Don&rsquo;t we all just love massages? Lounging in the luxury of a massage chair or, even better, lying on a mattress while it vibrates the spine gently but firmly &mdash; massages at home never felt so good. So say goodbye to stress and hello to indulgence even as these gadgets, with just a click of the remote, knead your muscles, soothe your tired nerves and help you face the grind of the next day.

Ah! Massage

Business Standard

Koneru humpy Vs DV Sundar continues to gather momentum with the Chess Players Association of India has also published an open letter supporting the world no:2 and urging &ldquo;positive and open dialogue&rdquo; between Humpy and the All India Chess Federation.

CHESS #612

Manesar is the new Gurgaon, but two resorts there provide a reason for refugees from the capital to seek sanctuary.

Villas and suites away from home

So there we were at 4.30am, un-slept and merry, peering cross-eyed into the Rajasthani night at the hill we&rsquo;d suddenly decided to climb. Atop it is the temple dedicated to Savitri, Brahma&rsquo;s first wife, who stormed off there when she discovered that comely Gayatri had turned all four of His heads and become the Creator&rsquo;s second wife. (There&rsquo;s now a court case in which the Brahma temple priest is demanding that offerings made to Savitri should by right come to Brahma; and the Savitri temple priest says it should be the other way around since Brahma owes Savitri alimony.) Anyway, for some reason, it seemed vital to go and climb this hill. Now.

Desert draws

Within (but without) a debate about forms, artist Dhaneshwar Shah creates an alternate world.

The politics of contemporary, folk

Magsaysay awardee Aruna Roy tells Sreelatha Menon that she is ready to chase a new dream, a School for Democracy.

A street-fighter's democracy

During a visit to publishers&rsquo; offices in Germany earlier this year, I was impressed by the variety of literature available to young readers. Also noteworthy was the darkness of content &mdash; a reminder that this was the land of the Brothers Grimm &mdash; and the willingness to matter-of-factly deal with the realities of life. (The protagonist of one popular series was a child of divorced parents, his mother frequently referring to his absentee dad as a &ldquo;monster&rdquo; &mdash; a word that can have literal and metaphorical meaning in children&rsquo;s writing.

Monsters in the closet

Christie&rsquo;s International had its smallest evening Impressionist and modern-art auction in New York since May 2004 as buyers snubbed Picasso and Matisse in favor of conservative 19th-century landscapes and still-lifes.

Picasso flops

Deprived of finer speech, my chief utterance while reading van Gogh&rsquo;s letters was: &ldquo;Oh, this is brilliant... this is brilliant... brilliant...&rdquo; It isn&rsquo;t as often as one would like that one&rsquo;s reading matter is of such quality as to interrupt one&rsquo;s respiration, and even less often that form, substance and function come together so satisfyingly as they have in the latest, and finest, edition of the great artist&rsquo;s collected letters.

Letter, spirit

He is a raconteur and a writer with a painful brand of honesty, says Nilanjana S Roy about Ved Mehta&rsquo;s life/work in progress.

The time traveller's life

Frito-lay&rsquo;s latest campaign comes in the backdrop of a volume war.

Lay's goes in for new flavour: Co-creation

From teaser ads to the Big B visiting schools &ndash; the producers are pulling out all stops on marketing.

Paa: The mother of film promotions

I get asked a lot of times what are you doing to get future ready? My answer is always the same, I&rsquo;m trying to look ahead. It&rsquo;s the hardest thing I&rsquo;ve ever had to do, because we humans are not programmed to do that. We are schooled to learn from the past. Our predictions are often based on what we see when we look back and examining the patterns that lead us to where we are. The age we are in doesn&rsquo;t work that way any more. In these times evolution is just as likely to be created by discontinuous change as it is by steady progression.

Where's tomorrow?

Users are increasingly taking to dual-SIM handsets, which enable two connections on a single device.

Two-in-one phones catch on

It is not surprising to see innovative accessories for Apple iPod and iPhone when you take into account their escalating user base. For example, there are accessories that can make your iPod work like a voice recorder or an external microphone.

Talk and record

You&rsquo;ve been a Duke destroying evil forces descending on mankind. You&rsquo;ve been the Prince of Persia saving your sweetheart from the crooked Wazir. You have been Cristiano Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and won soccer world cups.

Sony goes desi to appeal to first-time gamers

He might have inherited his family&rsquo;s jewellery business but Mithun Sacheti did not stop at being just another jeweller on the high street. This young scion of Jaipur Gems instead chose to sell solitaire diamond jewellery in the virtual world.

Sparkling the virtual world

The Bharti Group, promoted by the Mittal family, had searched high and low for a foreign partner when it wanted to start its cash &amp; carry (organised or modern wholesale) business. The expertise just did not exist in the country. The only way to begin was with help from a large foreign player. And most of them were indeed interested in India, the last virgin territory.

Inside Bharti Walmart

Ask an entrepreneur, if he had stuck to his original business plan and done well. The answer most likely will be &ldquo;No&rdquo;. Most well-known companies &mdash; say, Google, Starbucks, PayPal or even Pantaloon in India &mdash; have done well only after making radical changes to their original business plans.

Discover your Plan B

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Asia Pacific Director Colin Kelly compares his company&rsquo;s recently launched the Ghost to a sports jacket and the Phantom to a Tuxedo. The Ghost, a smaller car, sticks to the Phantom&rsquo;s 2:1 roof-to-wheel height ratio. What is more, it has the same centre opening door configuration as its predecessor. It also has the same hand-crafted interiors and grill. But where the family of Phantom costs between Rs 3.9 crore and Rs 4.1 crore, the 16-inch smaller Ghost&rsquo;s on road price is significantly lesser at Rs 2.5 crore. That&rsquo;s nearly a third less than the Phantom. &ldquo;We wanted something less formal and pretentious and more everyday,&rdquo; says Kelly. Indeed, they&rsquo;re both jackets, clearly addressing two very different niches.

Who'll ride the Ghost?

    Which company or brand publishes a bi-annual magazine titled Innovation? This company is looked upon as one of the most innovative in its business.

Answers to last week's quiz (#121)

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