The plains that surround Etawah, tinted with golden, heaving fields of wheat, end abruptly at a boundary wall. Above the crumbling barrier, an incomplete cricket stadium looms large, studded with four large floodlights that glint in the strong summer sun. Beyond, a concrete skyline &mdash; complete with clumped, whitewashed housing developments &mdash; appears amidst buffaloes and goats silently foraging in the sweltering heat.

A Yadav Utopia

Business Standard

Amrit Kiran Singh has challenged the rule of Scotch whiskey in the Indian market.

The bourbon seller

It&rsquo;s not a car. It&rsquo;s not a scooter. It is a hole on four wheels. Doors are an option.All my life as a motoring journalist, I used to laugh at the bizarre concepts that were unveiled usually at the Paris and Tokyo auto shows. I couldn&rsquo;t believe that those French and Japanese manufacturers were serious.

Is it tomorrow already?

Suzuki has always had a very potent scooter in the Access 125. It&rsquo;s a solid, well-built scooter and one of the peppiest, while at it. However, it lacks severely on a few counts &mdash; youthfulness and, as a result, appeal. For a scooter with that kind of performance, the Access is way too bland and that&rsquo;s what Suzuki aims to remedy with the Swish. Nice name, we think, and it looks younger than the scooter it borrows its motor from.

Easy rider

Dick Clark was a pioneer who created a television-based empire targeted at teenagers.

America's oldest teen

My family plans to buy a new car within a budget of Rs 5 lakh for a weekly commute of 40 km. We would like a petrol car that offers plenty of space in the rear and is fuel efficient. We&rsquo;re not particular about the car having a central locking feature. Please suggest a suitable vehicle.

Space cadet

The story is apocryphal but bears retelling. In the days when the film industry was yet to gain respectability in Indian society, the late swashbuckling film star Feroz Khan had applied for membership in Mumbai&rsquo;s Khar Gymkhana. Facing the snooty balloting committee was not a pleasant task for someone of Khan&rsquo;s calibre.

Turning a full circle

Every principal world religion has pilgrimage as a significant tenet. This pilgrimage is central to the &ldquo;sacred geography&rdquo; of the faith and provides an opportunity to the believer to traverse this physical space and seek to interact directly with the Divine.

Islam's sacred geography

What would it be like to inhabit a ruined city, a city not only smashed but also abandoned? Think of your own city this way: burnt-out shells of civic palaces, depressions in the rubble marking streets, balconies hanging off apartment towers.

Creating from destruction

In a nondescript lane off Agra Road in Aligarh, Rajiv Agrawal is talking animatedly on his mobile phone about a consignment of locks that needs to be delivered in the next two days. Conversation over, Agarwal, former president of the Aligarh Lock Manufacturers and Traders&rsquo; Association and director of Plus Point Buildsware, an Aligarh-based company that makes locks and lock components, apologises for keeping us waiting. &ldquo;With the financial year closing, everyone is in a hurry to get their orders,&rdquo; he explains.

It's a deadlock

Scene 1: India has lost all its super six games, and is out of the T-20 World Cup in the Caribbean in April 2010. As the players start to board the bus the one player who looks completely distraught and frustrated with himself is Yuvraj Singh. A dismal tournament, plagued by injuries, overweight Yuvraj is in the worst ever mental space of his life. So much so he has even contemplated giving it all up.

On the front foot

Rajeeb Samdani is enjoying his celebritydom. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he says of the hype that followed when he snapped his fingers and wrote a cheque for an undisclosed amount for a digital collage by Rashid Rana that had been grabbing eyeballs at New Delhi&rsquo;s India Art Fair earlier this year, &ldquo;Kiran Nadar spending $2 million is no longer news &mdash; that is expected &mdash; but Rajdeep Samdani spending that money on buying art makes it news.

Moment of truth

How many jokes on Sardars are there?&rdquo; quizzed a gentlemen of very definite Sikh antecedents. &ldquo;Perhaps a million,&rdquo; I replied irreverently. &ldquo;No, only four! The rest are all true incidents,&rdquo; he retorted with cheeky glee. The political incorrectness of the raucous laughter that ensued would certainly have been branded blasphemous by Mamatadi as she rises as the champion of the serious, somber and grave.

Why so serious?

New Delhi might tout itself as India&rsquo;s capital of art, but that&rsquo;s on account of its buying capacity rather than its ability to attract footfalls to its museums and galleries. Certainly, there&rsquo;s little by way of public art in the city, while Mumbai recently got itself Sudarshan Shetty&rsquo;s winged double-decker bus. Word is out that the Patna government is commissioning art for its public spaces, even if parochially by Bihari artists, and that includes its native star, Subodh Gupta, who currently lives and works in the National Capital Region.

Out in the open

The Russian teams championship was played in the town of Loo (!) just outside the Black Sea resort of Sochi. As usual, it had generous funding from many oligarchs and featured many foreign stars (a maximum of three non-Russians/ team) along with most of the local big guns. The format was six-board matches in a seven-round Swiss with a total of 18 teams playing the open section.

Chess (#997)

Are you ready to make some noise?&rdquo; shouts Gareth Emery, Britain&rsquo;s highest-ranked DJ, standing atop a stage titled &ldquo;Helia&rdquo; at the Tulip Star Hotel in Mumbai. With his name inscribed in the backdrop in neon, the electronic dance music (EDM) producer gyrates to his own beats, switching frequencies on his swank audio-mixer.

Sand on the dance floor

When Nadira Babbar founded theatre group Ekjute 31 years ago, she never imagined it would last so long. And neither did she anticipate all the changes that have transformed theatre in India over the last three decades. However, Babbar, who has been doing theatre for 42 long years, is delighted with the changes.

Drama queen

Even before hitting the small screen, Satyamev Jayate, with which Aamir Khan makes his television debut on May 5, is already making waves. To be telecast on Sundays at 11 am, the show will be reminiscent of Sunday morning family TV viewing &mdash; a common thing when serials like Ramayana and Mahabharat were on air.

STAR bets on Aamir's Midas touch in his TV debut

You will soon find Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone happily clicking away with a Sony Cyber-shot camera in a high-decibel campaign set to hit television screens the coming week.

Sony gears for compact click war

Here&rsquo;s an old war story with a new twist. Coca-Cola India has two brands, a cola and a clear drink, among the top three carbonated soft drinks in the country. PepsiCo&rsquo;s Pepsi is at No 3. But the top cola in Coca-Cola&rsquo;s arsenal is not Coke, like it is worldwide. It is Thums Up, the homegrown brand it acquired in 1994. When Coca-Cola and Pepsico entered India, they did not leave their legendary rivalry behind. It fell on Thums Up to battle it out with Pepsi on the ground as well as in its communication. Coca-Cola&rsquo;s Sprite took upon itself the onerous task of fighting PepsiCo&rsquo;s non-cola drinks.

The new frontier

What are the factors that could help increase car sales for leading vehicle manufacturers (VMs) in India? What makes customers buy a particular brand or be loyal to the same brand time and again? Some reasons include cost of the car, brand image, fuel efficiency, car makers&rsquo; reputation, car design etc. Can the after-sales service experience help sell more cars or make owners stay loyal to a brand for long? The answer seems to be &lsquo;yes&rsquo; according to Indian customers.

Vehicle servicing: the consumer is king

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