Over 500 rural sales executives of Hero Honda dealers are now busy meeting the sarpanch, the headmaster and the anganwadi workers in villages all over the country. They are also visiting potential customers at their homes, inviting them to drop in at the company&rsquo;s dealerships which might be located a few kms away.

Hero Honda steps up rural touch-points

Business Standard

Bimal Roy&rsquo;s black and white classics were films created in silence. &ldquo;He was a remarkable sight, especially when he stood behind the camera like a silent statue carved out of a rock,&rdquo; writes director Tapan Sinha of his friend in an essay, part of a new book on the filmmaker edited by his daughter Rinki Roy Bhattacharya. It&rsquo;s this aura Roy created around himself, consciously or unconsciously, that has intrigued his fans, critics and colleagues alike. Some of their contributions in the recently published book, The Man Who Spoke in Pictures: Bimal Roy, are insightful.

Celluloid Legends

It was a speech to remember. Delivered in late 2003 by a young Afghan social activist and newbie politician under the alias Malalai Joya (for security reasons), the 90 seconds she was given to speak rattled her country. The setting was a historic Loya Jirga (political meeting) which had been organised to debate a new constitution for Afghanistan. The 24-year-old Joya grabbed the microphone and spoke to an international audience of 500 delegates quite fearlessly. Why were the same warlords &mdash; the ones who were responsible for much of Afghanistan&rsquo;s misery and destruction &mdash; present amidst decision-makers at this all-important political forum, when they should, instead, have been taken to court? she demanded to know.

A nation in search of a fix

If Dara was such a wonderful prince, why is he not more warmly remembered? There are some things going for him: he was the eldest son and possibly his father&rsquo;s favourite, his brother was one of the great baddies of Indian history, his defeat was tragic and precipitated by betrayal and poor advice more than impatience or stupidity, and he was a scholarly fellow with unorthodox religious views &mdash; views which place him in line with his great grandfather Akbar, the Great. Yet, unlike Akbar, Dara wins our sympathy, not our affection.

Portrait of Dara

Abhilasha Ojha visits Sminu Jindal&rsquo;s home and comes away charmed by the experience.

Home of sentiments

Patrick Hughes&rsquo; works are now being snapped up in an increasingly experimental India, finds Kishore Singh.

Deceived!

Van Gogh Hysteria, Kapoor's Toothpaste Cannon...

At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, host country China picked up 100 medals (51 golds), the maximum number of medals were won by USA, and even a small country like Belarus managed 19 medals to India&rsquo;s one gold, and two bronze &mdash; its highest tally ever. That little win, far from satiating its appetite, has left sportspeople in the country hungry for more. And if a small group of people has their way, then the quest for medals at the Olympics, as early as 2012, could translate into gains that would have been impossible to imagine even a few years ago.

Going for gold

Resurrection. Few can argue with a concept such as that. Countless Bollywood movies have celebrated it and then followed it up with sequels. They make for lovely back-of-the-book tales in a Reader&rsquo;s Digest. And, of course, there are some that are corporate in nature. Right now, the automobile world has one such tale in the making &mdash; General Motors.

Cruze Liner

When 60,000 clothiers compete in the oversaturated Italian market for 60 million buyers, it&rsquo;s clear the smart brand will pitch its efforts towards exports.

Prince among jackets

It&rsquo;s a truism that the number of wines available is so large that they confuse, even intimidate consumers &mdash; few of whom have either the time or inclination to keep track of the hundreds of new wines being launched each year.

Rating at the tasting

Needless to say, it was nice to see Force India on the podium. I witnessed the birth of the team back in 2007 at Albert Park, Melbourne. Fisichella lasted five laps and Sutil, a handful more.

Winning formula

The NH Experience Vs Rising Stars match in Amsterdam saw the Experience team log a 27.5-22.5 victory. Nielsen, Svidler and Ljubojevic had plus scores for the oldsters. The 58 year-old Ljubo's performance was the real surprise.

CHESS #604

I am looking for a petrol sedan and cannot decide between the Fiat Linea, Maruti SX4 and the Honda City. Please help. My driving is limited to the city with an odd trip out of town, once a month.

Trio-logy

For a whole lot of us, stationery comprised of simple Camlin pencils, Reynolds ballpens and regular notebooks.

Writing luxuries

This last year, two friends of mine lost their fathers to Indian healthcare.

Rest In Peace

T hird generation or not, you can hardly be faulted for being taken aback by Baidynath scion, Pushpanjali Sharma, whose grandfather, in 1917, laid the foundations of this Ayurvedic firm that has since grown from Patna to 10 manufacturing centres and 1,600 employees, manufacturing 700 products. Not that Sharma &mdash; who has hardly led a cloistered life &mdash; is keen to leverage the family heritage, leaving that to her father, uncles, brothers and cousins to manage.

Systems Girl

You belong to an illustrious family where jewels must&rsquo;ve been aplenty.

'Diamonds are so challenging'

When Chander Mohan Sethi announced last Friday that Dettol, the 76-year old iconic brand from Reckitt Benckiser, is well on its way to achieving a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore much before the year-end, no one was surprised. For, the brand has been clocking a double-digit growth even at a time when most others, including market leader Hindustan Unilever, have been losing market share.

Dettol finds wealth in health

Once upon a time the product was the hero; everything was focused on the product and its features. The impetus of innovation and thought leadership lay with product research and development. So the story was built around the &lsquo;radial&rsquo; tyre or &lsquo;clove&rsquo; oil. Soon every other company arrived at the same formulae. Differentiation then did not lie with product development alone but came to be championed by marketing. We moved into what may be called the brand era. The approach was to surround people with brand&rsquo;s promise or positioning. This was followed by the idea era, where ideas came to enhance or boost brand identity.

The people era

Dabur has launched a new brand in the premium end of the skincare market, UVeda, giving the company a play in the entire skincare spectrum. It has Gulabari in the popular segment, Fem in the instant improvement segment and now UVeda at the top end. UVeda is an ayurveda line and comprises a fairness cream, moisturizer and face wash. The products have been developed in-house by the company. The packs have been designed by Zlata Designs of Australia.

Ayurveda's new avatar

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