India-specific hatchbacks took centrestage at the 10th AUTO EXPO, currently on in New Delhi.

Heavy metal

Business Standard

Wine tourism is something new in India. Google &ldquo;wine tourism in India&rdquo; and you get 2.98 million results &mdash; one indication of the booming interest in this little-known but fast-growing niche.

On the wine trail

In a half-retrospective of her life as an artist, Jayasri Burman journeys from the shadows to reclaim her place in the Indian aesthetic.

Journeys in a mythological land

Hats may not be the accessory of choice in India, but Gargi Gupta finds a few milliners who are testing the market with their designs.

Come into my parlour

Vandana Luthra, founder-mentor of VLCC, a Delhi-based beauty treatments and weight management company, is quite the poster lady for her line of business. Perfectly turned out in traditional Indian wear and Western suits, she likes to assert her sense of style through her choice of jewellery and accessories.

Blinging it

This latest affectation isn&rsquo;t required.

Hats off!

Travelling through cities like Mumbai and Delhi one often sees signs stating &ldquo;My Mumbai Keep It Clean&rdquo; or &ldquo;My Delhi Keep It Green&rdquo;. In Chennai and Kolkata the language changes, but the tone is consistent. The question posed here is not with regard to &ldquo;green and clean&rdquo;, but the word &ldquo;my&rdquo;, which is descriptive of a collective notion of identity with a place &mdash; a sense of belonging that goes beyond economic sustainability.

Meri Dilli, amchi Mumbai

This year feels as if it might be worth dedicating to being antsy rather than angsty, possibly because it&rsquo;s only January and the twelvemonth sprawling before me still seems filled with the buds, rather than the cindered remains, of possibility. Beats me why, especially since decade upon decade of evidence suggests that this optimism is a recurring mass delusion, but I think it&rsquo;s going to be a good year. As I look out at the sunny horizon of 2010 I surprise myself by actually wanting to make and keep this resolution: Every day (or, just to nod at the inevitable slippery slope, five times a week) I&rsquo;d like to do at least one thing that I&rsquo;ve never done before.

Angst is so 2009

The late Robin Wood was a courageous and open-minded writer who brought a new discipline to film criticism.

Trust the tale

Neelam Mansingh has spearheaded the resurgence of Punjabi theatre and adapted world classics for the Indian stage. Neha Bhatt turns the spotlight on another facet of her career &mdash; innovative set designs.

The world's a stage

It was a tempting brief: in 2005, Frenchman Nicolas Wild was hired to go to Afghanistan to write comic books on the Afghan constitution for children. He turned his experiences into a series of graphic novels. The first, Kabul Disco, was introduced to India in December at &ldquo;Litteratures&rdquo;, a French cultural festival.

Sleepless in Kabul

Fashion designers are supposed to make clothes. Beautiful, eye-catching clothes that make you feel like a million bucks. And often that&rsquo;s how much these clothes cost. It is then easy to argue that clothes that cost so much would require time and effort. But Indian fashion designers, barely beginning to make a mark in their chosen field, are busy doing everything other than concentrate on their core business. From designing dishes (Manish Arora for the home store Good Earth) to hosting talk shows (Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla) to directing a film (Sabyasachi Mukherjee), Indian fashion designers seem to have already tired of fashion.

Loose threads

If Nick Hornby&rsquo;s first book, Fever Pitch, was about a man&rsquo;s obsession with a football club, his latest hinges on a man&rsquo;s obsession with a 1980s musician.

Hitting the right notes

For these two or three days I have been much troubled with thoughts how to get money to pay them that I have borrowed money of, by reason of my money being in my uncle&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo; With these rather prosaic words opens Samuel Pepys&rsquo;s diary entry for January 9, 1660. The ninth day of the year is also the ninth day that he is keeping his journal. He kept it for 10 years.

Private life, public view

Here are some numbers for you to chew on: Last year, according to the National Crime Record Bureau, more than 40,000 cars, worth over Rs 150 crore, were stolen in the country. This piece of statistics is sure to worry all car owners, especially those who plan to have a smarter car in the near future.

Gearing up with gizmos

When Anurag Dod launched the search engine, www.guruji.com, in 2006, he harboured no ambition of making it big in a matter of months. A graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, he had built the first crawler-based search engine in India, designed to make search simple for Indian users. &ldquo;Our proprietary algorithm automatically identifies content on the web and organises it in such a way that Indian users get search results that are most relevant to them geographically,&rdquo; explains Dod.

Hear it from the guru of search

If you love listening to music on the go but don&rsquo;t like the thought of being tangled in wires, heave a sigh of relief. Companies are rolling out music systems that are not only wireless but also, get this, screen-less.

Walk the song

Radico Khaitan&rsquo;s attempts to make its flagship 8PM whiskey &ldquo;contemporary&rdquo; seem to be paying off. Within six month of launch, the grain-based variant of the whiskey has sold about 2 million cases. This move is expected to take 8PM volumes to 5 million cases by the end of 2009-10. All told, the Indian whiskey market is estimated at 160 million cases.

In high spirits: Grain-based 8PM attracts consumers

A new decade has begun. Needless to say, many of you have made resolutions in the spirit of making a new start, or even turning a new leaf. The more ambitious among you may well be thinking about turning the page and starting a new chapter. Since my mother raised me well and she will most certainly be reading this, I wish you all good luck.

Happy 2011

Sugar, unlike commodities like salt, tea and milk, has failed to achieve a successful transition from loose sale to a branded commodity.

Sugar takes its own sweet time to enter the branded space

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