Aabhas Sharma &amp; Veenu Sandhu list out the full extent of the rot in the country&rsquo;s sports administration which has been brought into the open now by the Indian Olympic body&rsquo;s suspension by its international parent.

Spoilsports

Business Standard

Her 0.64 per cent stake in the company her father co-founded is worth close to Rs 900 crore at today&rsquo;s prices. But 27-year-old Shruti Shibulal, promoter of the recently-launched luxury resort The Tamara, Coorg and daughter of Infosys Co-founder and CEO S D Shibulal, comes across as remarkably down-to-earth and, well, normal. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;ve been asked about [the Rs 900 crore] but I don&rsquo;t really wake up in the morning thinking &lsquo;oh, I&rsquo;m worth this much&rsquo;,&rdquo; says the young entrepreneur, whose casually bunched-up curly hair and black-rimmed glasses lend her an air more grad student than entrepreneur, though she has dressed for the interview in a fitted black cardigan, onion-pink silk blouse and black trousers. (The sole concession to luxury seems to be a sparkling diamond ring on her left hand, about which she will reveal only, with a smile, that &ldquo;yes, it means something&rdquo;.

The hospitable heiress

You could be forgiven for mistaking this book to be a slick publication of that master manipulator of opinion, Narendra Modi, the once and forever champion of Gujarati asmita (proud identity), even though the names of the author and the publisher should tell you otherwise. The large format, colourful appearance, neat presentation and easy-to-follow style all manage to camouflage this work of evident scholarship into a coffee-table compendium. That is not such a bad thing at all.

Shreekant Sambrani: Modi's Gujarat in black & white

Priyanka Sharma decodes the bandhgala, or nawab jacket, the hot fashion trend making waves all over this winter.

Nawabi style

Whether it is aboard his superfast Mangusta or the sporty Riva, Binatone Telecom Group Founder and Chairman Gulu Lalvani loves to unwind across the high seas on his many yachts. The 73-year-old businessman, an avid sailor, has been a yacht aficionado for over 30 years. So much so that he came out of retirement in 2002 to set up the Royal Phuket Marina, investing nearly $100 million and persuading the Thai government to abolish a 200 per cent import duty on boats.

'Bentley of the seas'

The reading on the instrument console is displaying -13 degrees centigrade but inside I am as warm as a stuffed toy in a child&rsquo;s arms. The Land Rover Freelander 2&rsquo;s climate control is keeping the Canadian winter away and the heated steering wheel has ensured my fingers have not gone numb. Outside, the snowflakes are dropping at an alarming pace, there&rsquo;s snow pressing down on the branches of the pine trees and other than the twin dark tracks created by the Land Rovers on the forest trail, the ground is covered with several inches of white snow. Though I am about 100 kilometres away from the city of Montreal in Canada, I half expect to see Rudolf and his friends waiting for the elves to load up the sled. Perhaps Santa should consider retiring his faithful reindeers and get himself one of these instead.

The Santa clause

The most important thing that India can give to the rest of the world is simply its Indianess. If it were to substitute this for a cosmopolitan veneer, it would have to come before the world empty handed,&rdquo; Ananda Coomaraswamy, the philosopher and cultural historian, had said. Perhaps Pandit Ravi Shankar, Robuji as we called him, was the greatest apostle of the above. I give below some of my memorable personal anecdotes.

Made the sitar come alive

Six months ago, artist Vivan Sundaram was taken to the lost city of Muziris that had drowned with the flooding of the Periyar river in the 14th century. Collecting a few hundred thousand of the approximately four million pieces of pottery shards he discovered there, he had the remains shipped to him in New Delhi where he began assembling them into mounds that were then transported back to Kochi, as a site-specific installation for the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale. A shallow pit was dug in which the shards were assembled, and after it had been flooded with water, pepper corns were flung into the water to symbolise the city&rsquo;s links with the spice trade, all of it filmed as Sundaram&rsquo;s project for India&rsquo;s first and the world&rsquo;s (on one approximation) 150th biennale.

A work in progress 

The third-generation Skoda Octavia has just been revealed to the world. The current Octavia, known as the Laura here, is getting a little long in the tooth so it&rsquo;s right on time, this new model. It&rsquo;s a new car from the ground up, bearing Skoda&rsquo;s new design language first seen on the European Rapid, with sharp edges, visible creases and overall more modern looking than the current line-up. The Octavia is based on a long-wheelbase version of Volkswagen&rsquo;s MQB platform, which will underpin many significant VAG cars, but this might just be the first one that makes it to our shores.

An Octavia above

I want to buy a diesel hatchback for my sister that I will present to her on her wedding day. She is likely to have a daily commute of between 35 and 40 km in Delhi. The car must be reliable, fuel-efficient, reasonably comfortable and well-loaded with features too. I am considering the Toyota Etios Liva GD, Ford Figo Titanium and Skoda Fabia 1.2 TDI Ambiente.

Wedding hatch

In the early 1950s, when Le Corbusier, a pioneer of modern architecture, was called to design Chandigarh, India&rsquo;s first planned city, he hit a peculiar hurdle: superstition. Corbusier was told not to include the &ldquo;unlucky&rdquo; number 13 in the city, which was to be carved into sectors. On the face of it, he did as told and the city has no Sector 13. But in his own way, the ingenious architect splattered Chandigarh with number 13. He placed the sectors in such a way that every opposite sector adds to a number divisible by 13. So, Sector 1 faces Sector 12. Twelve lies opposite 14, 14 borders 25, and so on.

Katha collage

Parents today are torn between disciplining, and possibly alienating, their children or indulging them.

The parent trap

The Tamil Nadu Express is speeding through eastern Maharashtra on Wednesday afternoon when I get a call from office, telling me that I had to travel to the Maldives. It was to be a short visit &mdash; just 18 hours in all &mdash; to cover GMR&rsquo;s handing over of Male airport to the Maldives government. By the time the train chugs into Delhi four hours late on Thursday, check-in is just hours away.

Down and out in the Maldives 

The list of highest run-getters in cricket this year does not feature Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni even among the top 40(Click on graphic)

Score card

    The company that was established in the 1890s made Cigars and Cigarettes out of chocolate as an alternative to the tobacco variety.&nbsp;During the Second World War, the company&rsquo;s machine shop even turned out parts for US Navy&rsquo;s antiaircraft guns. Name the company.

The Strategist Quiz (#284)

They are at least 25 per cent cheaper than brand new ones and often come with a one-year guarantee. Big names like Dell, Lenovo, Philips, LG, Panasonic, among others, sell them. But, what are they? We are talking about refurbished goods.

Are 'refurbished' electrical items any good?

The battle for the skies is moving to a new orbit &ndash; fuel efficient narrow body planes. While Airbus has cashed in on the first mover advantage in this space with its A320 Neo (full form for New Engine Option) bagging orders for 1579 planes across the globe, Boeing, which launched its plane in August last year, is catching up fast with nearly 1,000 orders for the 737 Max.

Sky war: Neo versus Max

For gamers who like annual franchisees, Santa Claus comes home twice a year &ndash; once on Chirstmas Eve and the other when the game&rsquo;s latest version is released. So, when Canada-based gaming company Electronic Arts&rsquo; (EA) latest installment of football game FIFA 13 was released last month, it was a big launch for the gaming company. On the day of its release a million copies were sold and in the next five days the number touched 4.5 million worldwide.

Sports on gadget: Soccer fever grips gamers

Discovery Networks had an early mover advantage in the infotainment genre as it launched its channel in India way back in 1995. The company today operates eight channels with multiple-language feeds. In an interaction with Gaurav Laghate, Discovery Networks Asia Pacific&rsquo;s Senior Vice President &amp; General Manager Rahul Johri spoke about the channel&rsquo;s future plans. Edited excerpts...

Discovery will offer the biggest non-fiction content: Rahul Johri

It was confusing enough to choose the next smartphone, thanks to the clutter of hardware and operating systems (OSes) that exist and now the confusion lends itself to tablet PCs too. You can go wild between 7-inch or 10-inch tablet PCs, the OSes and brands and prices.

A bevy of tablets to choose from

    The name for this start-up brand was taken from a character in the song-poem composed by Roscoe Mitchell, an African American composer and Jazz instrumentalist. It was founded by 3 musicians from California, who sold freshly squeezed juice from the back of an old Volkswagen van. It was NASDAQ Company till it was bought by a global MNC. Name the founders, the brand and its current owner.

Answers to last week's quiz (#283)

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