Monthly Archives: September 2017

An interview with Sahar, founder of “Chamak Patti”

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, , , ,

NEW DELHI :

SaharMPOs07sept2017

Hi Sahar, thanks for taking the time to chat with SIW. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.

Sahar : I’ve been in business of television news for almost 15 years. Having done everything from reporting, writing and producing shows, I have settled into being a news anchor for mainstream political news and specializing in arts journalism. I am currently the Afternoon News face for News X. Apart from that, I have launched by own design brand for home decor and jewelry called Chamak Patti. This includes furniture, home ware and jewelry. More recently, I launched Asia’s first web channel on the arts, called Hunar TV. This includes catchy, peppy yet in-depth dialogues with artists from visual arts, music, theatre, dance, writing, etc. I have been invited by LimeRoad to be part of their style council to help create new looks for their customers.

What inspired you to get into this profession?

Sahar : In both the businesses that I run, the biggest inspiration has been the world of art. In Chamak Patti, I myself design and make the products. But these products are works of art. Since they’re personally executed, each piece is unique, like a collector’s item, not repeated for any second client. For Hunar TV, the main thrust for creating video capsules is to ensure people from outside the art world are introduced to this magnificent world of artists’ studio and their thought process.

What is your USP?

Sahar : In both my businesses, it is my twin understanding of news and art. I am aware how the real relates to the transcendent. It is this very understanding that helps me figure how design and art fits into our needs, our lives.

How someone can start the same business as yours in terms of investment, material procurement, production, and marketing etc?

Sahar : For Chamak Patti, I started on a very small scale and invested my own money. Today the sale of products takes care of more investment. From my personal experience, the simpler the formula, the less complicated the business. Material procurement has to be done after a lot of research on what your raw product is and where to get it best from. Marketing is relatively easier today. I trust social media and my own large data base of contacts.

For Hunar TV, investment was larger because there was expensive equipment to be bought and a team of experts to maintain. I strongly depend on sponsorship funds for each of the video capsules we create.  Marketing has been strong on social media and by strategic partnerships with well established names.

Any challenge you are facing in your profession and how you overcome that?

Sahar : The biggest challenge has always been to ensure that funds keep coming in for the next big step to be taken. You gradually learn how to overcome it. There’s never one single formula on how to overcome a challenge. Every formula that you can think of is put to test and you eventually realize which formula works when and how! But in your mind, it’s more important to ensure you take all the criticism and warnings in your stride, it’s important to willingly take the plunge and have the grit to make it happen.

What are your plans for the future?

Sahar : Team expansion for both my businesses is the future plan. Having Chamak Patti products available outside India by logistically making the current structure stronger. For Hunar TV, I would like to create more interesting video capsules on a daily basis and have it shared more frequently.

How you manage your personal and professional life?

Sahar : More than time management, what works better for me is task management. I am a brilliant multi-tasker and manage to slip in and out of my professional and personal engagements with great ease. I often take my toddler to client meetings and shoots. And I often have important con-calls while taking care of my child at home. But most importantly, it’s impossible to balance this without a helpful mother and a supportive husband. My family is my pillar of support. I would achieve very little without them.

What are your favorite books that you would recommend SIW family?

Sahar : I’m afraid I get very little time to read!! I will soon be recommending a self-authored book to be read! Ha!!

What advice would you give to young women readers of SIW who want to follow a similar career path as you?

Sahar : Believe in yourself because only you know yourself best. There are plenty voices out there to scare you from taking a bold step that could be different or experimental. It’s important to take the plunge for a career you believe in. And it also helps to have your family understand why you need to do what you want to do! If not, go ahead nevertheless…

All images are property of “Chamak Patti” and required permissions have been taken to publish it on www.smartindianwomen.com website.

source: http://www.smartindianwomen.com / 2015

Air Marshal Jaffar Zaheer: Principled Indian Air Force officer

Amazing Feats, Community Involvement / Social Issues, Leaders, World Opinion, , , , ,

Lucknow, UTTAR PRADESH / NEW DELHI :

News, Obituaries 

Jaffar Zaheer’s impish irreverence hid a steeliness that emerged in the unusually principled stand he took against India’s omnipotent political establishment during the premiership of Indira Gandhi. As the first Indian Air Force (IAF) officer to head the country’s chaotic Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Zaheer refused, despite relentless political pressure, to withdraw the case against Gandhi’s unruly son, Sanjay, for flying a commercial airliner with passengers without a valid licence.

He also declined to apologise to Sanjay, an unforgiving thug who drew authority from being his mother’s political heir, for the “inconvenience” of charging him with the offence. The unrelenting Zaheer then further banned Sanjay Gandhi from flying a stunt plane and from executing dangerous aerobatics over the capital, Delhi, in violation of all safety norms. Sanjay ignored the veto and continued; Zaheer quietly resigned in June 1980.

On 23 June, Sanjay, unable to exit from a complex loop in his single-engine two-seater plane, crashed and died, changing the course of Indian politics. Zaheer was asked to withdraw his resignation, offered palliatives like ambassadorships and state governorships. But he declined, preferring instead the anonymity of running the small, private Khambatta airlines in the western port city of Bombay for the next five years.

But Zaheer’s impetuosity as a newly commissioned officer in the then Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) in the early 1940s had almost ended his budding career after he poured a bottle of wine on his instructor whilst raising a toast during his “dining in” at an RAF mess in England. As the stunned senior officer glowered under the onslaught, Zaheer declared with aplomb to a speechless, but secretly pleased, audience of English fighter pilots that the drenched gentleman had needed a spring cleaning.

The only Indian cadet at the RAF base undergoing an aircraft conversion course, Zaheer had found the chief instructor’s behaviour racist, an assessment the commanding officer possibly shared, as he merely demanded to know whether the offending wine had been white or red. And, instead of the court martial that was under serious consideration, Zaheer’s eventual punishment was merely to reimburse the officer for the cost of dry-cleaning his uniform.

Zaheer was born in 1923 into an aristocratic Muslim family in Lucknow in northern India, the son of a renowned politician who after independence became a government minister and later a diplomat. Schooled locally, he joined the prestigious Allahabad University but left before graduating to join the RIAF in 1942. Soon after, along with other Indian cadets, he was dispatched to Canada to undergo flying training and was commissioned into service in September 1943 in the rank of Flying Officer.

The Second World War ended during Zaheer’s journey home by boat, but he did see some action strafing restive Pashtun tribesmen in the North West Frontier Province – now in Pakistan – in the region bordering Afghanistan that remains in ferment even today, having changed little in over a century.

Zaheer was one of a handful of IAF fighter pilots to graduate from the Institute of Armament Technology, a discipline that helped him formulate the Weapons Planning Directive of 1963 that remains the template for all such activity at Air Headquarters even today.

From 1964 until he retired 15 years later as IAF’s deputy chief in the rank of Air Marshal, Zaheer held various staff and operational appointments in which he oversaw the air force’s modernisation and streamlined its Byzantine financial procedures. During the 1971 war with Pakistan that led to the formation of Bangladesh, Zaheer commanded the critical Agra air force station near Delhi and was decorated for his services.

After retiring in 1979 he was appointed to head the Civil Aviation Directorate and almost immediately earned the ire of corrupt politicians by refusing to acquiesce to their demands to acquire a particular aircraft for which they were doubtlessly receiving backhanders. Zaheer’s scrapes with Sanjay Gandhi eventually led to his resigning in 1980, two years before his term expired.

His droll sense of humour and self-deprecation never left him. When Zaheer was suffering from the early ravages of Alzheimer’s, a youngster once asked after his health. “Never felt better,” Zaheer quipped. “Don’t remember a thing.”

Kuldip Singh

Jafar Zaheer, air force officer: born Lucknow, India 14 June 1923; Director, Air Staff Requirements, Indian Air Force 1973-74; Director-General of Civil Aviation 1979-80; married (three sons); died New Delhi 23 January 2008.

source: http://www.independent.co.uk / Independent / Home> News > Obituaries / by Kuldip Singh / Tuesday – April 08th, 2017