Its first two million customers took 18 months to come on board. The next two million has taken eight months &ndash; something that Videocon d2h announced early this month.

This kid grows up fast

Business Standard

Arriving in style is fast becoming a statement itself, says Rajiv Viz, CEO of Carzonrent. He and his competitors are taking that seriously, which is reflected in the fact that leading private car rental brands are going upmarket with a vengeance.

Car rental brands thrive on luxury

The Mafatlals are fighting over their Mumbai real estate, and the result, Shyamal Majumdar discovers, is a soap opera.

Love, sex-change and dhokha

As the clamour for CCTV surveillance rises with every bomb blast and terror strike, it is not incorrect to say that privacy is becoming an increasingly elusive and complicated issue in our modern lives.

Private limited

The Toyota badge on a compact sedan and hatchback, as we have already seen, is irresistible to us Indians. Add a diesel engine to the mix and Toyota should have no problem in filling up its order books. With that as a backdrop, let&rsquo;s get on with the task of evaluating the diesel versions of the Etios sedan and Liva hatchback.

A sticky situation

The facelifted C-Class has a lot of things sorted.

C a new star

I would like to buy a new car with a budget of Rs 9 to 11 lakh. I&rsquo;m considering the 1.6 litre Hyundai Verna or the 1.6 litre Volkswagen Vento. Fuel efficiency, ride quality and looks are some of the key points that I have kept in mind. My daily running is 25 to 30 km in Mumbai.

Got stuck?

Ten years after the atrocity that came to be known by the numerical handle 9/11, headlines in the United States seem to be dominated by an entirely different set of numbers that range from zero, the number of net jobs created in August 2011, all the way to 14 trillion (dollars), the current size of the country&rsquo;s debt. On Tuesday, in a speech leading up to the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack that leveled the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, killing 2,752 people, New York&rsquo;s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, saluted the spirit of his city, pointing out that the number of people living in lower Manhattan had doubled in the last decade. He declared that New York had come &ldquo;roaring back, faster and stronger than anyone thought possible&rdquo;. The same day, a poll by Washington Post and ABC showed that 77 per cent of Americans believed the US was headed in the wrong direction.

In a new light

When the game of golf made its debut on the east coast of Scotland in the 15th century, it involved players hitting a pebble around with sticks. The pebbles went on to become balls and the sticks became woods, irons, wedges and putters.

Fits to a tee

The French Connection&rdquo; was the evocative name given to a dinner organised by the Bangalore Wine Club at the Blue Ginger, Taj West End, Bangalore, on August 20, that paired French-Vietnamese cuisine with four wines from Bordeaux.

Winevestment

The World Cup field is down to the last eight. The fourth round saw several close encounters and a couple went down to the wire. Judit Polgar, who knocked out top-seed Sergei Karjakin in Rd 3, came back from the dead in Rd 4. After losing the first game to Perez Lenier Dominguez. she won the second to force a tiebreak. Then they traded wins in four rapids and drew the first blitz before Judit won the second blitz tiebreak.

Chess (#690)

Witnessing the doyens of Indian classical music perform at the Swami Haridas Music and Dance Festival in Vrindavan is a blessing.

Master classic

American pianist and conductor Stephen Kovacevich, who will perform in India this month, tells Arghya Ganguly about his abiding love for Beethoven&rsquo;s music.

Ludwig, lifelong

A few years ago, while doing research for a story, I visited a theatre called Moti Talkies in old Delhi. A quick look around gave me a sense of how the communal film-viewing culture in this part of the city was fading. Families rarely came together to watch films now, one of the theatre&rsquo;s employees told me, so there was little motivation or money for revamping. The barely maintained hall with its crumbling seats specialised in irregular screenings of Bhojpuri films: B-movie posters on the walls showed buxom heroines, street-Romeos trying to look cool in shades, and leering policemen twirling phallic batons.

Slum-side theatres

When a daughter was born to restaurateur A D Singh of Olive Bar &amp; Kitchen recently, he decided to throw a cigar party for friends. Several cigar aficionados, including women, attended the party this week at Mumbai&rsquo;s Breach Candy Club. &ldquo;In the West, it&rsquo;s a tradition that when a child is born, the father passes around a box full of cigars,&rdquo; says Singh. Fond of good Cuban cigars like Romeo y Julieta and Habanos Partag&aacute;s &mdash; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tried Dominican cigars, too, but the draw and flavour isn&rsquo;t the same&rdquo; &mdash; Singh decided to do likewise.

Gentlemen may smoke

Lord Venkateswara of Tirupati has many devotees in Bangalore. So his temple trust has built the god a home in the city. Kavitha Srinivasa pays a visit.

Holy branch

A little-known fact about Hindu religious practices is that no priest can possibly start any ritual worship of any deity without invoking Vishnu or his hallowed memory. Even when the priest, irrespective of the school to which he belongs, worships the other two members of the Hindu Trinity of Gods &mdash; Brahma, the Creator, and Shiva, the Destroyer &mdash; he has to start the process by paying obeisance to Vishnu. There seems to be no getting away from Vishnu, the Preserver, or the one who maintains order and balance in the cosmos by means that are both violent and peaceful. Such is the primordial importance conferred on Vishnu by those who wrote the Hindu religious scriptures.

The God next door

Karen Anand may not know this but she owes a debt of gratitude to a learned Telugu Brahmin and a Sikh economist. Had P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh not courageously demolished the licence-permit raj and liberalised the economy 20 years ago, her career and this book would not have found a market, for a variety of reasons. First, a book on lifestyle and one so blatantly titled would have been considered mildly politically incorrect in those pseudo-socialist times when to be poor was glorious (at least from the politician&rsquo;s point of view). Second, there would have been few takers for this book since the Indian middle class (a) couldn&rsquo;t have afforded many of the good things she writes about and (b) wouldn&rsquo;t have had access to them even if they could. Third, the rich would access these things overseas and wouldn&rsquo;t have needed Anand&rsquo;s advice to do so.

Practical gourmet guide

The year was 1994. The auditorium of Government Girls School, Sector 11, Chandigarh &mdash; better known as GCG-11 &mdash; was choc-a-bloc with students for the convocation ceremony. A diminutive woman, no taller than five feet and three-and-a-half inches, walked briskly into the auditorium followed by the college principal who tried to keep pace with her. Later, in her 45-odd-minute speech, she told the students about the importance of focusing on their strengths; she spoke about her own achievements as the country&rsquo;s first woman IPS officer; and she spoke about the need to remove the words &lsquo;compromise&rsquo; and &lsquo;surrender&rsquo; from the dictionary. Everybody in that hall that day listened to her with full attention. But when the girls trooped out of the auditorium at the end of the ceremony, opinions about Kiran Bedi, the chief guest of the occasion, were mixed.

Good cop, bad cop

As new players throw their hats into the ring, the stakes in online retail become higher Nivedita Mookerji &amp; Dilasha Seth.

Casting the net wider 

After McDonalds and Barista, Dunkin Donuts is next in line to try and shore up business in the morning lean hours.

Betting on breakfast

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