Sightings

AS usual Delhi University admissions made news. If it wasn't forms that bugged admission seekers, it was their non- availability that drove guardians up the wall. Realising the terrible time students have, intrepid cyber cafe owners sensing good business, put the results on the net notching up another use for the dot com industry.

While on the Net, the latest venture is a new pet care site which took off at a huge ceremony with Karishma Kapoor and Akshay Khanna. Apart from using the celebrities to launch their site, Concerning-Pets.com. also plans to use celebrity names and their celebrity pets as part of the site programme.

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ANOTHER aspirant in this field is young Aditya Sarda, who has set up a site to sell Kargil mementoes with handicrafts. But what is novel about his scheme is the fact that the profit generated out of the sales of the empty Bofors casings will be used to help the war widows. Sarda said that the idea struck him after he went to see "Fifty Days..." where some of the Kargil war mementoes were being sold at the venue of the play. Memorabilia ranges from from Rs. 100 to Rs. 6,000.

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TELEVISION is going regional and the first big experiment has been the recent launch of Tara Punjabi, Star's ambitious venture to tap the regional market. With Kishwar Ahluwalia heading it and a cast of other known names that will pick up programmes based "on the youth", this channel hopes to tap a large chunk of the earthy northern middle class. Of course what the quality content of the programmes is and how these would be handled remains to be seen. Alongside all this are the scheduled launches for Tara Bengali, Tara Marathi and Gujarati.

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WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY suddenly became a special occasion for the city with C.M. Shiela Dikshit launching a new initiative involving school children and the common man as she put it. Still on the agenda are the earlier issues which seem to have made no headway with the public yet - the fight against polybags, vehicle pollution, planting trees, etc. While Dikshit promised more political teeth for the campaign, out to net as much support and awareness that they could, were a host of celebrities sporting leafy green headwear.

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NOT that these people were mistaken for a modelling show. But in today's world of high fashion where anything can be in - from sporty garments to flower and vegetable bedecked tresses, someone like Suman Khushwaha, seems almost staid. Except that she has managed to combine an age old process with the high tech world of glamour. Khushwaha, whose forte is Rajasthan's bandhini (tie and dye) recently launched a new collection, where she has perfected the art of choosing the right textile, the best of the colour dyes, diverse motifs and above all garments. Needless to say that they have wowed the fashion conscious in the capital.

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CONSTRUCTION sites are usually not pretty places. They often wear a grimy look that makes them dark and depressing. Meet Hemant Mehta who calls himself an industrial photographer who with his recent exhibition of photos on the Metro Rail project in Delhi has managed to convey a sense of romance in the grime of the workers' lives. Confident that the Metro Rail will do good to Delhiites, Mehta also included some pictures of the disgustingly congested and clogged roads of the city. "I shot these to make people realise the worsening situation of the city's public transport," he said.

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MEANWHILE the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), the repository of the national treasures is still on the look out for a director. Stepping in at the helm of affairs for a short deputation is Mukta Samnotra, who though given her bureaucratic background is certainly no stick-in-the-mud variety. Samnotra said she was "trying to revive" some of the building plans for a new wing that the NGMA desperately needs. As all good plans this one too was shelved for a few years. Now Samnotra hopes to be able to get some private funding and at least get the concept through during her tenure. On the anvil too are setting up a museum gift shop and a cafe, very much on the lines of those run by museums abroad. Of course funding is a problem, but as she put it, "The concept of private funding is rather new in government circles and we all have to get comfortable with that idea."

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BIDDING farewell to Delhi after seven eventful years was Colin Perchard, the boss of British Council in India. "India has become second home to me, and I'll miss it," he said, raising his last toast to India.

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