If anybody has a packed 2011 calendar, it&rsquo;s Audi India. The R8 V10 supercar has already seen around 14 entries in the order book and it is considering bringing down the Spyder (convertible) variant too. Audi India already has processed one such order for the Spyder and is looking for more potential customers. In March, the German brand will add a third engine option to the Q5 &mdash; the 2.0 TDI diesel and will be priced identically as the 2.0 TFSI petrol at Rs 42 lakh, ex-showroom, Mumbai.

Audi-acious

Business Standard

In one strip from Calvin &amp; Hobbes, Calvin is seeking information from his erratic father. &ldquo;Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn&rsquo;t they have colour film back then?&rdquo; Calvin&rsquo;s dad, who likes his little jokes, tells him: &ldquo;Sure they did. In fact, those photographs are colour. It&rsquo;s just the world was black and white then.

Colours of life

Some time back I took some advice from you and found it very useful. Now one of my friends is looking to buy a car. At present he is driving a Maruti 800. His running is 1,400 km a month, mostly in Delhi city. He is looking for a mid-size car. The budget is Rs 5 to 6 lakh.

New pinch

It&rsquo;s a sport that many of us have played casually, to round off a picnic with a friendly test of strength, perhaps, or in school, jousting on the field with classmates.

A long rope

On the morning of 27 December 2009, former India captain and now commentator Sunil Gavaskar walked in to do his pitch report at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in New Delhi. These were his words, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a hair transplant pitch with bald patches.&rdquo; What happened in the next two hours was something nobody had imagined. The match between India and Sri Lanka was called off after 23.3 overs as the pitch was deemed unplayable. Heads rolled at the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) and Kotla was banned from holding international matches for a year.

Pitch report

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose the lies, Noam Chomsky had said. For a motley group of artists, poets, actors and former bureaucrats in Kolkata, there is one single &lsquo;truth&rsquo; at the moment: Left rule in West Bengal must end. Is Mamata Banerjee the only option? Some of the intellectuals have thrown in their lot with Mamata; others haven&rsquo;t made up their mind.

Winds of change

The Aeroflot ended with a repeat victory for defending champion Le Quang Liem. The Vietnamese GM retained by a hairsbreadth to qualify again for the Dortmund super-tournament where he finished second in 2010. Ivan Cheparinov, who shared the lead after beating Le in the penultimate round, lost in the last round.

Chess #670

Architects and planners like to believe they direct the shape of the city. But the truth is that the Indian city grows and spurts with all the autonomy of a living organism. Design is not the culprit here rather it is the victim, enslaved within the clutches of policy or what is infamously called the &lsquo;system&rsquo;.

The law is always an ass

Analjit Singh says he was very excited when a home ministry official called to say that the government had decided to give him a Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in the country. The response of friends and associates over the next few days overwhelmed him too.

Out of the woods

Sanjay Jog looks at Prithviraj Chavan&rsquo;s 100 days as CM of a state embroiled in controversies.

Bouquets or brickbats?

Hindustan Unilever Managing Director Nitin Paranjpe says the company is looking at every possible lever in its control to meet the challenges of severe commodity price pressures. In this interview with Shyamal Majumdar and Viveat Susan Pinto, he also talks about why downtrading, if any, will be temporary as the secular trend will continue to be premiumisation.

Q&A: Nitin Paranjpe, MD, Hindustan Unilever

Anand Mahindra does not put the acquisition of the South Korean automaker Ssangyong as the next big milestone for his group of companies after the launch of the Scorpio, Mahindra&rsquo;s top-selling sports utility vehicle built with homegrown technology. Instead, the 55-year-old Vice-chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra &amp; Mahindra confers the title on the new corporate branding that the group is quietly undertaking, under the mantra Rise.

Rising to the occasion

Does your team know where it is heading? Have you defined and communicated the future you want? Managers often say they are carried away by events. They don&rsquo;t make decisions in conscious pursuit of some longer-term goal. In this extract from the book Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, authors Linda A Hill and Kent Lineback discuss why it is important for a team to prepare for future and how to go about it.

Why must you worry about the future?

Over more than a decade since the category came into its own, many brands have come to spell life insurance only as i-n-v-e-s-t-m-e-n-t.

Agent of change

If it&rsquo;s light, it&rsquo;s right. Food companies are busy keeping up pace with the growing preference for healthy, lean, low fat, low calorie, less filling or lite food.

Let there be lite

Mercedes-Benz recently unveiled two new variants of the Maybach &mdash; Maybach 57S and Maybach 62 &mdash; sporting price tags of Rs 4.85 crore and Rs 5.1 crore (ex-showroom Delhi) respectively. Though the German luxury brand has sold five units since launch in 2004-05, the automaker believes the time is right for a renewed push.

Mercedes-Benz: Back for more

Leading brands are taking promotions to a new level for the World Cup and IPL.

On the front foot

Emirates Airline, the national airline of Dubai and the largest airline in the West Asia, has launched its pre-summer awareness campaign in India. Dubbed &ldquo;Guess where, and Emirates will fly you there!&rdquo;, the campaign comprises eight television commercials and 15 print ads, of which four TVCs have already gone on air and seven print ads have been issued. The campaign has been split into two stages, each conveying a distinct message.

Emirates Airline: Discovering destinations

Most users are unhappy with the cap on &lsquo;unlimited&rsquo; access plans.

Fair usage policies tick off broadband consumers

Keeping pace with students who are becoming more tech-savvy, schools in India are taking to the concept of digital classrooms &mdash; a new education technology that assists teachers with course-ware and maintenance support in digital format.

Digital classrooms: The future of young India

Considering the growing popularity of smartphones, tablets and notebooks in India, it&rsquo;s no surprise that the digital medium is going to be the next battle ground for companies this cricket season.

Clean sweep for cricket across digital platforms

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