Suchitra Mitra, the legendary singer of Tagore songs, died in January. In this homage, Kabir Suman, the pioneer of Bengali modern songs, recalls a little-known aspect of her genius.

A singer's tribute

Business Standard

Poor Amy Chua! Death threats for writing a parenting memoir? I&rsquo;m so hoping she took some time off from the academic rigour of her life to invest in some meaningful relationships &mdash; you know, like the ones that are formed over sleepovers or fun summer camps? &mdash; because she&rsquo;s really going to need all the friends she can get, ever since she stirred up the biggest parenting storm in recent years with The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

No kidding

Abhinav Bindra is in Munich till the end of February. His family cannot reach him. The instructions from the young shooter are clear: don&rsquo;t call me, I will call you. &ldquo;For Abhinav, his fitness regime is above all else,&rdquo; says his father, A S Bindra. &ldquo;He is in Germany preparing for the 2012 Olympics and does not want anybody to distract him.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s the stuff Olympians are made of.Contrast him with Samaresh Jung, who doesn&rsquo;t have a coach and whose fitness seems to be on the decline. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Jung won five golds, a silver and a bronze. He got the David Dixon Award for &ldquo;Best Athlete of the 18th Commonwealth Games&rdquo;, and was dubbed &ldquo;Goldfinger&rdquo;.

Cut the flab

The Tata ended in triumph for Hikaru Nakamura. The 23-year-old American GM won his first super-tournament with 9 points (+6,-1,=6) and a tournament performance rating (TPR) of 2879. This adds 23 points to his January 2011 rating of 2751. &ldquo;Naka&rdquo; scored 5.5 off the bottom six players with calculated risk-taking.

Chess #668

Indulekha Aravind travels to AMU to gauge why the first women in the fray for the union&rsquo;s top posts lost miserably.

Old order, for now

Aabhas Sharma visits Deoband and finds that neither students nor teachers are comfortable speaking about the Vastanvi controversy.

Silence on another campus

Call it the domino effect. Johnson &amp; Johnson&rsquo;s (J&amp;J) aggressive marketing of Nicorette, the sugar-free nicotine gum, has made smokers who want to kick the butt sit up and take notice.

Starting the fire

If you have been taught that the internet is free and cannot be controlled, you might have to unlearn what you have learnt. Late last week (January 28), the Egyptian government, with a single flip of a switch, blocked its over 80 million citizens from accessing the internet or using mobile phones.

Forcing internet blackouts

Armed with a marketing budget of Rs 25 crore, leading US-based online travel company Expedia is now planning to make inroads into India&rsquo;s online travel market.

Expedia sets out to please Indian travellers

Aabhas Sharma travels to Chhattisgarh to find out how companies sell in the Naxal areas.

Dangerous business

Want to liven up your weekends? Acquire one of these practical classics.

Get a life!

Rahul Bhatia set up IndiGo and the Ibis hotels in India. Mihir Mishra on the man and his plan.

Growth on two planes

Gyan Verma profiles BJP&rsquo;s Anurag Thakur, of Ekta Yatra and cricket fame, a young political star with hundreds rather than thousands of followers.

Batting for Himachal

Maruti just launched its most expensive offering in India, a luxury sports car, the Kizashi. In Japan, as a baby boy&rsquo;s name it means &ldquo;powerful&rdquo;. As a car badge, Maruti says it means &ldquo;prelude to good things&rdquo;. In India, we will figure what it means once we get past the name. For a company that redefined the four wheeler landscape, Kizashi seems to do little to embolden Maruti&rsquo;s lead as the maker of compact cars. Worse, it&rsquo;s trying to woo an unfamiliar customer &mdash; the luxury seeker &mdash; at a time when competitive pressure in its bread-and-butter compact segment is building. It risks losing focus on both.

'A prelude to good things'

The immense, unwieldy State Bank of India is learning to compete.

One step forward at SBI

A nd if you&rsquo;re into motorcycles, there&rsquo;s no reason to be left out because here are two bikes that are classics in every sense of the term and yet are practical enough to be your daily ride.

These too are old school

I am looking for a car which has a quiet cabin, with minimal road and other noise coming through, and with great ride quality. The car will be mainly chauffeur driven, and fuel efficiency is not an issue. I am in no hurry and can wait if there is a new car coming. My budget is Rs 20 lakh-plus.

Skoda pop

In a fortnight of earthshaking news, one fascinating story became a sideshow. In the Brazilian Amazon, close to the border of Peru, a group from Brazil&rsquo;s National Indian Foundation and the rights group Survival International took a flight over the forest. From their low-flying plane they took video footage, the first ever images of a tribe of Panoan Indians hitherto unknown to the world.

Breaking the spell

Debaleena Sengupta and Shine Jacob revisit the colonial grandeur of the city that was once the capital of British India.

Two worlds

LEADERSHIP@INFOSYS
Author: Matthew Barney 
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Price: Rs 699
ISBN: 9780670084951.
INDIA: 150 YEARS IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Author: S Prasannarajan 
Publisher: Roli 
Price: Rs 3,500
ISBN: 9788174368119.
THE BIG SHORT
Author: Lewis Michael 
Publisher: Penguin 
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 9781846142574.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Author: Rashmi Bansal 
Publisher: Eklavya Education Foundation 
Price: Rs 150
ISBN: 9788190453028.
MANAGERS WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Author: TV Rao 
Publisher: Random House India 
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 9788184001372.
BUSINESS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Author: Anurag K Agarwal 
Publisher: Random House India 
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 9788184001402.
SURVIVING THE STORM
Author: Dhiraj Nayyar 
Publisher: Penguin Books India 
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 9780670085255.
OPEN SOURCE LEADER
Author: Sangeeth Varghese 
Publisher: Penguin Books India 
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 9780670083268.
DECISION POINTS
Author: George W Bush 
Publisher: Virgin Books

The top 10 business bestsellers

    Name the company that got started when its founder&rsquo;s friend, a glassmaker based in San Francisco, failed to sell one of his pieces on the street simply because he couldn&rsquo;t accept credit cards. The same person founded a successful online company with projected revenue of $150 million.

The Strategist Quiz (#187)

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

Page 940 - Supplements