The Express Tribune Magazine - April 7

A

APRIL 7-13 2013

bridge,

A

anyone?

APRIL 7-13 2013

Feature

What happens in Nepal, doesn’t stay in Nepal As climate change grips Nepal, it won’t be long before it spreads beyond the border into Pakistan

Cover Story

Bridge, anyone?

Tahir Masood explains bridge and talks about the decline of the game in Pakistan

Regulars

6 People & Parties: Out and about with Pakistan’s beautiful people 48 Reviews: Mama and motherhood in film 50 Healthy Living: The skinny on fat

4

Magazine Editor: Mahim Maher and Sub-Editors: Ameer Hamza and Dilaira Mondegarian.

Creative Team: Amna Iqbal, Jamal Khurshid, Anam Haleem, Essa Malik, Maha Haider, Faizan Dawood, Samra Aamir, Sanober Ahmed.

Publisher: Bilal A Lakhani. Executive Editor: Muhammad Ziauddin. Editor: Kamal Siddiqi.

For feedback and submissions: magazine@tribune.com.pk Printed: uniprint@unigraph.com

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Maira and Maryam Panjwani

Sayeda Leghari

Lubna Lakhani

6 APRIL 7-13 2013

Maliha Bhimjee and Rumana Husain

Aliya Omer and Nazneen Tariq Khan

Tara Uzra Dawood and Nida Butt

Sidra Iqbal

Spenta Kandawalla and Sabera Tapal

PHOTOS COURTESY THE ART OF ... PR, PHOTOGRAPHERS FAROOQ USMAN & SYED BASIT

Dawood Global Foundation holds the 5th Ladiesfund Women’s Awards in Karachi

APRIL 7-13 2013

PEOPLE & PARTIES

PHOTOS COURTESY SAVVY PR AND EVENTS

Rima and Babar host a party to celebrate Haris and Isabel’s engagement

Aneesa

Aaliya and Maliha

Maria and Saif Babar and Meg

PHOTOS COURTESY SAVVY PR AND EVENTS

Maria and Aamer Khan celebrate Amaan’s first birthday in Dubai

Maria Aamer and Amaan

Sahar Kashif and Fatima Shoaib

8 APRIL 7-13 2013

Maheen Kamran

APRIL 7-13 2013

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Pakistan Fashion Design Council launches PFDC fashion store in Lahore

PHOTOS COURTESY BILAL MUKHTAR EVENTS & PR

Natasha Nabi

Sarah Raza Rehman

Amber and Anushay

Ali Xeeshan and Fatima

Shirin and Afshan

Amber and Sunaina

10

Sarah Mumtaz APRIL 7-13 2013

Sundus

APRIL 7-13 2013

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Aisha Kardar

Zara

Selina Rashid, Asma Suleman and Maida Azmat

Sana, Nooray and Mahra Salma Turab

12 APRIL 7-13 2013

Mehreen Syed

PHOTOS COURTESY BILAL MUKHTAR EVENTS & PR

Waleed Zaman and Fatima

APRIL 7-13 2013

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Kausar Ahmed, Hina Bayat, Afreen Shiraz, Sofia Lari and Shehzi

Kausar Ahmed and Rafia Khan launch their food studio, Kitchen Craft, in Karachi Sanam and Sana with a guest

Shaheen Raza and Sabeen Zeeshan Nazneen Tariq

14 APRIL 7-13 2013

Rafia Khan and Laiqa

PHOTOS COURTESY FARAH AHED PHOTOGRAPHY

Fariha Bhanji

APRIL 7-13 2013

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Women’s Day celebrated at Laiqa Hasan Salon & Spa in Karachi

Leslie & Kim

Sharmin Malik, Laiqa Hasan and Sara Haroon

Amneh Shaikh

Fashion designer & Social Entrepreneur Shaheen Khan of Khanz presents her Spring Collection at SAARC Women’s Annual Exhibition at the Marriott Hotel, in Karachi

Nasreen

Sanam Agha

Madiha with Shaheen Khan

Sandy, Aliya, Waqar Hasan

16 APRIL 7-13 2013

Julian

APRIL 7-13 2013

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Sachal Khurshid and Farhad Humayun

Ustad Jaffer Hussain, Faisal Baig, Nasir Sain, Farhad Humayun, Kala Sain, Sheraz Siddiq

PHOTOS COURTESY PITCH MEDIA

Overload performs at the BNU Bestival 2013 in Lahore

Omair Abbasi, Farhad Humayun and Aman Abbasi

Kanwal

James Fluker

Urooj, Nida and Arsalan

18 APRIL 7-13 2013

PHOTO COURTESY VERVE PR

Cinnabon launches in Islamabad

Reya, Yasir, Rukhsana and Mustafa

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

APRIL 7-13 2013

A

COVER STORY

Tahir Masood explains bridge and talks about the decline of the game in Pakistan

bridge, anyone?

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two of the world’s richest men, play it. Other buffs include Pervez Musharraf, Anwar Maqsood, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Omar Sharif and even Snoopy from Peanuts. The game is bridge. And part of its appeal is that not everyone can play it.

“It is one of the most sophisticated card games,” explains retired banker MAJ who played between 1975 and 1981 until his bridge partner left for Canada. “It’s about the application of the mind, the fact that not everyone can play it.”

It was considered such a good exercise that officers encouraged their men to play it in the Pakistan Army. That was before cell phones and the internet. “Our superiors thought that it was the best way to groom our young minds,” says Col (retd) Basharat Ali, who played many a game in the mess.

The technicality of bridge puts off many people who would rather play simpler games like rummy. But as fans will tell you, if you manage to get a seat at the table, it is

30

Some bands throw up in their tour bus, Radiohead plays bridge. (top) frontman Thom Yorke APRIL 7-13 2013

Former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, has been known to play a weekly game of bridge

BY AMEER HAMZA AHMAD

an addictive and elegant game. In fact, the best players are even able to visualise their opponents’ hands after just a few cards have been played.

Aside from grey cells, all you need to get started is a standard deck of 52 cards dealt equally among four players. The players try to make as many ‘tricks’ as they can.

(A trick is just a collection of four cards, one contributed by each player.) There are 685 billion possible hands you can play.

History of bridge Bridge traces its origins to the British game of Whist, locally known as Court Piece, or Saath Haath, first played in the 16th century. According to one etymological theory, the game may have been named after the Galata Bridge in Constantinople, which British soldiers crossed during the Crimean War of the 19th century, to reach a coffeehouse where they played cards.

In 1925, Harold S Vanderbilt, America’s richest man at the time, took a cruise on the SS Finland with three fellow

Anwar Maqsood is an instinctive player, master of the psychic bid, and the endplay

Omar Sharif once ranked among the world’s best known contract bridge players

New talent emerged in the early 1980s and Tahir Masood was part of the new breed of players. They were nurtured by none other than Zia Mahmood. It certainly helped the prestige of the game that in 1981 he led the Pakistani team into the finals in the Bermuda Bowl

Contract Bridge Terminology Auction See bidding.

Auction Bridge An earlier form of bridge, replaced by contract bridge owing to changes in scoring methods Bidding The first stage of a deal when players jointly determine the final contract. Having examined their own cards, they make a series of calls in rotation, which is called the auction or the bidding Contract The statement of the pair who has won the bidding, that they will take at least the given number of tricks. The contract consists of two components: the level, stating the number of tricks to be taken. The last bid in the bidding phase denotes the final contract.

Short for contract bridge in contrast to auction bridge (auction) and other card games in the family

31 APRIL 7-13 2013

A

auction bridge enthusiasts. It was there that Vanderbilt invented what we now call contract bridge, by coming up with a structured set of rules, principles, treatments and an extraordinary scoring system.

Tournament bridge started in Pakistan in the mid 1970s.

“A gentleman by the name of Dr Muhammad Ilyas moved back to Karachi from Saudi Arabia and started conductHow to get in on the game ing bridge clubs,” says Tahir Masood. Masood is one of the All the major clubs have card top players in the country. In addition to having written rooms where rubber bridge can a book on the subject, he regularly teaches the game at be played.

T2F. He also manages the Bridge Federation and has been For duplicate bridge: a member of the Pakistan National Bridge Team on and Karachi Bridge Association off for more than three decades, representing Pakistan in www.pbf-bridge.com umpteen international events.

The KBA hosts weekly duplicate Ilyas opened the first bridge club at Bangalore Town Hall bridge games at the Aslam off Tipu Sultan Road in Karachi. In mid-1977, however, Bridge Hall the club was forced to vacate the premises as an adjoining Lahore Gymkhana mosque accused them of gambling. The club managed to Upper Shahrah-e-Quaid-e-Azam. acquire a space underneath one of the cricketing stands at Ph: 111 111 231, 35756690-95 the National Stadium where it is located to this day. www.lahoregymkhana.com.pk After Dr Ilyas introduced bridge, a man named M. The Gymkhana hosts a number Aslam Sheikh dedicated his life to promoting the game. of duplicate bridge He used to conduct twice-a-week sessions at the stadium tournaments where all the top players used to go. New talent thus Islamabad Club emerged in the early 1980s and Masood was part of the Main Murree Road new breed of players. They were nurtured by none other Ph: 051-9046191 than Zia Mahmood. It certainly helped the prestige of the www.islamabadclub.org.pk game that in 1981 he led the Pakistani team into the finals The club hosts daily duplicate in the Bermuda Bowl. bridge games.

Pakistan did reasonably well in competitions abroad, T2F, Karachi until players started growing old, some stopped playing 10-C, Sunset Lane 5, Phase 2 and others left the country. In 1995, the man who had Extension, DHA, Karachi done much to bring people to the table, M Aslam Sheikh, Ph: 021 3538-9043 was killed during an armed robbery at home. www.t2f.biz “That was a sad end to the promotion of duplicate bridge T2F hosts regular bridge classes in Pakistan,” says Masood. Sheikh had, after all, dediwith Tahir Masood cated his life to the game; he would get sponsors, orga-

A

let us give you a hand How to play Minibridge: Minibridge is a simplified form of contract bridge designed to expose

Step 1

COVER STORY DEAL Choose a “dealer”, or the person who will pass out the cards. Separate the Ace, King, Queen and Jack of a suit.

Shuffle them and distribute them in a clockwise direction. The person with the Ace will be the dealer.

Deal the hand: This is done by

newcomers to the game without the burden of learning a detailed

passing one card to each player

bridge bidding system.

in clockwise rotation, face down,

Dealer

This is a variant of Minibridge.

around the table until each player

It is played with a standard pack

has 13 cards, and all the cards are

of 52 playing cards with the jokers

passed out.

who sit round a table and are usually identified by the points of the compass: North, South, East and West. They play as two partner-

Step 3

ships, North-South and East-West.

Step 2

removed. There are four players,

SORT Sort your hand. Each player will sort their cards according to “suit”, that is, spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, with the cards of each suit placed in descending order, from the ace down to the deuce (2).

COUNT Calculate the points in each hand. The number cards do not have any points, while each face card has an assigned point value. The Ace is 4 points, the King is 3 points, the Queen is 2 points and the Jack is 1 point.

After each player calculates their

For example: if you have 2Q 1K 2A 1J

points, the dealer starts by telling

= 16 points

everyone how many points they have, then in a clockwise direction everyone else states their points.

The team with the majority points (both their points added up) will be the attackers and the team with the lowest points will be the defenders.

The attackers will then decide how many tricks they want to make. They can make anywhere between seven to 13 tricks. The goal of the defenders is to stop them from making the tricks.

The attacking team then decides which of them will be the ‘Boss’ and which will be the ‘Puppet’. The Puppet is a passive player who has to follow

32

the lead of the Boss.

APRIL 7-13 2013

Puppet

After the Boss and Puppet have been decided, the person on the left of the Boss starts by ‘leading’ or playing the first card to a trick. The Puppet then lays their card face up on the table for all to see. Remem-

Dealer

ber, the Puppet is a passive player and all the moves must be directed by the Boss.

Leader

Boss

Each player in turn clockwise will contribute one card to each trick and the highest card played wins the trick. Aces are high, followed in order by the King, Queen, Jack, ten, nine and so on down to the two, the lowest card in each suit. When

Winner

playing to a trick, each player must ‘follow suit’ with a card of the suit

Loser

led if possible.

Otherwise they may discard any card they like, but a discard cannot win the trick, however high the card chosen. The winner of a trick makes the lead to the next trick

Winner

Contract Bridge Terminology Duplicate bridge A form of bridge in which every deal is played at several tables, by several pairs, and their scores on each deal are subsequently compared. A minimum of two tables (four pairs) are required for a duplicate bridge event. Each entry might be a pair, or a team consisting of two or more pairs — the type of scoring varies accordingly. The hands of each deal are kept in metal or plastic containers called boards that are passed between tables Rubber bridge The original form of contract bridge, a contest with four players in two opposing pairs (as distinct from duplicate bridge, which requires a minimum of eight players) Trump A card in the trump suit whose trick-taking power is greater than any plain suit card

At the end of the game the attackers count their tricks and if they have made the number of tricks they declared, they win the game

33 APRIL 7-13 2013

A

Step 4

PLAY

A

COVER STORY

Zia Mahmood is to bridge what Muhammad Ali was to boxing, what Bobby Fisher was to chess and what Tiger Woods is to golf.

With his charismatic personality, signature black-rimmed spectacles and flamboyant playing style, he is the most popular player in the world right now and has been for the last 20 years.

Zia is a Pakistani professional bridge player. He is a World Bridge Federation and American Contract Bridge League Grand Life Master and is considered to be one of the greatest players of the game. Zia achieved international bridge fame practically overnight when he led Pakistan to second place in the 1981 Bermuda Bowl tournament.

He was born in Karachi and was educated in England from the age of six to 21. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant of the Institute of England and Wales and spent three years running the family newspaper chain in Pakistan. Zia’s introduction to bridge actually began because of a girl. “She was only allowed to attend bridge parties, so I lied and said I played,” Zia once admitted in an interview. “Over the course of the next two weeks playing bridge and meeting her, I fell more in love with the game than with her.”

After winning silver at the Bermuda Bowl, Zia did nothing but play bridge. When he couldn’t find like-minded players, he started playing bridge in the UK. He went on to become the World Bridge Champion while playing for America. He now spends much of his time in Great Britain and the United States, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

It is a measure of his fame that in 1997, Phillip and Robert King published a collection of short stories titled Your Deal, Mr. Bond.

In one of the stories, 007’s boss M assigns James Bond the task of defeating the bridge-playing villain Saladin who threatens to set off nuclear bombs. Bond impersonates none other than Zia Mahmood in order to beat the villain at the table.

34 APRIL 7-13 2013

A

Pakistan’s Zia Mahmood — the world champion

nise tournaments and he even introduced a master point system in which players could work towards the highest rank of life master.

After Sheikh’s death, interest in bridge waned. Zia Mahmood also left the country. In fact, strangely enough, emigration became a major factor behind the decline in the game.

Bridge requires two sets of partners and these relationships tend to become larger than life. Thus, when your partner leaves, as MAJ’s did for Canada, you tend to stop playing. “When our group split, it was hard to make another group,” says the retired banker. “Either you make your own group [by finding three more players] or you find a group with a gap.” Neither option is easy. It was for many people just easier to start playing other games such as rummy which can accommodate even or odd numbers of players.

Banker Muhammad Munir Hussain, who learnt the game from his older brother and was at one point “obsessed”, hasn’t played for over 30 years. “Back then, it was all the rage,” he recalls. “Now I hardly find the time, more importantly it is even harder finding three other players.”

Bridge may be too old school for the generation that is more interested in its version of poker games and Texas hold ’em. This may explain why bridge die-hards Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have said they are willing to put a million dollars into reviving the game in high schools across America. In Pakistan also, this may be fertile ground. For example, Dosti Zahra Jafri, an undergraduate student today, started playing the game at Karachi’s L’ecole. In 2008, she was on the under-28 Pakistan team that went to the 13th World Bridge Games in Beijing. According to her, there are a lot of young people playing in the country.

They just need a little support and encouragement. Perhaps the government needs to lend a hand.T

FEATURE

What happens in Nepal Water shortages, extreme temperatures and poor crop yields are putting villagers in a fix as climate change grips Nepal. It won’t be long before it spreads beyond their borders — in Pakistan farmers have already begun to worry

BY SHABBIR MIR

the majority of which Country folk live in rural areas

30m

is the population of Nepal

36 APRIL 7-13 2013

doesn’t stay in Nepal Life had been good for Sunyali Majhi, a farmer in Dolalghat, a small village about 50 kilometres from landlocked Nepal’s Kathmandu. She harvested enough rice to sell and feed her brood at home. But the portions have been getting smaller, the financial squeeze tighter.

In the shade of a Peopaal tree, Sunyali and her children are silhouetted against the blue Nepal skies. The scene is idyllic but the family’s anxiety undercuts it: crop yields have fallen drastically this year.

“Over the last decade or so, rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable,” she explains, estimating a 40 per cent drop in what the earth produced. The vagaries of Nature were to blame. “When the crops needed water, it did not rain… and then suddenly it rained cats and dogs.” This erratic behaviour slowly eroded farmer confidence. Like Sunyali, a vast majority of Nepali women making a living from the land in the landlocked country of 30 million people.

Over the last few years, Nepal has been seeing more and more extreme temperatures as weather patterns have grown unpredictable. Winters are drier and summer monsoons more delayed. For years, the farmers have lived in harmony with nature in the mountainous villages. And while they may not have necessarily contributed much to climate change, they are certainly feeling its effects now.

Sunyali and the other villagers in the area once used to grow rice but in recent years they have switched to cash crops

80% of them live under the poverty line of $2 a day 37 APRIL 7-13 2013

FEATURE

Tip of the iceberg

3,252 is the number of glaciers in Nepal and they cover a total area of 5,323 sq km such as potato, cauliflower, cabbage, maize and beans.

While incomes have improved, there are now worried that changes in the climate will lead to lower crop yields and their livelihoods will be threatened.

Sunyali’s husband Sate Majhi says that there is no other work to do besides growing crops.

“Due to the changes in the weather and lesser and lesser water at certain times of the year, it seems as if we won’t be able to grow anything besides maize,” he says, pointing to a field made barren since the nearby water channel dried up.

The climate change translates into lower earnings for the family that only produces eight sacks of rice a year.

Their 18-year-old son, a dropout, doesn’t contribute to the household and has thus become another mouth to feed.

In his defence, he does try to fish weekly.

With farming becoming less reliable, the villagers are now looking at other ways of earning money. Some make moonshine and sell it in the nearby market. Others, mainly the young men, move to Kathmandu in search of work. Many go in search of jobs overseas.

Scientists say that rainfall patterns are changing as global industrialisation pumps more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, preventing heat from escaping and thereby raising temperatures. While the changes are more evident in the Himalayan region than 38 in most other areas of the planet, they could soon be felt APRIL 7-13 2013

well beyond Nepal’s borders.

“There is no doubt there’s been a change in rainfall patterns in Nepal over the past 30 years or so,” says Dr Bed Mani of the department of Environmental Sciences at Kathmandu University. “The volume of precipitation in a year is the same but the duration of such events has changed,” he explains. “It now rains at lesser intervals but with more intensity.” Farming in Nepal largely relies on monsoon rainfall because the irrigation system covers only a small area of the country.

Inconsistent rainfall and changes in climate are having an impact not just in Nepal but throughout the Himalayan region. Similar events are already taking place in Pakistan. Professor Ahmed Nafees at Karakoram International University says that the mountainous regions are more likely to be affected by the growing intensity in rainfall as this often triggers landslides and avalanches.

“Deforestation is a constant problem in the mountainous regions and when there is a heavy downpour there is nothing to hold the soil,” says Nafees. “It results in death and destruction.”

Northern Gilgit-Baltistan shares the story of Nepal’s mountains. The Pakistani villagers may not, however, at least for now, seem interested in debating the technicalities of the melting glaciers in the high Himalayas but they know that something strange is happening with the weather. “The winter rains are less frequent but they have become increasingly violent,” says Tufail Ahmad, a farmer in Gilgit. “Dry spells have become longer and the risks of landslides have increased as fierce rains have become frequent.”

On February 6, 2013, a sudden but heavy downpour hit parts of Pakistan, India, China and Nepal. At least 45 people were killed in Pakistan alone as landslides triggered by the rains struck houses, orchards and fields in KhyberPakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In an attempt to mitigate damage and study the phenomenon, the Kathmandu-based international centre for integrated mountain development is seeking to help farmers, particularly those living in mountainous areas. The centre is implementing the Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Programme which aims to link climate science research knowledge with the experience of farmers and communities who are already facing the consequences of climate change. “It helps them share their direct experiences of dealing with the consequences of climate change,” says Nand Kishor Agrawal, a programme coordinator at the centre’s office, “and also understand the science behind the changes that they are seeing.”T

REVIEW

Childhood innocence subverted and motherhood gone bad feature as themes in this horror flick

BY NOMAN ANSARI

This is one scary Mama!

It may suffer from a few clichés, but Mama is one scary mama! Yes, at times this film on the supernatural directed by Andrés Muschietti was so frightening that it left me wishing for the presence of my own mama. And judging by the shrieks from my fellow audience members, I was not alone.

Mama begins with a scene typical of many horror movies. Three-year old Victoria (Megan Charpentier), and her one-year old sister Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse), along with their father Jeffery (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones fame), get into a car crash, after their speeding vehicle drives off a snowy road, and into the woods, where the trio finds themselves at what seems to be an abandoned cabin. Jeffery, who is in the middle of a psychotic breakdown having earlier murdered his business partners as well as his wife, decides to kill his young daughters with his handgun. But before he can pull the trigger, he is snatched away and killed by a smoky apparition. This savior of the two children is a ghost, who for the next five years takes care of the little ones as her own, until the girls are found by a search team sponsored by their uncle, Lucas, (Coster-Waldau). Having been away from any human contact, the girls are in a horrific state, underfed, hissing to communicate and crawling on all fours like beasts. The film subverts the powerful innocence of children.

The State turns them over to Lucas, and his girlfriend Annabel and they begin to live in a government-owned house.

At this point, Mama transforms into a typical haunted-house film, with the ghost following her girls into their new home.

Annabel, who is a former punk rocker, is still tough as nails.

Although reluctant at first, Annabel’s love for the two girls grows steadily, until she decides to fight for her wards. And thus, this turns into a film about one mama against another mama. The film is produced by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), whose influence clearly felt in the absence of gore.

You can’t watch but you must watch — that is the impossible pull of the horror film. “I think we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the mental asylums only hide it a little better,” Stephen King once said in an interview. He is the master of the macabre and explains the appeal of the horror film. He should know, he has sold 250 million books worldwide in the genre.

Perhaps we watch them to dare the nightmare or prove to ourselves that we are able to take it. We also watch them to remind ourselves of our own normality, argues King. Perhaps the movie theatre or your sofa at home are the only places where — even though it is just watching — we can unleash our darkest parts. There is a reason why we watch them in the dark, after all...

Models, Morals and Messing with Nature: 3 of our film picks on motherhood All about My Mother (1999)

48

Blurred lines brought on by emotional crises dominate this celebrated work, Todo sobre mi Madre, by Spanish genius Pedro Almodóvar. A single mother relocates to Barcelona after her teenage son is killed in an accident. She continues to play roles determined by society and even takes on other ones such as a ‘surrogate’ mother to three strong characters, a stage actress, a pregnant nun (Penelope Cruz), and a sex worker.

APRIL 7-13 2013

Mother India (1957) As its title makes clear, this Nargis classic is about the struggle to make the motherland, especially so close after Partition. Radha, the ‘mother’ of the village refuses to let grinding poverty compromise her morals. Symbolically she even kills one of her sons as he turns into a criminal. This Bollywood box-office hit is regarded as one of the finest works in world cinema.

Three Men and a Baby (1987) It wasn’t quite a gender-bender for the 1980s, but Tom Selleck can babysit us any day. In this Leonard Nimoy comedy, three roommates are forced to care for a baby one of their girlfriends leaves on their doorstep.

What was long considered a woman’s job took on a whole new meaning as the men struggled to change diapers (“How can something so small create so much of something so disgusting?” and feed the baby (Michael: I don’t know what babies eat? Peter: Soft stuff. We were babies once, for Christ’s sakes, what did we eat?).

HEALTHY LIVING

The skinny on fat Are you in a panic because your bad cholesterol has increased? Are you looking for ways to reduce it naturally? For starters, the good cholesterol is called HDL or high-density lipoprotein and, according to WebMD it is a “friendly scavenger [that] cruises the bloodstream [to] remove harmful bad cholesterol from where it doesn’t belong”. The bad guys are LDLs or low-density lipoprotein

Lowering cholesterol is a battle but if you say no to the samosa and yes to yoga, you’re on the right path

BY KIRAN ZAHRA

1

Fibre, fibre, fibre!

Fibre is essential if you want to reduce cholesterol levels in your body. Some forms of fibre are better than others. Take for instance, water-soluble options such as pectin or guar gumpsllium seeds, and oat bran. These fibres take the shape of a gel that helps bind cholesterol and prevents it from entering the bloodstream

How to get tested Test name: The Lipid Profile Breaks it into HDL, LDL and triglyceride levels.

Recommended: Fast for 9-12 hours before

2 Gobble the garlic

3

Have garlic whenever possible. Raw crushed or chopped garlic can be eaten daily with salads

Research has proven that routine exercise lowers total cholesterol while increasing the good cholesterol (HDL)

6

50 APRIL 7-13 2013

Move your body

Go vegetarian Pure vegetarian diets have proven to be effective in decreasing cholesterol. Consider going vegetarian for a short term (say for three to six months).

By eating more fresh vegetables, you will provide the body with a large range of vital minerals, vitamins and antioxidants

When to Get Tested

Screening: for adults, every five years; for youths, once between the ages of nine and 11 and again between ages 17 and 21 years. Regular monitoring if you have a proven history

4 Abandon caffeine 5 Stomp out the stress There is a correlation between drinking tea or coffee and cholesterol levels.

Not good news for those who drink six cups a day

Results and levels The numbers to know Total cholesterol over 40 mg/dL LDL cholesterol: under 100 mg/dL HDL cholesterol: over 40 mg/dL Triglycerides under 150 mg/dL *mg/dL is milligrams per deciliter Test cost

Rs

600

to Rs1,900 is the average range of the cost of a Lipid Profile test

Regular stress-busting activity and relaxation helps keep cholesterol under control. Try yoga, exercise, meditation or prayer

Cut the sugar Sugar intake is normally out of control in an average individual’s diet to a degree that most people are no longer able to detect subtle gradations of sweetness. It is also highly addictive. If you eliminate it from your diet, you will find even simple grains tasting sweet

7