Blah blah

I feel like this today

There’s something awesome about a good stretch.

Capitalising on the Claus

Every year, dozens of Santas graduate from what is probably Mumbai’s oldest and only Santa training school. After learning the Santa talk, the Santa walk and the Santa ho-ho-ho, the red and white bundles of joy are transported to malls, shops, homes and Christmas parties all over India. Their professor, Martin D’Souza has been training “happy people’’ to play the jolly old man for 20 years now.

Classes for the only finishing school that aims at making flab and wrinkles attractive and lucrative begin in the first week of December. Admission criteria are physical attributes like high cheekbones, broad shoulders and a twinkle in the eye.

A member of the Clowns of India International (COAI) and International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM) D’Souza hires “fresh graduates or undergraduates’’ for his event management company Mad Hatters Entertainment. They are taught the nuances of clowning like juggling, magic, mime, stilt walking and comedy but only a select few get to play Santa. Both men and women can enroll.

Earlier, students were trained to be Mr Claus, Mrs Claus and the young and pretty Santarinas. But Mrs Claus had no takers. “Party goers prefer Santarinas with their halter-necks and short skirts’’, says D’Souza who has imported Claus costumes from America and Singapore for the 60 Santa-strong troupe.

Past experience has made the school shy away from Delhi parties because “hunt and hit Santa is a sport’’ for the saucy crowd there.

Cyril D'Souza with his grand daughter and neighbour on his Byculla home terrace

But 72-year-old Byculla-resident Cyril D’Souza who has been playing the role since 1983 says the crowd can be as raucous in Mumbai too. “I don’t mind the rough handling. Regular yoga helps me stay flexible,’’ he says.

He recalls the time when he was lifted by a crane to perform at the Chembur Gymkhana do which made him feel like a superhero performing a stunt. At a party at Mahalakshmi racecourse he had to arrive as Santa on horseback which proved quite cumbersome with the Santa costume.

This professional Santa vouches that he would make a good candidate for the Limca Book of Records since he shakes hands with over 2,000 guests for every party he visits.

Bandra Santa Darryl Loyola at Hill Road's St Peter's Church

A Santa from Bandra, Darryl Loyola informs that shaking hands and crowd management is a scientific operation. Disciplinary tactics have to be in place without being to obvious as a large crowd could cause a stampede and chaos. He has acquired an on-the-job expertise and can cope with rowdy crowds, hankering street kids and filmstar crazy fans as he often pairs up with celebrities.

Last week, he shared the stage with Salman Khan at Wellington Club where a Christmas party for orphans had been organised. A dance teacher at St Stanislaus School and makeup artist by profession, Loyola uses his professional skills to role-play Santa. He choreographs his own Santa stints and does his own old-man makeup.

A regular at Hill Road’s St Peter’s Church, this year, his bag of goodies not only contains sweets for children but medicine boxes for the needy sick who come for Christmas mass at the church.

Tags: Christmas, church, mumbai, santa claus

An online invitation to grow offline

On Saturday morning, 120 Mumbaikars, most of them internet junkies, gave the city a green Christmas gift. They had been invited online by techies Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj to adopt an Ashoka or Neem sapling. The saplings were given free of cost with a condition: They should have an online profile with updates, photos and videos for the next two years.

Participants were encouraged to use the #sapling tag on networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and Technorati. An award awaits the participant whose sapling grows the tallest at the fastest rate. The group plans to plant 10,000 saplings to the city by 2010.

The citizens’ initiative has been called The Sapling Project (www.thesaplingproject.com) and was started because the organizers felt that most tree plantation drives were carried out at the National Park or Aarey Milk colony, while colonies and buildings that actually need more trees were being ignored. ”Living is a different thing, we’re just about managing to stay alive,’’ says Vijaykumar, a Borivali-resident, avid tweeter and blogger at bombaylives.com.

Weeks before the drive, online invitations to visit Shivaji Park and adopt a sapling were sent out using Twitter, Facebook and blogs. His friend Walunj wants to tie up with the BMC. “A lot of places in the city can be designated sapling zones where trees are needed. So people who do not find place can come here and plant them’’.

Online networking with tweeters in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi has enthused locals to carry out similar plantation drives as part of the project. The next drive in Mumbai will take place in January and the organizers will visit areas like Dadar, Bandra, Andheri and Borivali with saplings in a van for distribution.

In the past, several sapling-planting initiatives have been launched in the city. In a move to restore the degraded periphery areas of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, GAIA Conservation Foundation is working with the Bombay Natural History Society to get citizens to plant saplings.

Over 10,000 saplings of indigenous trees like Red Silk Cotton, teak, Shivaji’s Sword, Khair, Shivan, Ziziphus and Flame of Forest have been planted by hundreds of people at the Goregaon site. NGO I Love Mumbai has been carrying out planting distribution drives in the city too.

But environmentalist Rishi Aggarwal says drives like these need support from experts who understand the ecology of each tree. ”You can’t plant a tree that will grow to have a 30-foot canopy on a narrow road. Plantation has to be an informed exercise,’’ says Aggarwal who wants the tree authority to have a separate website giving details of where saplings can be planted in the city using GPS coordinate. ”Location is the key criteria and the BMC seems to have failed in facilitating the good intentions of citizens in this area’’.