Sweet Lime the Skateboarder - Bangalore Mirror

An 8-year-old boy living in a hut has picked up a passion for skateboarding and become so adept at it that American print and online magazine Top Grom, devoted to celebrating young achievers in the sport around the world, has named him Grom (young skateboarder) of the Month for February.  But despite the acclaim, and the fresh pair of wheels gifted to him by the magazine, the boy does not have a place to practice because the only free-for-all skating park in his neighbourhood has a stay order slapped on it. 


Meet Shrishaila, aka Sweet Lime, son of a construction worker and a maid from Gadag district in North Karnataka, residing at a shanty with a plastic cover for roof at Sector 2, HSR Layout. Life changed for him a year ago when he ran into a band of cool-looking youngsters who rode bikes and big wooden boards with wheels. 


When curiosity got the better of him, he strolled in and asked the big guys what they were doing. MR Somanna, who taught the kid everything he knows about skateboarding, said: "Shrishaila became very curious about the stunts we were doing. So we took him under our wings and taught him everything about the board itself and are now teaching him different tricks and stunts he can do with it." Somanna and his partners Abhishek and Poornabodh N run HolyStoked Collective, where they have created a large community of skateboarders from the city. 


These youngsters in the 20-30 age group have jobs in different companies, but find time to practise their passion as well as help underprivileged children learn the sport. As part of their initiative, they set out to build a skate park on a property that belonged to one of the partners at HSR Layout. There's an interesting story behind how Shrishaila got the moniker Sweet Lime, and how his achievements with the board got noticed by Top Grom. 


Abhishek said, "We built the park ourselves with cement and construction materials. We received a lot of help from friends, most of whom were foreigners. One of them was Troy Roberts, from Australia, who was shooting photographs and making a documentary on us building the park. He spotted Shrishaila and since he could not pronounce his name, started calling him Sweet Lime. Troy was touched by Sweet Lime's commitment to skateboarding, so he wrote a story on him and posted it on Facebook." 



And the rest, as they say, is history. Sweet Lime's story of how he battled his financial odds to skate using an old board one of his 'annas' (elder brothers) had given him, got picked up by a foreign artist who made a video on the child. That video was in turn seen by Top Grom magazine owned by Top Grom Inc — a merchandising and marketing platform for skateboarding. The magazine selects one child under the age of 13 every month as the Grom of the Month — part of their initiative to promote skateboarding . 


The Los Angeles-based privately held organisation describes a grom or grommet as someone who "isn't necessarily a beginner skater, but a young skater usually aged 13 or under" on their website. 



Somanna added, "We were told by them that Sweet Lime's determination to skate was inspirational, and had to be told to the rest of the world, and that sometimes finding a board to skate is a big thing in itself. They also sent some fresh wheels for his board, but that got lost in the delivery process, so we are pooling in money to give Sweet Lime a fresh pair of wheels soon." 


Life goes on as usual for Sweet Lime who is completely unaware of the international acclaim he has received. A shy boy with a sweet smile, he sits in a corner and watches the older boys skate on the road. Sometimes, he brings his little blue toy car to play on the road, or otherwise borrows his friend's tricycle to go for a spin. If asked to demonstrate some skills, he picks up the board reluctantly. But once he is on it, he forgets that there are people around him. 



Twists, flips and turns are all he can think of while on the board. But his older friends have great regard for him. Abhishek said, "The child has talent and has picked up all these stunts in just six months. Our heart goes out to him since he cannot practise in the skate park we built, where we were teaching kids like him, because a neighbour filed a case against us and now there is a stay order on the park preventing anyone from using it." Sweet Lime looks on, his expression unreadable. He now finds solace in a small ramp that he and his friends have built along a quiet road for everyday practice. When asked whether he was excited to skate again, he said, "I miss these slopes and I know that I cannot skate in the park anymore because the neighbour will come and shout at me." 


Sweet Lime's mother Gangamma said, "My son joined a government school a few months back, but he had taken up the sport much before that. I would have to shout at him every day to change his school uniform at least before going to play on his board, but now he is too scared to even touch it." 



When a team from Bangalore Mirror went to photograph the boy, his parents, neighbours, and friends, along with Somanna and Abhishek, had to plead with him and promise him new wheels just to get him to pose for the camera dressed in his finest clothes. 



Sweet Lime lives in a hut, but the world fetes him for skateboarding - Bangalore Mirror:
'via Blog this'


Also see : http://skategypsy.blogspot.in/2013/10/sweet-lime-bangalore-india.html

God of World Freestyle Biking comes to India

 The God of World Freestyle Biking comes to India, the second time. We share with you the complete schedule of Red Bull Chris Pfeiffer India Tour 2011. When he came to India, Chris covered only 5 cities in 2010 across 9 days. This time the show is grander and covers 10 cities in a span of 17 days all across the nation. Chris would kick off his play from Kolkata on 21st of March and Bangalore would be his final venue on 6th April.
Kolkata, Pune, Jaipur, Panchkula, Coimbatore, Ahmadabad and Cochin freestyle Chris’ lovers would get to see him perform in front of their eyes for the first time, whereas Hyderabad and Chennai have been missing from his last years visit.
The event would be sponsored by Red Bull and there would be no charges, fees or tickets for the shows. After creating a huge success in his last stint, this time the show seems to be more blasting with crowds pulling from all nooks and corners of the respective cities.

So whoever missed witnessing Pfieffer’s magic the last time, ensure you grab your seats before it gets jam packed. So see you there…!
To know more about Chris Pfieffer visit ChrisPfeiffer.com

Travel like a Journalist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2010/03/packing_tips&fsrc=nlw%7Cgul%7C03-09-2010%7Cgulliver
by E.L. | LONDON

(Women readers will probably find this post rather annoying as convention dictates that they have to look smarter than men.)

I was recently talking to Charlemagne and we noticed that we were dressed identically—heavy cords, tweed jacket, brown shoes etc. That’s the ideal journalistic clothing: warm, presentable and clean, and easily made informal by discarding the tie.

The tie is a useful signalling device. Some people plan this carefully (eg, wearing blue-black-white when going to Estonia). I find it better to wear my university (LSE) tie. It often starts conversations at airports or on trains. LSE alumni are just the sort of people you want to meet.

Here are a few other tips from 25 years of life as a perpetual traveller.

You can manage for a week out of a laptop bag, so long as you fold your shirts neatly. It is good to have one with three compartments as it is embarrassing if you have to rummage for a pen and notebook at a meeting and find your dirty laundry emerging from the bag. The bag itself should ideally cost nothing—the kind given out at conferences are ideal, especially the World Economic Forum ones.

The sponge bag should be tiny and light. Key contents: an almost exhausted tube of toothpaste which weighs nothing and doesn’t show up at baggage control; a sliver of soap; a battery-powered razor, using the kind of AA batteries that you can recharge from a USB port on the computer. Then you can use them for your dictaphone as well. Also, a tiny sewing kit, a couple of pills (two sleeping pills, two pain-killers, two Imodium; a couple of sticking plasters (band-aids in American); spare cufflinks; an almost exhausted roll of sticky tape, a blob of Blu-Tack, a few yellow Post-it notes, spare fountain-pen cartridges. In backward places a film canister full of green tea leaves is handy. In travels round the ex-Soviet Union I used to carry another canister full of Marmite (a strange British food product that you spread on bread or dissolve in water). But it looks disconcertingly like raw opium and in these security-conscious days can attract unwelcome attention. However, a few sticks of biltong weigh nothing, keep for ever, and ward off hunger if you are stuck on the Moldovan-Transdniestrian border in an immobile queue for a couple of hours. I also keep pay-as-you-go SIM cards for the main countries that I cover and use them in a lightweight $20 mobile phone that I bought in Dubai: much cheaper than roaming charges, both for you and people wanting to call you. And it confuses the chekists.

Travel comfort: an inflatable neck cushion, a blindfold and earplugs are a lot cheaper than flying business class. Take off your shoes as soon as you get in the plane.

Electronics used to take up too much space but that’s getting better now that you can recharge things with a USB cable. That means no Blackberry or iPod chargers. If you know you are staying in a hotel with a kettle in the room you can even leave your laptop cable behind and use the one attached to the kettle. The little Sony ICF-100 radio is still useful sometimes, but increasingly I listen to radio on my laptop. (That way you get Ekho Moskvy as well as the BBC.) But it is well worth the extra weight to get an extended battery for your laptop.

In Soviet days I never travelled without several thousand dollars in cash, just in case I needed suddenly to rent a satellite phone or buy an air ticket from a cash-only travel agent. However, it’s still useful to take postage stamps—I carry them for all the countries that I cover. Plus lots of passport photos—you never know when you will need some pointless accreditation or visa. Also handy: lots and lots of business cards, in wallet, jacket pockets and the bag. At a good conference you can get through hundreds. It’s annoying in this electronic age that these are still necessary, though if someone gives me theirs first I just get out my Blackberry and e-mail them my contacts, explaining that this is the modern thing to do. Also useful in the wallet is a tiny credit-card shaped torch.

Reading material: a photocopy of a good poem, preferably in Russian or some other foreign language that you have to think hard about, folded in the wallet just in case you are stuck with no electronic or other diversion.