Tanmoy Samanta's works are deceptively simple but layered in meanings.

Idea art

Business Standard

Two brilliant shows in New Delhi kick off the winter season.

Capital art

I wish to buy a hatchback. I intend to run it for around 300 km every month. I have shortlisted the Fiat Palio, the Fiat Punto and the Maruti Suzuki Ritz.

Hatch Match

Travel &mdash; it&rsquo;s what I do for a living, and I enjoy every moment of it. Er, hold on a second &mdash; let me back up a bit and start again. It&rsquo;s what I do for a living, and I enjoy every moment of it &mdash; except the part where I have to apply for visas. Just how many times can a human being gather the same set of papers (salary slips, bank statements, income tax returns, covering letters, air tickets, insurance policies, photographs, proof of semi-intelligence, proof that I don&rsquo;t have ingrown toenails and so on) and submit them to some sour-faced visa officer who&rsquo;d rather be out to lunch? Why can&rsquo;t countries, especially European countries, issue long-term, multiple-entry visas to people who are clearly frequent travellers, and who don&rsquo;t have bombs in their backpacks for good measure? Because they rake it in by way of visa fees, that&rsquo;s why.

Week in the knees

The population of vultures in the subcontinent has been decimated over the last two decades, but it may yet rise from the ashes with support from human hands.

Back to the vulture

In the same way that you should get massages and take naps or meditate, you should, everyone should, make a point to eat out by yourself from time to time,&rdquo; wrote Amanda Hesser in her wonderful Cooking for Mr Latte. &ldquo;You should be kind enough to yourself to lavish your appetite with good food without the interruptions of company.

Table for one

Can't figure out which flat-panel television to buy? Priyanka Joshi gives you the dope you need before you go TV shopping.

Scene stealers

Whisky is still India&rsquo;s favourite drink and, going by the number of new launches that have happened in the category, it seems that habit is unlikely to be broken. In the last few weeks there have been no less than three new brands which have made their presence felt, while others are trying to bring more variants into the market so as to reach out to yet more whisky guzzlers. We list some of the new whiskies that you might now find at duty-free shops or even retail outlets.

Viskey, viskey, hic!

It&rsquo;s official. Fide has announced a 12-game world title match between Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand to be played at Sofia, Bulgaria in April 2010. The Bulgarian PM, Boyko Borissov has guaranteed a prize fund of Euro 2 million. The Sofia bid was preferred over lower bids by Singapore and Turkey for undisclosed sums.

CHESS #610

There is at least one question that bedevils all relationships, whether they be romantic, platonic, filial or the vastly complicated one you have with yourself (for which I can&rsquo;t think of an existing word but will propose the one suggested by a smarter friend, &ldquo;autorelationship&rdquo;): Is this the sort of question that takes so long to get to, what with run-ons and parenthetical clauses, that you&rsquo;ve completely forgotten where it was going? The answer to which is: That&rsquo;s the sort of cheap shot that&rsquo;ll pad out a word count nicely and further alienate hostile readers.

Truth is beauty, unless it isn&#39;t

Manvendra Singh Gohil, crown prince of Rajpipla, overcame tradition and won his independence as a gay man.

Poster boy prince

When a family reports that their six-year-old son has accidentally floated away in a homemade helium balloon, the result is frenzied media coverage and nationwide sympathy for the stricken parents, accompanied by copious church-going (in addition to a small number of harassed papas and mamas mulling the possibility of constructing similar dirigibles for their own little Damians). When it turns out that there was no one in the vagrant balloon and that the kid was munching biscuits in the attic all the while, there is relief, along with puzzlement. But when it later transpires that the publicity-hungry parents had concocted the whole story just to get their own reality TV show, the reactions really heat up.

Boy in a bubble

Madhulika Liddle liked historical detective fiction so much that she created an amateur sleuth for Mughal Delhi. She tells Rrishi Raote how she did it.

Clues to a qila

An anthology has its pros and cons: while, in a carefully chosen collection, literary works can complement each other, or stand out on their individual merit, in an inconsistent compilation even the good ones tend to go to waste. It&rsquo;s a pity, then, that the more competent artists in the comics collaborative When Kulbhushan Met Stockli may not get their due.

Everyday shenanigans

On a clifftop above the sea, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, a young man meditating at sunset heard a voice inside say &ldquo;Go to India.&rdquo; He climbed down to his cave and there met his childhood friend and fellow traveller, who had been meditating on the seashore. This other young man had heard, at the same time, a voice telling him to &ldquo;Go to Israel.

Monk&#39;s quest

If you have been holding off buying a new computer, then Windows 7, the latest operating system (OS) from Microsoft, will give you a good excuse to buy one. Windows 7, or Win 7, is largely believed to be better than Microsoft&rsquo;s previous OS Windows Vista and way more advanced than the last generation Windows XP.

New 'windows' open up to computer users

Apart from a new brand ambassador, the apparel maker has gone in for aggressive store expansionProvogue has done it again. It has switched its brand ambassador, this time from Saif Ali Khan to Hrithik Roshan, for its new campaign. The brand needed the buzz as much for its new line as for ensuring that its aggressive store expansion drive matches the growth of curious consumers.

Provogue wears a new attitude

After a lull of over eight months when virtually no new endorsement deal of any significant value was signed, the Rs 400-450 crore celebrity endorsement business is back on the recovery path.

Celebrity endorsement market back on track

To really understand the power of execution, you need to be in the East Stand of Mumbai&rsquo;s Wankhede stadium, when India is playing an opponent like Australia in a one day international. Every time Sachin Tendulkar touches the ball, an electric current passes through 60,000 spectators who let out a humungous roar of excitement. It is a zing that almost physically tries to reach out and touch this diminutive teacher&rsquo;s son. A man who realizes a million dreams as he sends the ball scorching across the ropes.

Kadak hai?

    This Indian entrepreneur named one of the ITES companies he set up by the Latin word for the number &lsquo;4&rsquo;.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (119)

Aviva tries a new tool with Sachin Tendulkar to grab a bigger share of the life insurance market.

No child&#39;s play

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