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Eyokar Cabs and Goa (yet to be published, written as freelance blog)

Goa, the smallest state in India yet somehow the most romanticized. The history here is rich varying from the 10,000-year-old rock art engravings in Usgalimal to the magnificent churches that date back to the early days of Portuguese acquisition, the landscape unflinchingly picturesque with waterfalls like Dudhsagar, Tambdi Surla and Kuskem, the massive farmlands nestled in between villages and of course Goa’s main attraction, the beaches. It’s for good reason that the state is favoured by tourists all over the world. The tourists here are either looking to get away from the lull of their daily lives, are fuelled by their wanderlust, travel to Goa to experience the magic themselves or all of the above. Goa welcomes them all with open arms, which is why to take care of all their transportation needs there’s Eyokar Cabs. A web-based taxi service company that strives to provide the best transportation to both the people of the state and the people visiting it.

It’s a well-known fact that the taxi industry in Goa is a more difficult aspect of the state’s hospitality industry. It’s expensive and needs the clients to rely upon physically approaching the drivers and haggling with them. As a consequence, out of the 7 million tourists that visit Goa yearly, most now tend to rely upon renting bikes or cabs rather than booking taxis. This is usually done without considering the fact that travelling by bikes is a more dangerous method of transportation and accidents usually result in worse injuries than car accidents. By renting cars, tourists have to compromise on the comfort of being driven around on their vacation and much needed time to relax and stay worrying about the bumps in the road. To help with this Eyokar cabs offer 24/7 services that comprise of casual pick up and drops whenever you want to wherever you want. The prices of the cabs are relatively affordable, the cabs are fast, reliable and very easy to book. The payment methods accepted by the cabs are many so you never have to bother about being cashless when it comes to cabs again.

The resorts in Goa are also exquisite and boasts of the most luxurious stays ever. From the Marriot to Taj, Goa seems to have it all for someone looking to get away. The previously mentioned hotels however, are not in everyone’s budget. However, that’s not a problem as Goa still has the best hotels for travellers on a budget and Eyokar Cabs provide assistance to travellers unsure of what hotels fit into their requirements and help get them there! The Cab Company also provides services like hotel and resort reservations, sightseeing tours, tour operating, and tour packages for whatever your confused traveller woes may be. The sightseeing packages include places like the Dudhsagar waterfalls, Divar island, and the Basilica of Bom Jesus amongst many others. Eyokar Cabs is only a call away, all you do is tell them of your requirements and preferences and they will have all your vacation transport needs catered to, with no problem. Unlike many other taxi companies, the cab services are prevalent all over Goa from Pernem to Canacona.

So go have the time of your life in Goa. Visit the churches and forts, bathe in the sandy beaches, go trekking in the hills, party and dance the night away and for when you need to get around, get an Eyokar cab. It’s Goa’s warm welcome to you.

Movie Review on Crazy Rich Asians

Based on Kevin Kwan’s novel Crazy rich Asians is a romantic comedy that focuses on the life of Racheal Chu, an economics teacher and her boyfriend Nick, on a visit to meet his parents and to her surprise turn out to be one of the richest people in Singapore and he Asia’s most eligible bachelor. The movie portrays the lavish wealth of the Asian elite, their standards and how they see the people around them especially through Nick’s mother who is extremely critical of Racheal. The movie also pertains to the themes of Asian family values and the problems behind the closed doors of the rich. It is a Cinderella spinoff of sorts with the plot of hardworking average girl meets prince charming with many other clichés present.

Although the movie is a milestone when it comes to Asian representation in Hollywood, it also in a way seems to forget, as in its title, that ‘Asian’ is an umbrella term to a vast variety of people from different nationalities and races. As far as the other Asians are concerned, i.e. Arabs, Indians, Russians, and the others, they are nowhere to be seen other than the roles of those working menial jobs. When it comes to an all Asian cast the movie has done an amazing job with Constance Wu and Henry Golding as the lead characters it still needed an all inclusive cast which is where it happened to miss the mark.

Vox Populi on NSS/NCC credits

Out of the majority of colleges in Goa Parvatibai Chowgule College has its own unique way of assessing and grading their students, which consists of a credit-based system where most credits are allotted to academic endeavour and a few towards sports, internships and lastly the NSS/NCC based work. We set to find out what the students think of the NSS/NCC based credits. The students who do take part in such activities claim that its more of a chore than anything because even after they have obtained those credits they are forced to do the other events as the notices always say that participation is mandatory and the students who do it every now and then claim that even if they do the job they have no heart in it and the acts of NSS are supposed to be because you want to not have to. One student admits that in the name of NSS they make students clean the campus during class hours and sometimes on Sundays too and calls it free labour to the college.

Sociology Film Festival 2018

The sociology department held a film fair on the 6^th of august 2018 to 11^th of august, where movies pertaining to a certain theme were screened everyday for that week. The first day held movies based around water as a theme, then they had fire and then air. They also screened other movies like hichki, padman and toilet. About seven movies were screened in each of the auditoriums of the college. The purpose of the events is to bring awareness to social issues and the topics and themes were picked accordingly.

Why sanitary products should be free.

With the pace India is developing at it is safe to answer the question of why do we still lag when it comes to supporting our women? For years we have had menstruating women seen as a taboo because of a natural phenomenon, from being kept in a separate room to having everything they touch seen as impure we have and still are overcoming it all as a country. According to research out of 355 menstruating women in India only 12% use sanitary products or napkins and the rest claim to use unsanitised cloth, husk and ashes. And reproductive tract infections (RTI) are 70% more common to the other 88%. Inadequate menstrual hygiene often requires girls to miss school for a week every month. The government recently waived the tax imposed on sanitary products which was a huge step towards the right direction but the fact still remains that in most parts of India sanitary products are still inaccessible to backward villages. This poses a threat towards our struggle for a more developed nation and provision for these products by the government would mean accessibility and far less of a hassle for women all around.

College band represents at Redbull national band hunt.

Redbull spotlight is a national competition that aims to find the top student bands in India and support them in their endeavour. TNT, the student band from Parvatibai Chowgule College is now one of those bands and represents goa at the programme. We conducted an interview to know more about the artists and their journey so far.

Q. Who is TNT?

“We are a rock and roll band and we mostly play the classic rock songs from the 50s till 90s. We are dedicated to our genre of music but also open to exploring new horizons. We take inspiration from the greats like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Guns and Roses etc. We are constantly exploring new sounds to give the public something new and interesting to listen to. We are a very defined rock and roll band.”

Q. How did TNT form in the first place? How did you come up with the name?

“We found out about plexus and we decided to just get together play and we won the competition. Basically, with the competition approaching and it being an inter college competition, we just got together with our seniors and formed the band and we decided to go ahead and perform at many competitions. We came up with the name TNT when we realized we needed a name that would define our electricity on stage and hence TNT.”

Q. How did you get into Redbull’s nationwide competition (spotlight)?

“The band hunt started by having a competition between bands in Goa which was organised by Redbull and Chowgules. This meant that we couldn’t participate. But on the day of the competition the organizers told us that we should participate because they didn’t have enough bands. So, we went up and jammed and won the competition. We recorded an original called “in the city” which is now up for online voting on the Redbull site on facebook.”

Q. Have you guys won any other competitions?

“We performed at a competition organised by GMC called Plexus we won first place there. Then we performed in other college events and won the top spot in all college events that we participated in till today.’’

Q. What do you look forward to most in this competition?

“We are pretty excited of winning the title because if we win and that is if you guys continue to vote for us we get a free studio recording and we get the opportunity to meet the top people in the industry. Since we are representing Goa we request all you guys to vote and support us in this journey”.

Snow white and the seven other face creams

If you live in Asia like the vast majority of the world, you will have noticed and possibly been a victim of the beauty Industries obsessive need to be fairer. We see it everywhere, from the sad girl in commercials whose only problem the world is her god given complexion which somehow hinders her job opportunities to the neighbourhood aunties who have advised us about staying out in the sun or a certain remedy to rectify the dark skin because otherwise you’ll never find love. The skin lightening market in Asia alone has been valued at an estimate of 13 billion dollars and this obsession with being fair has been going on for decades through methods of subliminal conditioning. Where did it even come from?

The first advertisements for fairness creams date back to E.S Patanwala’s Afghan snow introduced in 1919 but the biggest stem towards capitalizing on our obsession with fairness, especially in India, came in 1978 when Unilever introduced the infamous “Fair and Lovely” in the Indian market, after which the hunt for the best skin lightening products was on. Fairness products severely over achieved compared to other beauty products. So much so that the Indian market for this was estimated to be around half a billion dollars by 2014. This madness to be paper white has to come from somewhere though.

In ancient India, when the aryans migrated from the north, they mixed with the dravidians and shared traditions. The fair aryans were considered the rulers and the dark-skinned dravidians were considered as the peasants. Thus, birthing the notion of white skin being better. After which the constant invasion and ruling of the Mughals, the Persians, the British, all of lighter skin conquering the land further perpetrated the notion of the lighter the skin the better you are, light skin equals power. Also, there was the caste system that came into play where usually people of higher caste would remain indoors safe from the sun, whilst the labourers and generally people of lower caste worked outside in the hot sun. there even is a Sanskrit word for this “Aasuryasparsh” which means untouched by the sun and therefore pure.

And so our long rich history had flaws in it that perpetrated the internalized racism we have all come to learn. Women in the entertainment industry and beauty pageants have all somehow been linked or used fairness products just because of India’s obsession with fair skin. Even now we come across so many controversial advertisements with taglines like “white is purity” (Nivea) and “You just need to be white to win” (seoul secret) which thankfully gains a lot of disapproval from the audience. There have been large movements put up in the fight to dispel the notion of only fair skin being beautiful. Its going to be a long journey before we eradicate the internalized colourism within us as a country but for now, at least we’re getting there.

Alpha 2k18 Leaves A Scar

On the 13^th of July 2018, the English department of Parvatibai Chowgule College hosted and organized the freshers party, AKA “Alpha”, to welcome the First-year students to the department. It was held in the upper auditorium and took on a horror theme in ordinance of the day being ‘Friday the 13th.’

The event commenced at 2:30pm as the freshers entered the dimly lit auditorium with the audio of an eerie lullaby playing in the background, the event was addressed by the head of the English department, Mrs. Sonia Fernandes Dacosta, and then followed by a skit connected to a murder-mystery game where the students in their first year of Bachelors and Masters degrees were split into teams with horror themed mascots. The mascots were Slenderman, Freddy Krueger, headless man and the killer from cult classic Scream, all played by second year students Shubhankar Niak, Quibila Dsouza, Jaff Fernandes and Chrisneil Dias respectively. The teams were allowed to inspect the crime and had case files given to them, they were allowed to ask only two questions to each of the characters and find the murderer. Team Scream came out victorious in the end with accurate motives and correctly identifying the murderer. After which the first years were asked to introduce themselves one by one, followed by the traditional slideshow of the events the English department took part and hosted in 2017-2018, a dance performed by Nikita Fernandes, Shamin Cardozo, Sasha Fernandes, Micah, and Vrinda vaz to the pop classic Michael Jacksons ‘Thriller’ and finally a photo session where all the teachers and students posed for the camera.

The celebration overall was hosted and coordinated by the second year students with Nikita Sequeira at the forefront managing the events, food and invitees, ensuring everything went as per necessary, Zoya Rebello and Schynelle Costa in charge of the murder-mystery skit and game, Galicia Rodrigues taking charge of the music, décor by Quibila Dsouza, Jaff Fernandes and Jisha Ponnachan, and the momentos made by third year student Jashmi Sirakaje.

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