Have You Seen Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra's Pinga Dance-Off Yet?

Just in case you missed it, the hotly-anticipated Bajirao Mastani dance number featuring Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra was released over the weekend.

Remember Dola Re with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Madhuri Dixit from Devdas? Replace the actresses, swap the Bengali red and white saris for heavily embellished ones in jewel tones, change the setting from a zamindar's mansion to a Peshwa's palace and you have Pinga, which is basically Dola Re 2.0.

Why change a winning formula, right?

Deepika stars as the Mastani of the title, the second wife of Maratha leader Peshwa Baji Rao I, played by Ranveer Singh. Priyanka Chopra appears as the Peshwa's first wife Kashibai. Bajirao Mastani, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali who also serves as composer, releases on December 18.

Pinga is now available on YouTube and if you haven't watched it yet, here you go:

He Fries Pakoras With His Bare Hands

Ram Babu sells over a hundred kilograms of fries each day and makes around Rs. 2000.

A street chef in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh has been dubbed super hands - thanks to his ability to dip his hands into boiling hot oil unscathed.

Ram Babu regularly attracts hordes of spectators, who come to see his astonishing ability. The 60-year-old snack seller can bury his bare hands into searing cooking oil heated up to 200C for frying fritters.

"People from far away come to see me frying pakoras without burning my hands. I have been doing this for more than forty years but have never suffered blisters or any burn injury," he says.

When Babu - who fries potato and eggplant wedges at his roadside stall - started selling the deep-fried snacks to make ends meet at the age of just 20, he never thought his small stall would see such a large turnout. But as the demand grew, Babu stopped using any apparatus to save time - opting to spoon them out with his hands.

"Using the heavy spatula was time consuming. One day, there was a throng of customers at the shop and I had no helping hand. In panic, I mistakenly put my bare hands to take out fries. Before I could realise, my hands were deep into the pan of bubbling oil. I immediately took my hands out expecting blisters covering my hand but surprisingly there was nothing," he recalls.

"Ever since that day I decided to not use spatula. I have never been hurt, it feels as if I am putting my hands in water," he adds.

Babu sells over a hundred kilograms of fries each day and makes around Rs. 2000. "People go bonkers seeing me doing this, they keep asking if I have done some magic - but I simply smile and say this is all God's magic," he says.

Over the years, Babu has earned a bevy of customers and a huge fan following over the years, who travel from across the capital region to sample his crispy fries.

Amit Singh who is a frequent customer at Babu's stall says: "It really surprises me when I see him pulling out the fritters straight out of the pan. One has to see to believe him doing this.

"I can never think of even touching that boiling oil but he astonishingly takes out crispy pakoras as if they have been fried in cold water. And the fritters taste really good."

And just like his customers, Babu's unique ability has also left doctors baffled. He says: "As my popularity grew, several doctors approached me for research. Many took the sample of my skin, but none found anything unusual. I do not know why I am like this but as long as I am unhurt and my ability helps me make money, I will happily fry fritters with my hands."

Story First Published: November 17, 2015 15:51 IST

After Veggies, Flowers to Bloom in Space This New Year

It is the first time that a flowering crop experiment will be grown on the orbiting laboratory. Image Credit: iStock

Washington:  After having a sumptuous feast of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce grown in space, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are set to witness flowers blooming on the orbiting laboratory after the New Year.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren has activated the "Veggie" plant growth system and its rooting "pillows" containing Zinnia seeds on the space station.

Zinnia is a genus of plants of the sunflower tribe within the daisy family.

It is the first time that a flowering crop experiment will be grown on the orbiting laboratory, NASA said in a statement.

Growing zinnias in orbit will help provide precursory information about other flowering plants that could be grown in space.

"Growing a flowering crop is more challenging than growing a vegetative crop such as lettuce," said Gioia Massa, NASA Kennedy Space Center payload scientist for Veggie.

"Lighting and other environmental parameters are more critical," Massa added.

Lindgren will turn on the red, blue and green LED lights, activate the water and nutrient system to "Veggie", and monitor the plant growth.

The zinnias will grow for 60 days, which is twice as long as the first and second crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce that grew on the space station.

During the growth cycle, the LED lights will be on for 10 hours and off for 14 hours in order to stimulate the plants to flower.

"Growing the zinnia plants will help advance our knowledge of how plants flower in the Veggie growth system, and will enable fruiting plants like tomatoes to be grown and eaten in space using Veggie as the in-orbit garden," explained Trent Smith, "Veggie" programme manager at Kennedy.

Researchers also hope to gather good data regarding long duration seed stow and germination, whether pollen could be an issue, and the impact on crew morale.

Growing tomato plants on the space station is planned for 2017.

Earlier, Expedition 44 crew members, including NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, cherished the fruits of their labour after they harvested a crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce from the "veggie plant" growth system on the orbiting laboratory for 33 days.

The astronauts cleaned the leafy greens with citric acid-based, food safe sanitising wipes before consuming them.

"Having fresh food like these available in space could have a positive impact on people's moods and also could provide some protection against radiation in space," said Dr Ray Wheeler, head of advanced life support activities at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The "Veggie" unit can also be used by astronauts for recreational gardening activities during deeper space missions including Mars.

Story First Published: November 17, 2015 19:05 IST

China to Release Fifth Giant Panda

Representational image.

Beijing:  Another giant panda bred in captivity will be released into the wild in China's Sichuan province on Thursday, officials said on Tuesday.

The two-year-old female Hua Jiao, the fifth candidate of the country's programme to send artificially-bred giant pandas back into the forests, has finished a two-year wilderness training programme, said Huang Yan, chief engineer of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP).

Hua Jiao, weighing around 50kg, is the younger sister of Tao Tao, the male panda released in 2012, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Hua Jiao has met all wilderness training targets and she is absolutely an A graduate," said Huang, who is in charge of the training.

"We are hoping to introduce more artificially-bred pandas into wild to diversify the gene bank of local panda community," he said.

Hua Jiao is currently living in the wilderness training reserve at Tiantai mountain. She will be released into the Liziping Nature Reserve in Shimian county before undergoing a physical examination. Her elder brother Tao Tao was released in the same reserve.

China began releasing captive-bred pandas into the wild in 2006 when Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old male, was released in Wolong National Nature Reserve. However, Xiang Xiang died roughly a year later after fighting with other pandas over food and territory.

In 2012, 2013 and 2014, three more, Tao Tao (male), Zhang Xiang (female) and Xue Xue (female) were released in the Liziping reserve, but Xue Xue died in November 2014.

Researchers have been following Tao Tao and Zhang Xiang with the help of GPS collars, radio positioning tools and DNA. Monitoring data shows the animals are doing well.

Giant pandas are one of the world's most endangered species. Fewer than 2,000 pandas live in the wild, mostly in the provinces of Sichuan and Shaanxi. There were 375 giant pandas in captivity at the end of 2013, about 200 of them at the CCRCGP.

Story First Published: November 18, 2015 08:01 IST

Want to Avoid Conflict? For Just $10, You Can Outsource Your Breakup

The Breakup Shop. Image courtesy: The Breakup Shop, Handout/The Washington Post

Just in time for the holidays, two Canadian brothers are selling the heartwarming gift of avoidance: Starting at just $10, you can pay someone else to end your relationship for you.

The Breakup Shop is the vision of 20-somethings Mackenzie and Evan, who declined to use their last names publicly for fear of inciting the wrath of a scorned sweetheart. ("We're really just the messenger," Mackenzie says.)

The brothers, who described themselves as university-educated entrepreneurs, launched their business Nov. 9 with a crisply designed website that offers an array of ways to ditch your significant other. These include a breakup text or email (starting at $10), a standardized form letter (starting at $20) or a phone call ($29 and up). If you must be single by Saturday, rush orders are available; and if you care to soothe your soon-to-be-ex's pain, you can always send the $80 "Breakup Gift Pack," which includes a Netflix gift card, a box of Chips Ahoy! Rainbow cookies and either "The Notebook" on Blu-ray (for those who want to cry) or the "Call of Duty: Ghosts" video game (for those who want to blow things up).

It's the kind of gimmick that gets passed around and gawked at online - which can create a bit of a fiction, because although the service does exist, only a handful of people have used it.

Mackenzie says he and Evan were inspired to create the Breakup Shop after Mackenzie was recently "ghosted" by a woman he was dating: Instead of just telling him she didn't want to see him anymore, she stopped communicating and disappeared. Mackenzie was bummed.

"My brother and I were commiserating, and talking about our experiences with relationships in the 21st-century modern dating world, and saying - you know, if there's all these apps and services to help you get into a relationship so easily, why isn't there one to help you get out of a relationship easily, with compassion and empathy?" he says.

Nothing says "compassion and empathy" quite like the phrase "end-of-relationship technology solutions," as Mackenzie puts it.

They're not the first to become breakup middlemen. There was, for example, "IDUMP4U," launched in 2010 by a pragmatic Iowan who offered to handle people's breakups by phone for cash, according to the Globe and Mail; or "Sorry It's Over," an Australian breakup service founded this year by a former nurse, according to the Daily Dot.

For now, Mackenzie and Evan are the only ones fielding breakup orders at the Breakup Shop, although they say they're looking to recruit employees who have a background in counseling, writing and/or psychology. So far, people seem more interested in becoming a professional "heartbreaker" than hiring one.

As of this week, more than 500 people have applied to work at the Breakup Shop, Mackenzie says. The number of breakup orders? Fourteen - including one from Emanuel Maiberg, a writer at Motherboard who purchased a phone breakup as a stunt for a story.

The brothers like to keep the ordering process simple; they won't ask any invasive questions about what prompted the imminent split. "We don't want to be asking why or casting judgment on anyone who wants to get out of a relationship," Evan says.

But customers can choose to include personal information if they want, which is then plugged into the breakup message. (We're imagining something like a breakup Mad Lib: "Tobey no longer wants to be with you because he feels DISTRAUGHT when you MAKE HIM WALK THE DOG EVERY TIME and he thinks it would be better if you NEVER SAW EACH OTHER AGAIN but he hopes you can still be friends.")

In other words, the service seems slightly better than straight-up ghosting; still arguably worse than a parting Post-It note (la "Sex and the City" - at least it was handwritten!); and on par with getting Homer Simpson to deliver your message ("Dear Baby: Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: You").

But wait! Before we rush to judgment, the Breakup Shop's blog page includes two heartwarming stories from satisfied customers - Samantha, who eventually married her Candy Crush-obsessed beau after an icy text from the Breakup Shop inspired him to turn his screen-centered life around; and 24-year-old Vanessa, who found lasting love after she dumped her loser boyfriend, Steve, who couldn't support her and her kid because all he did was play in a band. Angry Steve then stole Vanessa's car, but then Vanessa became smitten with Mark, the lawyer who put Steve behind bars: "Before you know it, Mark was taking me to the opera, to fancy wine bars and taking my son Zachary to the zoo," Vanessa gushes.

But, wait: None of that is true. The fabricated testimonials are merely "intended to allow people to try to relate to how their experiences might be," Mackenzie says.

Still, Mackenzie and Evan say their commitment to the Breakup Shop is just as real as the testimonials are fake. "We want to grow to become the biggest and best out there, and the most trusted and the most well-respected," Mackenzie says. The brothers are talking to investors, he adds, and focusing on how to build the business.

"There have been articles saying, 'Oh, it's a cowardly service' and whatnot, but there are a lot of people in relationships who know they don't want to be in them and because of conflict they choose not to actually do the deed of doing the breakup," Mackenzie says. "I think, if anything, if our service is just a 'Hey, the cat's out of the bag' service, then it's served its purpose."

Fair enough. Considering how many breakups are plagued by second-guessing - Was it really for the best? Is there a chance this person was The One? - the Breakup Shop gives the gift of certainty.

And cookies.

© 2015 The Washington Post

Mumbai Woman, 89, Has a Confession For Husband Who Died 12 Years Ago

"My husband and I had the best time after he retired," says an 89-year-old woman from Mumbai on the Humans of Bombay Facebook page. Her post, about her favourite memories of her husband, will help you believe in true love, the kind that never ends.

In her post, the octogenarian explains how she and her husband spent their time doing different things and were never idle. They would paint, redecorate their house, watch the evening mass on TV, even cook their meals together.

"But his favourite thing to do was to go for long walks in the evening, where he would hold my hand during every crossing and only let go once we reached the other side," she recalls.

They followed this lifestyle until her husband died. "He passed away peacefully in his sleep 12 years ago, but I still want more time with him," she says.

"I try and keep myself busy by going to my daughter's house for lunch and dinner and going to mass whenever I can, but it isn't quite the same without him," she explains.

And she has a secret she never told her husband, a confession she never made. It is this and might make you cry a little: "At 89, I can say I've lived a great life and nothing really scares me... except one thing which I would have never admitted to him then, but I'm terrified of crossing the road by myself and I still can't do it without him."

9 Beauty Tips for Gorgeous Skin and Hair

Most people are born with good skin and hair. The sad part is that a lot of them destroy them overtime due to negligence, without putting in the effort to take care of themselves. I come across hundreds of young women looking for desperate solutions to their skin and hair problems and expecting me to wave my magic wand and tackle their issues overnight and transform them. I would love to oblige but the truth is that nature doesn’t bloom overnight. The smallest seed of a plant also needs to be planted, nurtured and cared for before it can blossom and show its magnificence. Though we live in a world of “insta” or instant options, some things cannot be played around with.

With the festive season around the corner – Durga Puja, Karvachauth, Diwali and endless parties and festivities that go with it, the skin and hair need to look healthy and stunning. In this article I have conjured up some INSTA recipes (both magical and natural) that are guaranteed to work and give some fabulous results to dead looking skin and hair. So wake up and imbibe these spells into your festive look.

1. For dull, oily and combination skin
Massage the skin with iced yoghurt and sprinkle some sugar along with it. Now take orange halves and scrub gently until the granules melt. Wash the face with iced water and see the difference.

2. For dull, tired and dry skin
Massage the skin with papaya. Then make a scrub by mixing oats and honey along with a little cold milk and scrub the skin. Wash off with ice cold milk and water and pat dry.
 

3. Suffering from frizzy hair?
Try this simple, quick and easy-to-make spray. Take slices of two lemon and simmer in two cups of water until it reduces to half the amount. Pour the liquid into a spritz bottle and spray on your hair. Not only will there be a wonderful natural sheen but static and fly away hair will be gone!

4. For natural hair colour
If you have a brownish tinge in your hair and don’t have the time to henna or colour it, then take a few sprigs of rosemary from the kitchen shelf and simmer them in 2 cups of water along with 2 tsp black tea until it reduces to half the quantity. Mix with 1/4cup of shampoo and every time you shampoo, use this mixture. Leave the shampoo in your hair for about 15 minutes and see the difference it makes.
 

5. For a smooth back
Planning to wear a low back blouse, backless dress or choli, but have no time to go in for a body scrub to show off a smooth back? Here’s a quick home remedy. Take 1 cup of sea salt and mix it with half a cup of olive oil. Add 5 drops of sandalwood oil and mix well. Store in a jar and scrub the areas of your body you want to flaunt. Wipe off with a wet towel.

6. Dealing with under eye bags and dark circles
Take used chamomile tea bags and store them in the freezer. Grate half a cucumber and massage around eye area and then lie down with the tea bags on your eyes for 10 minutes.You will find an instant difference in the way your eyes look and feel.

7. Instant face lift
Wash your face with ice water or simply rub and ice cube with a tsp of honey on the face. Beat an egg white until it peaks and brush onto your skin and let dry. You will feel the stretch in the skin. wash face with icy cold water.
 

8. Tired eyes?
Long hours at work, then shopping and getting things organized for the festive season can be tiring. I would suggest you make this wonderful eye wash which will make you feel refreshed instantly. Take iced spring water in a bowl and add a few drops of rose water, 2-3 drops of honey and immerse one eye into it. You can also open your eye a little and then close it. Throw away the liquid and make the same water for the other eye and repeat the process. After this, splash the eyes with cold mineral water. There maybe slight redness for some time but it will go away soon and your eyes will feel refreshed in minutes.

9. Quick Hair Care
Don’t have the time to shampoo and blow dry your hair even though it is oily? Well, sweat not. Sprinkle talcum and amla powder onto your hair brush and overturn the hair over your head and brush from the nape of the neck to the tips .Now throw your hair back and voila you have bouncy oil free hair in minutes!

So these are just a few of my secret ‘insta’ beauty recipes. Use them and enjoy but never substitute them for a regular skin and hair care regime.