I have visited the mountains of Himachal Pradesh several times over the last few years. My destination has usually been the apple orchard country of Kotgarh district, which is tucked away behind a hairpin bend on the road to Narkanda, amid some of the most beautiful spruce forest anywhere in the world. Getting to Kotgarh involves taking the train to Kalka, the railhead at the foot of the hills, and then driving for six hours.

Apology to the Queen

Business Standard

Mohammed Azharuddin has shrugged off the ghosts of his past. He is ready to shoulder his new responsibility as a people's rep.

Second innings

At least the Shiney Ahuja rape case has taken some pressure off Mahendra Singh Dhoni&rsquo;s shoulders, a friend says on Twitter, and he&rsquo;s right: it takes something very special for the captain of a World Cup-losing cricket team to be only the second most vilified public figure in the country.

Taking the shine off

Chintan Upadhyay makes Mumbai's Mithi river a censorial context for the perils of unchecked urbanisation.

The babies get a bath

The Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed New Wing of the Chicago Art Institute just opened in May, to house contemporary art. We&rsquo;ve all heard about that. We know &mdash; from images, if we haven&rsquo;t seen it &mdash; that it&rsquo;s spectacular, and buzzing with hives of visitors. But, contrary to popular understanding, contemporary art isn&rsquo;t the only recipient of a new home. There is an exception &mdash; the New Alsdorf Galleries of Indian, South-east Asian, Himalayan and Islamic Art were entirely recreated as well. Few people know that these are the largest galleries by square feet housing South and South-east Asian art, including Indian art, in the United States.

Looking south

The Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in New Delhi has a surprise for its youngest &quot;guests&quot;. Anoothi Vishal checks out a first-of-its-kind &quot;recreation centre&quot; set up by Sanofi Aventis there.

On the playstation, in the hospital

At first, flipping through the early pages, I tossed the book aside angrily, its very premise, the purchase of a fake Amrita Sher-gil, wrongly attributed to the contemporary genre, enough to prove annoying. The book has several such gaffes, but I&rsquo;m glad that boredom and the lack of anything else to read led me to pick it up yet again.

Music, high life, hauntings

By the time I closed the book at half past three in the morning and on page 104, I was all aglimmer. Partly it may have been sleep deprivation, but mostly it was Errol Flynn. You see, I was reading his memoirs, titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways. And you are reading these words on the centenary of his birth, in Hobart, Tasmania.

To Errol, divine

The much-publicised sea link isn&rsquo;t the only transport improvement coming Mumbai&rsquo;s way. More roads linking the east and west, the metro and monorail, and a trans-harbour link are changing the way people will live and work in the city.

Mumbai gets a makeover

A recent KPMG survey highlights the huge potential for banks to grow their market with the rise in mobile phone subscribers in India.

Bad times are good for m-banking

That&rsquo;s the success formula of India&rsquo;s leading bakery products company.

Nutrition + Fun = Britannia

For the last seven successive seasons, Federer has held not just the tennis lover&rsquo;s imagination, but that of a fair bit of humanity.

Un-see to see

Don&rsquo;t just go ahead and seek means to buy the new Apple iPhone 3Gs. Instead, download the free iPhone 3.0 OS update for your iPhone 3G and spend some time with the new software. Yes, there are some huge jumps in the hardware of iPhone 3Gs when compared with the last year&rsquo;s iPhone 3G, but a software update will fill in plenty of gaps on your iPhone 3G or iPod Touch (the update has been priced at $9.95).

A must-have upgrade

There are several targets that Bharti Airtel is chasing at the moment &mdash; there is MTN of South Africa to acquire; footprint in emerging markets like Sri Lanka to expand; DTH (direct-to-home), IPTV and broadband operations to ramp up and mobile telephone services to grow in a crowded market.

Iconic ambitions

Yes Bank is the youngest private bank in India &mdash; it is just five years old. Having gained a strong foothold in corporate and institutional banking as well as commercial banking, it is currently on a drive to tap the vast but somewhat amorphous market for small enterprises. Yes Bank Founder, Managing Director and CEO Rana Kapoor is confident that the potential is huge and risks close to none.

'Small businesses spell big opportunity'

Indian solar power companies now want to light up the domestic market, with a little help from the government, of course.

While the sun shines

Italian confectioner Perfetti&rsquo;s new ad for its breath freshener, Chlormint, is an irreverent shtick. And brothers Salman Khan and Sohail Khan who feature in the TVC, have got it down pat.

Wishing upon falling stars

Infosys Technologies intends to ramp up business in the domestic market. It recently set up an India-dedicated unit within Infosys BPO &mdash; its business process outsourcing arm. The order book has already begun to see action, inform company executives. The domestic BPO arm has won a Rs 250-crore BPO contract from the income-tax department and is soon going to sign a letter of intent for another government deal, says Infosys BPO CEO and Managing Director Amitabh Chaudhry.

Infosys: Value at home

    Which CEO said: &ldquo;Fired? Hell, I spent $10 million educating you.

Answers to last week's quiz (103)

Sesa Goa&rsquo;s acquisition of Dempo Group&rsquo;s iron ore assets in Goa bears a stamp of Vedanta Resources Chairman Anil Agarwal&rsquo;s signature strategy &mdash; buy low-value assets, pump investments into them and work to turn them into cash cows. Vedanta&rsquo;s previous acquisitions of Hindustan Zinc, Balco, Konkola Copper Mines and the 2007 takeover of Sesa Goa have helped the company multiply the value of its metals business.

Sesa Goa: Asset mining

Laptop sales doubled in India in 2008 over the previous year.

KIT: The Indian market for laptops

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