It is ironic that the week in which the sound of one hand slapping rocked the country happened to be the week which celebrates Musician&rsquo;s Day.

The sound of music

Business Standard

What A K Ramanujan actually said in his essay on the many ramayanas, and why he might have offended those who plan courses for history students.

The difference is telling

Selling luxury homes is a personalised art.

Luxe living

There has been an explosion of estrogen on screen recently&rdquo; says Jitesh Pillai, editor-in-chief of Filmfare, &ldquo;and it&rsquo;s become quite risqu&eacute;!&rdquo; Social anthropologists who want to understand India will ignore Bollywood at their own peril. For all its pelvic thrusts, larger-than-life characters and vaulting orchestras, Bollywood has held a mirror to the changing mores of India, and never has it been so closely in step with it as today.

Enter, the brave new heroine

Another shot at glory

What is so exciting about a 245 bhp car? A car that doesn&rsquo;t even have doors, or a roof, or a windscreen! Well, a lot, if the car in question is the Ariel Atom. It&rsquo;s the quickest, most minimalistic sports car you can buy this side of a Formula 1 racer. Wait a minute.

Atomic Kitten

I have owned a Maruti 800 for the last 12 years and I am going to buy a new hatchback within the next 3-4 months. My budget is Rs 5-6 lakh. I am looking for comfort for the passengers, especially the rear seat passengers. My running is around 10,000-12,000 km a year.

Hatch plans

How relevant is K K Hebbar as an Indian modernist? With a retrospective of his work showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, after it ran to apparently packed houses at NGMA Bangalore, it is important to try and place him within the grid of India&rsquo;s first flush of artists who brought both the Western and the Indian idioms to bear on their painting tradition. Many of those artists are not just national but also global icons.

An artist less celebrated

Four new movies try to redeem the near-declining trend of newspaper reading.

Smudged ink

The lead investigator of the country&rsquo;s first paranormal society says 90 per cent of the cases are false. Rationalists argue that the remaining 10 per cent are also bunkum.

Soul searcher

The crowds at cricket stadiums are thinning by the day.

Testing times

Goa&rsquo;s Sunburn festival gets bigger and louder.

Sun, beach and music

While Sula rules the roost with both the best Indian wines and the highest sales, there are an increasing number of other good quality wines vying for shelf space and listings &mdash; time to check them out.

India's best wines

Ratan Tata&rsquo;s inheritor in the most widely watched succession quest in India&rsquo;s corporate landscape, Cyrus Mistry, has the Obamaesque task of steering a large, multi-decked ship &mdash; the Tata Group. Much is being made of his one advantage &mdash; that he understands the &lsquo;Tata culture&rsquo;. Mistry&rsquo;s true test, though, may really end up being far less about the Tata culture and more about steering the group through what&rsquo;s the worst incessant drubbing the global economy has taken since World War II, given the group has never been more global in scope or ambition.

Yes, he can?

Koneru Humpy&rsquo;s title challenge was snuffed out in clinical fashion by Hou Yifan. Hou took a 2-0 lead by winning game six with a snap combination in mutual time trouble. She made it 3-0 by winning game seven as well, with a workmanlike endgame.

Chess (#982)

This month, for the first time since the entry of international majors in the retail sector, all the three international chains operating their cash and carry business in India launched new outlets or announced aggressive expansion plans.

A whole new opportunity

Birla White&rsquo;s parrot commercial tries to put the brand top-of-mind with a healthy dose of everyday humour.

Serious business

While many still argue that the West will maintain its edge because of its penchant for innovation, India is not far behind.

Q&A: Nirmalya Kumar & Phanish Puranam, Aditya Birla India Centre

The iPhone 4S is here within a month of its launch in the US and is priced at Rs 44,500. While that&rsquo;s a steep price to pay for a smartphone, there are fans out there who cannot wait to own it. New Delhi-based financial planner, Rahul Kushwah, who has pre-booked the iPhone 4S with Airtel, says, &ldquo;I know I could have got it cheaper from the US or Singapore, but I needed an Indian warranty on my device as I am prone to dropping handsets. Devices bought internationally do not carry an international warranty and then they need to be repaired in grey markets.

Price doesn't matter

The other day a friend got home a pair of flip-flops that had &lsquo;Facebook&rsquo; branding on it. Curiously, I asked her if it was a gift or souvenir from somebody at that internet company. I was surprised when she said she bought it off a stall on Linking Road in Mumbai.

Online edge for local retail

The industry is segmented into sectors namely, milk and allied products (dairy), meat and poultry, seafood, bakery and confectionery, fruit and vegetables, grain, pulses and oilseeds (staple) products, alcoholic and non-alcoholic products (beverages), and packaged foods. The classification is not distinct as many processed products overlap different segments.

KIT: Food Processing Industry in India

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

Page 1331 - Supplements