The Hong Kong event's contemporary format has brought together the good with the gimmicky, the ludicrous, the luscious and the predictable

Market chronicles

Business Standard

Last year, Kabir turned to his diary of two decades ago to check how he'd fared against the goals he'd set himselfÂ - the serious as well as the facetiousÂ -Â when graduating from college. He'd turned his back on the family's well-established business to become an entrepreneur, travelled, made and lost friends, managed to avoid discussions on politics, appeared on television for his five minutes of vicarious fame, taken up riding, given up riding, trekked to the base camp at Mt Everest, eaten escargots (under duress: he won the bet, but threw up after), got drunk and gone to a strip club in Bangkok, got drunk and sung karaoke also in Bangkok, made his first 10 million before turning 30, and now, on the cusp of 40, he was looking at his potential failures. He hadn't fallen in love, hadn't married, and any hope of becoming a father appeared remote. "I'd promised myself I would be a dad by the time I was 40," he mused.You'd imagine love would be easy to find in India's capital with youngs

The family business

What defines a "small" party in Delhi, an intimate gathering of friends, what a hostess might describe as "casual"? "That would be 50 heads," hazards Jessie, who ought to know. You won't find her in Page 3 pictures even though she is sometimes erroneously referred to as a "socialite". Actually, Jessie is a party organiser. Those days when you simply picked up a phone and invited friends over for potluck are over. In these designer times, guest lists need to be "managed", and even a close gathering of buddies needs to be "curated". The presence of a reclusive billionaire, some influential bureaucrats, a media personality and A-list celebrities - they've replaced what previously passed for entertainment. Belly dancers? Darling, that's so last century.Jessie builds on the surprise factor. A celebrity DJ is a good idea, better than a "bar therapist" - that's a bartender with attitude - because most Indians lose interest in the "help" after a few tricks, though they might respond better to

The 'small' party showbiz

The Chinese are emerging as strong contenders to claim a larger slice of the global art pie

Is the India story over?

It starts as breakfast is being laid. "I've boiled eggs for everyone," the cook says. "I'd prefer pancakes," my daughter sulks. "Fruit," demands my son, who isn't given to talking much in the morning. "Idlis," suggests my wife - fortunately they're left over from the previous day when she'd declined them in favour of muesli - "but make me fresh chutney." "Toast," I request timidly, "with a fried egg perhaps." Unity isn't our family's strong point. My son wants strawberry shake, my daughter asks for cold coffee, my wife would like lime juice in warm water, I'll settle for a south Indian brew, "piping hot". That's before the packed lunch hullaballoo starts, my daughter insisting she can't carry pasta because "it's fattening", my son asking for "proteins, not carbs" to sustain him through his gym routine, while I'm lucky to get leftovers, the cook having reached the end of his tether by now."Why are all other families so supportive," I ask my wife, "and ours so obstructive?" "If you're tr

Spoilt for choice

So okay, I confess I'm a hoarder - though hider might be closer to the truth - and for good reason. How do you explain to your grown-up kids that now that they're no longer dependant, they need to - ahem! - pay for their stay? Not only do I have them still dipping into my wallet for "some chota-mota money, Dad" every time they phone out for pizza, contact lenses or face wash, but they think nothing of making off with my bank cards for a lasik surgery, booking air tickets, or topping up their wardrobes with unpronounceable European brands. And it isn't just their expenses I find myself underwriting as also those of their friends or colleagues because "Nikhil lost his job", or "Preeta's boyfriend ditched her" - conditions that might lead to catastrophic breakdowns unless urgently ministered a bottle, or preferably two, of the finest.While I'm hardly curmudgeonly about sharing that finest with my son, to continue to spread the cheer among his friends is, I consider, stretching the good li

Hoard and seek

Writing on August 17, 1960, Raza is scathing about Souza's need for "self-publicity"

Souza defanged

Men, poor pets, throw them a bone now and then and you'll have them eating out of your hand," Samira was sharing her views with her monthly support group. It would have been easy to dismiss her prognosis if she'd been a society matron, but Samira is a senior associate and has risen in her career, she likes to boast, at the expense of the men she is so casually scornful of. "She said they have no imagination," my wife recounted later to me, on which count, at least, I begged to differ.It is my experience that what men lack by way of actual achievement, they make up in imagination. They're delusional fools who look into mirrors not to see themselves, but who they imagine themselves to be - George Clooney, Richard Gere, Hrithik Roshan, Irrfan Khanâ€¦ Where Samira might point out an insecure, vulnerable creature looking into the mirror, the men will see a reflection of invincibility, not a loser but a feisty chooser, a nobody that's actually Brad Pitt in disguise, a genius in the making. I

Man and superman

The hair stylist wanted lights, mirrors, reflectors; he demanded fresh towels, damp wipes, white damasks; he'd carried scissors, combs, clippers and other paraphernalia but required warm water, gels, ointments and assorted unguents. The staff gawped at his tomahawk tresses stiffened like iced frosting on a cake as he set to work on my son's somewhat unprepossessing mane adequate for a lawyer but hardly requiring the attentions of a personal hair therapist. For all the high theatre, his cropped locks looked no different from his more mundane haircut at the neighbourhood salon - the only difference being the size of the bill that I was left holding because he was running late for work.Laid up with a bad back, if I thought I'd be indulged by the warm affections of a caring family, I was mistaken. "You won't be needing the driver then," whooped my wife, fixing lunch and gossip meetings with a snap of her fingers and disappearing in a haze of Estee Lauder. When I'd complained about the pain

Working at bed rest

If the measure of an artist's success is the secondary market, then Mithu Sen's Rs 18 lakh outing in the recent Saffronart sweepstakes with Dance After Depression I qualifies her for an encore in this uncharted terrain. If Sen's meteoric rise in the contemporary market was celebrated by many - she did seem to manage awards and residencies with alacrity - others would have advised caution, having seen several of her peers singed by the torch of fame. Sen, though, has remained irreverent. To dismiss her as merely another shooting star would be short-sighted, though it is a sore temptation given the artist's ability to shoot her mouth. But to see Sen's work through her posturing would be detrimental to the observer. She is far more than the sum of her ripostes.Other artists who have borne the "feminist" tag have been similarly feted as well as lambasted by the cognoscenti. Some of that opprobrium must indeed be borne by Sen for playing to the galleries with her fetishisation of phalluses

Sen's sensibilities

For most people, there comes a time when they realise that the only adventure they're going to have is deciding whether they want to dine al fresco at an Italian cafe or more formally at a five-star. Whether to do yoga in the morning and suffer through a score of excruciating surya-namaskaars, or hit the gym apres the marketing meeting to burn off the frustration of unachievable targets with a cardio workout. Kochi for a holiday or Cannes? Brogues or moccasins?There are a few others who defy their age, such as my no-longer-kid brother who's got a tapestry of tattoos across his body - all manner of snakes and birds and other twisting creatures too horrific to look at - and who, even as you read this, is on his way trekking to the Everest base camp. Because he intends to be gone for a while, he's parked his Hayabusa in our garage. My son takes it to his office, but only occasionally because it isn't the chick magnet he had hoped it would be. Girls enjoy looking at the bike with the kind

The motorcycle diary - redux

Well, darling, are you missing me?" my wife asks. "No," I say, really because no husband minds a reprieve of a few days, but mostly because the dog nestles in the crook of my arm, snoring lightly into my ear while sprawled across the bed - so what's to miss? Of course, he needs to be taken down for a constitutional at midnight, something my wife hasn't requested yet, but who's to know what the future holds. Not that she's averse to being away on her own, having spent more weeks outside Delhi than in. "Be a sweetheart and see to the bills," she says, which is unfair because it's her turn to write the cheques, and once taken care of we'll never get round to settling accounts, and next month it'll be my turn to pay anyway."Do you miss your mum?" I ask the kids. "Mum, who?" says my daughter, but really, she's only kidding, they're on Facebook and update each other regularly on everything from what're they're wearing to what they're doing, accompanied by pictures to boot. My wife thanks me

Keeping the home fires burning

If the number of high-end luxury homes is increasing, art, without a doubt, is going to ramp up too

How is art not luxury?

My wife pushed aside an elderly man, elbowed out a middle-aged auntyji, refused to give way to a newly-wed spouse, all of it to lay claim to the title of musical chairs champ on the family day organised at our son's office. No doubt it was intended to break the ice between people who till that day had been innocent of each others' existence, but who were now embarrassing themselves in a display of enforced bonhomie. Perhaps it had something to do with it being appraisal time in March, but if they were hoping to leverage lineage they'd have to do it without us. "If they play antakshari," I groaned, "or sing karaoke" - we're not your typical musical family - "I'm out of here.""It'll be like a parent-teacher meeting," our son had declared gloomily the day the invitation had arrived in the post, getting increasingly jittery as the date came closer. He even returned a part of a loan he'd "borrowed accidentally" when he swiped my card instead of his at the ATM, minding his manners with his m

Family's day out

Our jars of sauces and dips from Genoa had served us well, though we'd been out of pesto for a while, attempts by my wife to sneak in substitutes from INA Market having been foiled by our daughter. But she had found a bakery in the city where the focaccia at least could be trusted. For a variety of reasons, our motley collection of wines included a sizeable selection from Tuscany. We had olives from Spain, true, reserved for family treats, but salads and strangers had to make do with Italian olives, no slur intended. And now here they were, packed into cartons that my wife said we were to give away."Wow," said my son surveying the spoils, "is Christmas early?" - exactly the sort of statement likely to get him in trouble with his mother. She'd been in a dilemma deciding what to do with the mozzarella made with Italian know-how, thanks to an enterprising businessman for whom the burden of friendship meant a supply line from his factory to our home. The milk for the cheese came from India

The Italy we hate to love

The famously reticent Ganesh Pyne found an anchor in death long before it claimed him

Melancholy as muse

Decades from now, she will either be hailed as a design catalyst or be consigned to a footnote in the history of Indian design, a diva of space and form or someone whose attempt to turn design solutions into discourse was well-intentioned but poorly served. But right at this moment, in Mumbai, Rajshree Pathy is in her element - even if she's chewing her nails backstage in between sessions as Thomas Heatherwick and Christian Louboutin strut their stuff before a packed NCPA filled with corporate honchos, students, sponsors, entrepreneurs and young professionals.In the cold chill of a Delhi winter, two months ago, she had morosely announced, "Design suffers from a lack of priority in India. Indians don't think design." You could have argued then about Indian aesthetics and how form followed function when even wooden combs were beautifully created, and wasn't the lota once hailed as the finest example of design ever? Except, of course, that was a long, long time ago. Except, of course, she

Tackling the design deficit

The dog trainer gave notice a week ago. The pup had shamed him, ignoring rather than listening to his commands. Around the time he was drafting his resignation - the first time, he says, he was conceding defeat to a canine - food writer Farzana Contractor had checked into a resort accompanied by her two-year-old Apso that was the model of good behaviour, perched on her lap through all our meals in the dining hall where it did not once raise its head to sniff at the delicacies being served up by a celebrity chef. Coming back home, I was greeted by the sight of our family pet on the dining table licking the eggs akuri, sausages, papaya, oats, toast and slabs of butter clean in no particular order - with not a burp to show for it."Beagles," said his trainer, at the time when he was still there and we could reprimand him for the mutt's lack of progress on the behaviour front, "have an obedience issue." But at the design shop where I often work, the owner's Beagle, of approximately the same

The family in the doghouse

Fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna debuts in India with Reena Kallat's cobweb on morphing identities

Stamp over Mumbai

How much wine is too much? Sadly, I was unable to satisfy my wife's curiosity but I did tell her that at the Four Seasons winery in Sahyadri Valley, too much wasn't much at all. The previous evening in Delhi, we had attended a birthday party where I knew neither our host who had thrown a "surprise" for his wife that she had taken care to dress for, nor indeed the "surprised" birthday girl  Delhi's generous hospitality is sometimes stretchable to include complete strangers  but I did know enough guests, each of whom said, "Hey, buddy, have a glass of wine". By the end, my wife said, "You've had too much," which was hardly a good thing, since I was also the designated driver, but at Roti village in Baramati, I wasn't driving anywhere, so too much wasn't so much after all.It did seem like a lot though if you started counting the empty glasses. Driving up at lunchtime, some kind soul was at hand with a glass of sparkling rose that hit the spot in one thirsty draught. But at the lunch table

Kishore Singh: One for the road

Some homes keep their secrets well. In Mumbai, Mukesh Ambani's Antilla, which has hosted its big-ticket parties, has floored visitors to such an extent that few recall seeing any art there. On prodding, they might recall "a kind of bird"  possibly a massive Garuda by artist Satish Gupta  at the entrance, part of a series of artworks commissioned especially for the skyscraper, though it is the junior Ambanis who take art collecting more seriously, with both office and their residence brimming with masters and contemporaries from F N Souza to Chintan Upadhyay, Jogen Chowdhury to Sujata Kejriwal. Unsurprisingly, really, with Tina Ambani supporting the Harmony show, and spouse Anil Ambani providing discreet inputs. In New Delhi, it is Sunil Mittal's home that has remained unreported for its art collection, with the Mittals apparently inclined to support emerging artists over established masters.But it is the masters that seem to excite most collectors, with M F Husain right on top as the "

Kishore Singh

Kishore Singh

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