You can&rsquo;t really get too far from the pink-and-red-shaped hearts this season, we&rsquo;re afraid. So you might as well give in to the romance in the air. Not sure of how and what to do this Valentines&rsquo; Day? Here is a guide to where to eat, go and pick up.

V for ....

Business Standard

An unusual novel about coal mining breaks the surface &mdash; Rrishi Raote meets author Sanjay Bahadur.

Underground lives

A food travelogue that never quite lives up to its vindaloo claim. Anoothi Vishal on a Scottish-Indian&rsquo;s journey.

Tame takeaway

The state would like to impose political censorship to muzzle the media foremost, and to have a say in and on theatre, cinema, art&hellip; As for social censorship, and we&rsquo;re seeing it play itself out currently and vociferously where attempts by the Shri Ram Sene to show pub-going girls the whole point of Indian culture are being thwarted by a pink-chaddi-campaign.

Versus

Reema Nanavaty of SEWA tells Abhilasha Ojha why it's essential to look at handicrafts and empower craftsmen in rural India.

Threadwork of expression

Ten years after he gave it up, French photographer Bernard Faucon rues that there's nothing new about shooting photos. He talks to Neha Bhatt about &quot;staged photography&quot;.

'There&#39;s no fresh concept today'

Transformation

Feel the Beat

Abhilasha Ojha checks out a new boutique hotel near Jaipur that uses recycled waste to come up with some stunning design concepts.

Stunning design concepts at a Jaipur hotel

We were planning to buy the Chevrolet Tavera because we are a family of six and need a comfortable utility vehicle to travel between towns in Gujarat. For the Tavera, we had set aside about Rs 6.5 lakh. Now that Mahindra has launched the Xylo, should we consider it instead of the Tavera? We don&rsquo;t mind spending a little more, as we will be keeping the car with us for at least five years.

Moving experience

India's premier arts museum will debut in the south next week.

The NGMA juggernaut moves to Bangalore

Blue Book, Dayanita Singh&rsquo;s new body of work, is actually a double entendre. It&rsquo;s both a series of photographs, hung on the walls of Nature Morte in India, and a slick book of postcards, produced by Steidl publishers in Germany. The thing is, Dayanita intended it to be that way. It is her intervention in the art market. The book ensures you can own the images, if not as the expensive prints, then as high quality postcards.

Feeling blue

&ldquo;If you get emotionally attached to a hotel, you will never make money. Build in a down cycle and sell when the market is up,&rdquo; Peter Barge, the well-regarded former chairman of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, had advised Sanjay Chandra in 2006 when he was in two minds whether to sell his stake in the Delhi Radisson or retain it.

Unfinished business

To stay competitive, organisations need to build managers who can deal with and manage change effectively.

Closing the gap

The economic meltdown has brought employee compensation in sharp focus. Salary expectations have softened as fears of joblessness mount across countries. Directors and senior management are grappling with the implications for their business and human capital strategy. Most of them have already revisited their executive pay programmes. Equity grants and severance packages are getting a fresh look-in.Sky-high Wall Street bonuses have been called obscene.

Make performance matter

NUDGE
Authors: Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein
Publisher: Yale University Press
Price: Rs 1,158 
ISBN: 0300122233.
MILLIONAIRE BY THIRTY
Authors: Douglas R Andrew, Emron Andrew and Aaron Andrew 
Publisher: Business Plus
Price: Rs 1,072 
ISBN: 0446501840.
SWAY
Authors: Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
Publisher: Highbridge Company
Price: Rs 1,367
ISBN: 1598876295.
THE NEW AGE OF INNOVATION
Authors: C K Prahalad and M S Krishnan
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill
Price: Rs 695
ISBN:

The top 10 business bestsellers

TEH HEALTH AND fitness market in India is estimated at around Rs 2,900 crore.

KIT: The health and fitness industry in India

    Link the West Indies cricketers Lance Gibbs, Carl Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to the name of a product that is mostly found in coffee bars and restaurants.

The Strategist Quiz (#086)

    This company&rsquo;s website greets you with the tag line: &ldquo;Faster. Further. Freer &mdash; Our Message in a Bottle.&rdquo; These are its leading principles on the basis of which it runs its business. Name it.

Answers to last week's quiz (#085)

The south of France is the world's largest wine-producing region, with some 700,000 acres under grape vines, producing an estimated 1.8 billion litres of wine annually. Most of this is produced in the flat coastal plain where the Rhine (and other smaller rivers from the mountains to the north) drain into the Mediterranean. The key cities here are all ports with wonderfully evocative names: Montpellier, Marseilles, Toulon, and Nice, each with a hinterland of miles upon miles of vineyards.

Boutique winery, big nose

Despite the meltdown of their fortunes, our billionaires' love for gizmos and gadgets hasn't waned, finds Priyanka Joshi.

Just one more toy, please

- Find Specials News, Features, Analysis and more at Business Standard. Full coverage of Goafest 2014

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