At Sip, an intimate wine bar furnished with a sofa and easy chairs that lend it the feeling of a friend&rsquo;s living room, the owner, Victor Gomez, was talking up Romanian reds while pouring glasses of C&ocirc;tes du Rh&ocirc;ne and tempranillo for customers that included three Japanese expats, two American tourists and a young Thai on short leave from his accounting job in Kuala Lumpur. &ldquo;The pinots are earthy and complex,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and the feteasca neagra are getting better and better.&rdquo; This scene unfolding on a Saturday night late last year would have been unsurprising had it not been for its location, in Bangkok.

In high spirits 

Business Standard

An hour and a half after we are to meet, I am still waiting at Pullela Gopichand&rsquo;s office. So are others: parents, vendors, guests. &ldquo;Saturdays are the busiest days for us,&rdquo; his secretary tells us.

Schooling aspiration

Muzaffar Ali carries on his shoulders the weight of his earlier films: Gaman, Umrao Jaan, Aagman and Anjuman. All four were based on Awadh, the area around Lucknow, and were critically acclaimed. To Ali goes the credit of portraying Awadh truthfully on cinema; the only other claimant being Satyajit Ray in Shatranj Ke Khiladi. Any film less artistic will be unacceptable to viewers. That&rsquo;s why Ali has gone 25 years without a release.

Awadh's storyteller

There&rsquo;s nothing quite like a candle-lit dinner for two at a fine-dining restaurant, with good food and a nice bottle of wine, to celebrate that most ancient of sentiments: love.

Valentine wines

Making their way across barren West Asia and Central Asia, when nomadic tribes camp, one of the things they do is dance. For many tribes, dance involves raising the arms heavenward and spinning in circles, much like the whirling dervishes of Turkey. There are striking similarities in the music and dance of the Roma or gypsies in Europe, Central Asia and India.

Spun together

The Soviets believed in planning. Talent was identified early and put through rigorous training. The talented were given &ldquo;jobs&rdquo; as journalists or trainers, or on the sports quota of public enterprises. They would mostly play mega round robins. Open tournaments were rare because opens incorporate a slice of random luck and playing for prizemoney was un-Soviet. The prizemoney structure of Opens also encourages cut-throat risk-taking.

Chess (#990)

A few weeks ago I read a very stimulating discussion &mdash; on the website of a favourite writer, Jim Emerson &mdash; about the &ldquo;technical&rdquo; knowledge required for in-depth movie criticism. Emerson mentions the reluctance of the legendary reviewer Pauline Kael to analyse technique, or to engage with the nuts and bolts of movie making. Elsewhere, he writes, &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t distinguish form and content for the purposes of analysis... You can&rsquo;t perceive the whole without taking notice of the specifics, any more than you can absorb a novel without reading the words.

Nuts and bolts

Mahindra&rsquo;s answer to the Toyota Innova, the Xylo, has met with a degree of success that even M&amp;M probably could never have imagined. Since its launch in January 2009, the Xylo has been moving from strength to strength, racking up sales of 90,000 units in three years. And while the growth story hasn&rsquo;t shown any signs of decline, the company has used the opportunity to slip in a makeover this time around.

Xylophonic

All roads led to Pragati Maidan in New Delhi that morning. Ratan Tata was all set to unveil the Nano, his dream project. Thousands thronged the Tata Motors pavilion. The world held its breath as Tata drove the Nano on to the stage.

All in a day's work

With several successful comedy shows and a Filmfare nomination in his kitty, stand-up comedian and actor Vir Das knows how to make the audience laugh.

A Funny Guy

Can there be any thing as fulfilling as the life of a writer? I am writing this column ensconced in the study of the late Manohar Malgonkar, in the remote region of Jagalbet in Karnataka. Set amidst 10 acres of wheat fields and jungle, the sprawling bungalow is where he worked and breathed his last at the ripe old age of 98 a couple of years ago.

A solitary reaper

The stocky Italian instructor sitting beside me in the Ferrari 458 Italia wasn&rsquo;t exactly fluent with the Queen&rsquo;s language, but I could understand what he was communicating despite his mouth being shut. He was talking volubly with his feet, mashing an imaginary brake pedal every time I rammed the accelerator pedal home.

Horseplay

I am looking to upgrade from a Maruti Suzuki Swift petrol to a sub-&#39; 10 lakh sedan. I want a car that beats, or at least matches, the Swift&rsquo;s manoeuvrability in tight traffic and stability on the highway. I am also looking for good mileage and low maintenance costs. I&rsquo;d prefer a car with a little bit of heft if you know what I mean. I drive about 40-50 km in the city each day with about a 500 km highway run every few months.

Sunny side up

One-Sentence Answer: Active leadership, new voices, safe spaces, and smart borrowing can help protect innovators from the sucking sound of the core.

Break the 'Sucking Sound of the Core'

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), India&rsquo;s third- biggest two-wheeler maker, showcased the CBR150R at the Delhi Auto Expo last month.

Battle of the Samurais in India

Despite being a late entrant, business and risk consulting firm Protiviti has made a mark for itself in the internal audit market in India in a short span of six years. Mritunjay Kapur, country managing director, Protiviti Consulting, joined the firm in 2006, and is credited with spearheading the company&rsquo;s growth strategy in the country. In this conversation with Alokananda Chakraborty, Kapur talks about how talks about the lessons learned from the recent financial crisis and how organisations are reacting to the new demands of risk management. Excerpts.

Traditional risk management approaches do not adequately identify, evaluate and manage risk: Mritunjay Kapur

When in India, we know who rules the social networking domain. But if you are among those who prefer real-time chatting on your smart phone or tablet, it&rsquo;s time to try Nimbuzz. A recent survey by Nielsen Informate panel says that the Nimbuzz Messenger, a free chat and calling app that lets you connect 24x7 on Gtalk, Facebook, Yahoo, MSN etc, enjoys 24 per cent reach in the chat genre in India.

The chatterbox challenge

The Indian cheese story has come a long way &mdash; from one that once used to be only about Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation&rsquo;s Amul, cubed, canned and now sliced, it now includes a bunch of new players, both national and international. Increasing competition has also meant players are looking at newer avenues for growth. Take Maharashtra-based Parag Milk Foods, which is eyeing the institutional segment with keen interest.

Parag Milk Foods: Way to go

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ISBN

The top 10 business bestsellers

    Identify this American entrepreneur who learnt to program on an Atari 800 at the age of seven. He was caught hacking into a Fortune 500 company at 16 and was recruited by the CIA to work for them. He became the founding president of an internet company at 24 and wanted to make a hedgehog the company&rsquo;s mascot.

The Strategist Quiz (#240)

    In the 90s a computer virus was discovered that would erase all PC hard disks annually on March 6th of every year. What was the name given to it and why? IBM&rsquo;s PCs were most affected.

Answers to last week's quiz (#239)

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