I was there when a minor deluge of people came from the other side into Punjab&rsquo;s parts bordering Pakistan, right up to Chandigarh, with the Pakistani cricket team that came to play a Test series in 2005. Everyone said Punjabiyat, as a culture, had proved to be a bigger binding force than the divisiveness of politics. Before that, I was transfixed as the Indian team went to the other side the year before to &mdash; as Prime Minister Vajpayee put it with his usual eloquence &mdash; win not only matches but also hearts. The team won both. A large contingent of non-cricketers accompanied the team, including many journalists sponsored by corporate houses, to roam the lanes of Karachi and Lahore. Young Pakistani girls sang naughty little songs to tickle Indian players (Balaji zara dheere chalo, for instance).

Love thy neighbour?

Business Standard

Military conquests are often led by business. In the last years of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the East India Company was convinced there were business possibilities beyond the high Himalayas. Tibet was a closed market. If it could somehow be opened, then goods made in the company&rsquo;s factories could be shipped there in bulk. The problem was that the Tibetans were a xenophobic lot; it was impossible for a European to sneak onto the roof of the world.

High spies

Sportsmen giving in to the temptations of big bucks, and making news for off-field reasons.

Should we care about sport anymore?

The Shanghai Masters consisted of a four player double round-robin with two to qualify and join Carlsen and Anand in a similar DRR, in a &ldquo;final&rdquo; to be played in Bilbao. The field was unbalanced with Aronyan, Kramnik, Shirov and Wang Hao. The latter is strong but not quite in the same league as the first three.

CHESS #643

Birbal&rsquo;s silverware, Tipu Sultan&rsquo;s palanquin, the chair Nehru broke and a treasure trove of anecdotes.

Walk into my parlour

Imagine getting ready for a strenuous workout that exercises your abs, waist, back, hips and more.

ABS-olutely!

Trust the Italians. As Elizabeth Gilbert&rsquo;s Eat, Pray, Love went from bestselling memoir to a Julia-and-Javier starring romantic blockbuster in the film theatres, tour guides in Bologna, Naples and Rome were pulling in the groupies.

Eat (pray/love optional)

58 paintings along the ground floor corridor of Parliament House have been restored for the first time.

Art in the house

Ever had somebody&rsquo;s umbilical cord fall into your lap? This is the sort of thing they don&rsquo;t tell you about when they&rsquo;re extolling the joys of becoming a parent or grandparent. Economists have a technical term for this, and that is &lsquo;hidden costs&rsquo;. Have you ever had a kid tell you that you&rsquo;re an ugly old woman/man and that you will shortly go blind? That&rsquo;s what you can expect if you&rsquo;re planning to have more than one kid. The technical term for that is &lsquo;sibling rivalry&rsquo;.

Trailing clouds of gory

The recent grand inauguration of the INA Market metro station in Delhi saw an unlikely marriage of modern mass transport and traditional handicrafts. In an underground passageway, handlooms and handicrafts from across India were exhibited in squat enclosures, heavily framed. This is called the &quot;Crafts of India Galleries&quot;.

Carving place out of space

Drawing up a strategy is exciting. The entire process of brainstorming, interpreting consumer insights, analysing research, playing with postulates and creating hypotheses is exhilarating. Eating those dry sandwiches late at night, gulping zillion cups of black coffee, knocking off objections and punching in PowerPoint presentations &mdash; that&rsquo;s an ideal day at office.

Are we obsessed with strategising?

Two cities, two festivals &mdash; a similar madness. The 11-day Ganeshotsav in Mumbai, which starts today, and the five-day Durga Puja in Kolkata (October 13-17) are not just about piety.

Heaven sent opportunities

There&rsquo;s is this 26-year-old lady whose Facebook status message says she has been &ldquo;shamelessly&rdquo; waiting to see Dabangg. She gets a smattering of responses, some of which, mainly from those in their teens, express dismay over her eagerness, but there are many others who echo it.

Back with a Dabangg

The streets are completely deserted at this ungodly hour. This is downtown Mumbai and it was intensely throbbing with life not a few hours ago. Now, there is complete silence except for the steady patter of the rain. Bar a few listless security guards, it is, well, like a ghost town. The perfect setting, then, for a supernatural automobile, that too in haunting white, to waft around.

Ghost story

Durga may be recycled and Diwali celebrated before time, but Indians import their festivals with gusto.

Non-resident gods

When companies launch innovation initiatives, they focus almost all of their time and energy on that initial one per cent &mdash; the thrilling hunt for the breakthrough idea. The reality is that an idea is only a beginning. Innovation is not just the much-anticipated light-bulb moment. It is also a long, hard journey &mdash; from imagination to impact.

Executing innovation

UTV Action is expanding its distribution and content, six months since its launch. Unlike other movie channels which span a gamut of genres, the channel focuses on action movies which rate as the most-watched movie genre on TV. When UTV redid its Bindaas Movies, a youth-centric movie channel, into UTV Action, it had a sharper positioning on its hands. &ldquo;We were looking to capture a mood of the viewers than just offer a movie. Hence, the entire channel was oriented to action,&rdquo; says UTV Global Broadcasting CEO MK Anand. It got more undivided attention of audiences and advertisers. The task on its hands now is to get more action movies and reach more of its target audience, before other players launch their specialty movie channels.

Action replay in Hindi

Three new TV commercials back to back, then a high-profile Nescafe ad preceded by a teaser. Nestl&eacute;, the country&rsquo;s largest foods company, has suddenly taken the commercials market by storm.

Fresh take

The toilet cleaner market in the country is estimated at around &#39;60 crore per annum.

KIT: The toilet cleaner market in India

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The top 10 business bestsellers

    This brand&rsquo;s name hails from the popular sport of cricket and it was introduced by Karamchand Appliances, which is now a subsidiary of a multinational. Name the brand and the company that owns it now.

Answers to last week's quiz (#165)

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