Interview: Satisfashion and its Girls

Today, I would like to introduce an interesting website run by a group of young people from Brazil. The website is called Satisfashion, which is primarily available in Portuguese language. This blog has French and English versions, which are also simultaneously running, making it an interesting and successful entrepreneurship. Let’s meet today the three Brazilian belles who are behind this work. They are Roberta Valadão(27), Kamila Frutuoso(23), and Babi Bernardo(25), editors of the blog. 

Girls, welcome to Vanity Moments. 

Tomz: About your venture, Satisfashion Brazil, what does it mainly deal with?

Roberta: Satisfashion is a very different website, because it is one of the few bilingual websites here in Brazil dealing with fashion, beauty, culture, and lifestyle.

Tomz: How did you come to the idea of starting a blog for Brazilian fashion? Personally, I run a fashion webstore myself at TripAttires.com featuring travel fashion clothes for men and women. Is your website a similar one? Or, is about only the fashion industry in Brazil? Or does it cover world fashion too? 

Roberta Valadão

Roberta:  The blog “was born” after a brainstorm session with Babi. We wanted a place to share our ideas and everything that we believe as cool on internet. Satisfashion was released in February this year.

Satisfashion is not just a fashion blog, because we speak about different issues, like the upcoming movies, art expositions, books, etc. But when it comes to fashion, we have a concern of speaking about the fashion all around the world, not only from Brazil. Thus, we really like to introduce new designers and brands to our readers; one of them is Bonita Cor from the fashion designer, Márcia Braga. 

Tomz: How did you bump into the curious title, Satisfashion? What does it mean? 

Babi: The name was inspired from the song Satisfaction, by the British group The Rolling Stones.

I was singing and playing with the word Satisfaction. Suddenly, I thought that the word Satisfashion would sound very nice for a fashion blog. I personally interpret the beginning part Sati as encompassing of all kind of topics that make us happy!

Tomz: Is Blogging a mainstream career in Brazil? Are the bloggers in Brazil well accepted? 

Kamila: Yes, here in Brazil it is very common to be a blogger and the career is growing more and more every day. But still, there are many people who do not consider blogging as a job, but overall we are well accepted here. 

Tomz: For Vanity Moments readers, could you please share a few of your nice memories and bad experiences as a Blogger? 

Kamila Frutuoso

Kamila: I encounter pleasant moments daily. We can see the appreciation from the readers through their comments. I feel really touched when the readers comment that they enjoyed our posts, or when they reply to our posts that they now know an issue because of our website, which they were previously unaware of.

We had one bad memory also, which happened due to misunderstanding, during the beginning of our blog. That time, we had just started the business. But now everything goes perfect. We are learning a lot daily. 

Tomz: Do you have any hobbies? Tell me about your pastime activities. 

Kamila: I do not have a specific hobby, but I usually go out with friends, watch movies and walk along the beach. I like skating, and I hope to soon get into a roller derby league 4!

Roberta: Reading, and watching TV shows!

Babi: Reading, going to the movies with my fiancé Thadeu Rodrigues, and hanging out with friends.

Tomz: You have lots of fans, friends and followers from India (I am also one of them). How did you start to connect with your Indian friends? 

Babi: I started interacting with my foreigner friends through Orkut (May rest in peace). I really love all of them. They were always very supportive and caring and now they extend that support to Satisfashion also :)

We have a huge audience in India!

Babi Bernardo

Tomz: As a fashion blogger, what do you feel about Indian traditional costumes? If you feature any costumes from Indian fashion world, what would be it? 

Babi: Sari, no doubt! I love this Indian dress! It’s so mysterious! 

Tomz: Can you share a few details about the film industry in Brazil? Do you think your fashion blog can do something for Brazilian film industry? 

Babi: The film industry here in Brazil needs attention. We have been producing many good stories for the big screen but we have some cultural problems, because our people prefer American movies to our native ones. I think it’s important to share and support our native productions. Nowadays, Satisfashion commented about an upcoming an independent production called Me + You. All the money for the movie has been raised through the crowd funding.

Apart from Roberta, Camila and Babi, a few more youngsters are part of the venture, including Babi’s fiance Thadeu.

Members of Satisfashion:

Thadeu Rodrigues – Financial Director; 23 years old

Lívia Araújo -  Books Columnist; 21 years old

Jefferson Alves – Music Columnist; 20 years old

Bruna Andrade – Humor Columnist; 21 years old

Vanity Moments wishes good future to Satisfashion Brazil!

Chat with Shetall Ramsinghani

I happened to meet Shetall Ramsinghani a few months back through social media. Shetall is a Delhi based blogger and a writer, who has published two books, “Love beyond Veils”, and “The Golden Hour”.

Shetall’s writings appear to me as ‘a soothing, and silent celebration of solitude’!

It’s surprising to see her thoughts mix melancholy with romance; and sometimes with an additional tinge of fantasy. On certain writings, I found her thoughts courting with the nature. Her writings very unexpectedly take us from present to past in a very swift shift through the memory lane.

Here she is talking about her latest work, “The Golden Hour”.

VM: Who is the author “behind” the book?

Shetall: Hi, I am Shetall Ramsinghani born and bought up in New Delhi and presently working for a Diplomatic Mission i.e. for a foreign government for their office in India. I have completed my graduation in Bachelor of Arts from Delhi University. My first book Love beyond Veils was a book of poems which was created with my thoughts and with the guidance of my higher self.

Shetall Ramsinghani

Later on I started participating in various competitions also and won U.K pet poetry competition in 2013.

VM: Do you have any particular literary influences that have helped you develop in your genre, subject and style?

Shetall: No, I write my heart out 

VM: Please briefly describe your book. 

Shetall: The Golden Hour is my second book which was released on 06th June, 2014 by Partridge India publication. It has short imaginary stories of what I have seen and observed in my daily life. The Golden Hour is a varied and exciting collection of short stories with situations we face in our daily lives in cities. Some have the irony of life and some give you the strength and positive energy to move ahead no matter how life treats you. I have dedicated this book to my late grandfather Shri Gopal Das Ramsinghani, who passed away in August, 2013. The one who taught me how to live life with morals.

VM: What inspired you to write your book and how long did it take you to finish it? 

Shetall: My grandfather was very fond of reading short stories and he enjoyed reciting them to me every evening after I returned home from work. After I lost him in August 2013, I recalled how he used to divert my mind from daily humdrum with the stories he used to read during the day after retirement. It  took me an year to finish this book as I am a working woman and when priorities gets mixed with passion it does take time.

VM: What is the one message you would like to convey to your readers about your book?

Shetall: Logic can take you from A to B but imaginations can take you anywhere and everywhere. Come join my imaginations while reading my stories and for a while live in your own world. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

VM: Are you working on a sequel to your book? 

The Golden Hour Cover

Shetall: No, I would be working on a different project now. It would be a totally different experience for me and of course a new era with learning for me and the readers

VM: Are there any events, marketing ideas or promotions planned for your book?

Shetall: I have been promoting my book through social media and recently got my book reviewed by a journalist also. Please find the link here.

VM: What advice would you give to aspiring authors? 

Shetall: Live your passion, you have only one life 

Thank you Shetall for the time spent with Vanity Moments.

Interview Experience and Two Ghost Tales

Before going to Bangalore to attend a conference last week, I had a plan to post two ghost tales, which were very popular in my region in Kerala. I don’t remember, how many times had I heard these two tales with slight modifications from many local human sources and also there is no count for how many people had heard those two tales from my own mouth.

But while on my two days trip to Bangalore, NRI Girl, a popular blogger mailed me asking my participation in an ongoing interview series that she conducts among her Blogger friends. Being a blogger, who, during the last two years, produced some posts, which were received well by my good Blogger friends, I was also considered by the NRI Girl as an eligible candidate worthy to be interviewed by her. Here is the link to the interview in which I answered to some of her nice questions. Thanks to her for giving me an opportunity to explain the reason for my interest in blogging.

Here are the horror stories as promised. In the first one, a man was walking in midnight through the isolated country sides after watching the second show from a theatre in town. In Kerala, you can see at least one town associated with a village in most of the areas, and thus the whole Kerala state is counted by many as a semi-urban settlement.

While walking to home, he met a guy. Since our man was alone, he thought about walking in the company of the other chatting something so that none of them would feel the boredom of travelling alone in the night. At a point, the fellow traveler took out a cigarette and match box from his pocket. While trying to light the match stick, the match box toppled and fell on the ground. Seeing this, our man bent down to help the other to get the match box. While picking up the match box from the ground, with a shock, he noticed the feet of his fellow traveler. His feet were actually those of a buffalo. 

Horrified, our man soon escaped from the spot running. After covering many furlongs, he saw a person wearing a dhoti walking at a distance. He ran to him and tried to explain what had happened between him and his fellow traveler,

“There…there...a man...the buffalo-footed man…”, he said while panting heavily.

The other one watched him with inquisitive eyes. With a mysterious smile, he raised his dhoti a bit and asked our man,

“Didn’t his feet look like mine?”

Our man looked at what was the new person pointing and with a chill in his heart found this new person also had the feet of a buffalo….!

Ok, now the second tale. It was a moon-lit day and two fellows were travelling on a jeep in the midnight time. On the way, they had to drive through the steep hair-pin roads that went uphill. When took a new curve, they saw in front, a woman with a new born child, waving at them. These guys stopped the jeep and inquired her how was she left alone with her child at that late night time. She replied that she lost her way and requested a lift on the jeep till the forest ends. 

They agreed and continued driving with her and her child at the back seat of the jeep. After travelling a few more distance and covering some more dangerous hare-pin curves, they heard some noise from the back seat. One of them turned back to see what’s the source of the noise. With a startle, he saw the woman with a horrid look, with viscous blood oozing through the edges of her mouth, was eating her own child sitting at the back seat.

The police inquired about the mysterious case of the mother eating her own child and came up with some interesting findings. This hilly region was where some illegal activities like prostitution and woman trafficking used to take place during the night time. The child eating mother’s was a story fabricated by the criminals behind the illegal activities to stop the night time journeys through that area.  

Garden of Literature

One week back, one of my friends in Thiruvananthapuram called and asked me to just go through an article written by him, which was published in a Delhi based magazine titled Public Agenda. Since the magazine was not active online, he sent me a copy of his neatly written article in word format to my e-mail. But, unfortunately, some problem occurred to my Operating System and so I was not able to check the internet in my laptop.

Today morning, I just tried to download it and though with much effort and minutes and minutes long wait, I could open it and read it. The article, which was titled ‘A Garden for Trees from Literary World’, was about a person in northern part of Kerala, who, though a businessman by profession, motivated by his love for trees and literature, has been maintaining a botanical garden expecting neither popularity nor profit.

My friend Dileep, who was mentioned in My Inception Experience as a movie encyclopedia, interviewed this nature and literature lover and collected interesting details. His garden has more than 1000 trees, belonging to as much as 300 species. Besides, the presence of birds, harmless animals like mongooses, squirrels and rabbits make it a perfect ecosystem.

Like stamp collection to someone and numismatics to some other one, maintaining a botanical garden with trees, which got special mention in literature, is like a hobby to this special person, named Maliekal Mohammad. He got his love for Chestnut tree from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and thus collected a sapling from somewhere in the globe. Mangostein tree, which appears in the works of coveted Malayalai writer Vaikom Muhammad Basheer and Pomgranate Tree (Neermathalam in Malayalam), which was a favourite of renowned authoress Kamala Das, also adorn this beautiful Botanical garden.

Besides, the Sababul Tree from Kahlil Gibran verses, legendary trees like Kadamba, Palasa and Simsipa from of Hindu puranas, Cedar trees of the Sacred Bible and Olive from Holy Koran also are part of this exotic garden. I think, my friend has done a great job in spotting this man and introducing him to the public. 

I hope, you wonderful writers of the Bloggosphere also have love for certain trees. Though not a wonderful writer, with nostalgia, I still remember a Guava tree which stood at the side area of my home, which was demolished some years before. 

Meeting Dyana Dafova, Bulgaria’s Musical Charisma

I was actually disinterested, when my boss asked me to go Manaltheeram Ayurvedic Resort at Kovalam the next day for meeting some foreign tourists who came to a halt there, for enjoying some Ayurvedic holidays. My boss might have mentioned it unintentionally in between his usual talks, I thought and I had a little hope that the next day he might not be remembering it at all.
But the next day – it was 11th of December 2008 – when I reached my office (Tourism India Publications) at the routine time, he informed me that some materials regarding the person whom I am going to meet are kept on the desktop of my system, and he asked me to have a quick look at the information. Again with not much interest, I checked the details, but it could really put me into utter amazement when I learned about the person whom I am going to meet.
‘An unforgettable experience with Dyana Dafova, the International European Star,’ one of the information materials read. It was an article-like thing telling something about the person I am going to meet, Dyana Dafova, a singer, lyricist, composer and dancer of Bulgarian origin and her mother country had described her as the ‘Spiritual Voice of Bulgaria’. Her last album ‘Charisma: One World in Songs’ was a thrilling hit in the United States. Her stage shows are described as really spectacular and magical, as they contain some fusion of music combining different cultures and even languages across the whole world.

“His Holiness will remember you in his prayers. He invokes upon you God’s abundant blessings,” so once John Paul II, the late Pope had blessed her. Besides, many international personalities, like Hilary Clinton, the former first lady of the US, among several others are ardent admirers of this musical personality. When Shuttle Columbia took off from NASA for a space expedition, years before, it carried none other than Dyana’s music too. The song was ‘Ahadyah’, which consisted of archaic words from Sanskrit too.
After knowing these things from the news and from her website, http://www.dyana-dafova.com/, I immediately prepared a list of questions to ask her. At that moment, our photographer Shyam reached the office, half hour late as usual as he is a normal latecomer (he has to come from a very distant place via train). I surprised him with a mimic ambuscade and explained the whole things in a single breath’s laps of time. I uttered him with a leaping heart that, ‘buddy, we are going to interview an artiste’, for it is a rare chance for a journalist in tourism media to meet celebrated and blessed artistes. Thanks to my boss, Mr. Ravi Sankar!
Without much delay, I got Shyam with his camera on the rear seat of my ‘sincere bike’ and darted through the ‘beeping’ heart of the Thiruvananthapuram city to Kovalam, the renowned international beach destination, located some 20 kms away from our office. It was already 10.30 am, and our appointment time was fixed at 11.00 am.
When we reached the Resort, it was already 11.10 am, and we had to meet Mr. Michael Butterfield, Dyana’s husband and Executive Producer of her concerts. He was actually waiting for us in the reception. He lead us to a table at an open space in the patio of the resort, sitting where we could see the sea at a distance through the coconut trees and leaves. Mr. Butterfield left and we waited there in patience. I was actually a little nervous and opened my questionnaire to try to commit the questions to memory. Shyam was involved in taking some snaps of the premises (including me) and finding better locations.
We heard Mr. Butterfield’s call from back to invoke our attention and I looked back turning my head. I saw with him, the beauty personified, the international musical diva clad in a gorgeous dress walking towards us with a quite familiar open smile at her face. She greeted us with her innate enthusiasm shaking hands with me and accepted the seat next to me. Mr. Butterfield too sat on my opposite side. I felt that she is so familiar to me, must be familiar to every one, quite like her music as well, which is familiar to all people residing in all parts of the world. It is said that in every part of the world, every continent, country and corner, wherever, when people listen to her music or watching her stage shows feel the song as constructed on the very basis of their own existence, woven with the tune and charm of their own culture, tradition and history, myths and even the language. That may the reason why people took Dyana and her music to their own hearts. And, the same may be the reason, why I felt this international musical personality at the first sight as so familiar to me. And obviously she is so familiar to everyone, whoever sees her, for the first or second time.

I actually forgot about my prepared list of questions containing some routine inquiries. In spite of that we entered into a casual talk without much apprehensions. Shyam busily clicked several snaps of her and (mine also). Thanks to him, for that I got a bunch of some remarkable pictures for a lifetime.
Dyana spoke in a very clear voice, as if the voice was coming straight away from her heart, a soulful voice! She appreciated me before answering the first question telling that it was an intelligent question. She talked about her music, the way she writes songs, her achievements, the languages in which she sings, and obviously the tourism in Kerala and the terror attacks in Mumbai.
She said about her compositions, “my music is contemporary music, but combines different genres of the world. I blend traditional intonations in instruments. I have classical elements in my song, at the same time very modern like Jazz, Hip-hop, Pop, etc. It is the mixture of different types of music composed in a contemporary way with respect to the tradition, if I can explain it in this way.” She posed with smile several occasions for the camera while she talks.

About the recent Mumbai terror attacks and the consequent tourist booking cancellations, she said, “we have told our friends that it is not the time to cancel their trip; we have to support India, because we love India. To fight the terrorists, we just have to go and show them that we are not scared”, a superb attitude and an open support to India!
Dyana’s music has the message for positive way of thinking and peace. According to her, because of living a long time without the ‘right calculations’, the world has fell in to the present financial crisis. The solution is that through calm and positive way of thinking; go ahead with better attitude after learning the lesson.
I had heard that Madonna, the pop singer used certain Sanskrit terms (Ohm Shantih – the very similar words that Eliot once used in Waste Land) in her works. So I asked Dyana, whether she also is using it in the same way. Dyana replied that she goes much deeper into the meaning of the terms unlike Madonna, who used it in a very commercial way.
Dyana sings in more than fourteen languages, including, Sanskrit, Celtic, Latin, Japanese, Italian, Bulgarian, English, North American Indian, and even Indonesian. In her stage shows, the dancers wear the traditional costumes of the respective country and use traditional drum and wind instruments. She was planning to do a song together with the Indian music maestro, A. R. Rahman. Though the time is a big constraint, she hoped that it would happen, “If it’s the God’s will, it will happen,” she added with a hearty laugh.
Dyana is a special envoy of UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to spread the word of peace in several hotspot countries of the world like Kosovo and Afghanistan. She believes that the beauty of being an artiste is that being able to connect people through art. I asked her about her citizenship, though she shares her time between Bulgaria and US, she always prefers to be a ‘Citizen of the World!’
Mr. Butterfield too has participated in the conversation, giving us quiet interesting information, about Dyana, about her songs, and even about the history of India. He spoke to me in Hindi revealing his ties with India. He was born in India, when India was a British colony. It was him who convinced us that India and Bulgaria are connected through the tribes. “The trail of tribes from India goes through Asia Minor to Europe and then to Bulgaria. Also mountains like Himalaya and the houses in India are very similar to those in Bulgaria,” he said.
“There are similarities in words too. We too use the word ‘chai’ for ‘tea’ in Bulgarian language”, added Dyana.

She gave us three photographs signing her autograph, one for me, one for Shyam and one for my boss. After our conversation we took some more photographs, in which she and her husband posed with us. She gave Shyam an appreciation that he takes really wonderful pictures, which made him blush. We bid farewell to her and before leaving I said her that I must be very much lucky, for I could meet and have a talk with such a wonderful celebrated personality.

30th January, 2009

PS: Here you can hear some of the songs by Dyana. Follow the links one by one and enjoy:
1. Taliesin
2. Forever's Forever
3. Shin-Koto
4. Charisma
One more thing, I wrote an article for our magazine based on the interview, and as she had requested, I sent a pdf copy of the pages in which her interview was featured, after the magazine was published. One day, when I checked her website, I could see that she has up linked the article in it. You can read the article here if you wish…Click Here