vegetarian, I would have liked to share them with him.” To which PM Modi tweeted: “Connected by the Indian Ocean, united by the Indian Samosa! Looks delicious, PM @ScottMorrisonMP! Once we achieve a decisive victory against COVID-19, we will enjoy the Samosas together. Looking forward to our video meet on the 4th.”
