Not many people who have seen Raja Ravi Varma&rsquo;s masterpieces like &ldquo;Mohini&rdquo;, which depicts a lady on a swing, and &ldquo;Dattatreya&rdquo; and &ldquo;Riddhi Siddhi&rdquo;, which portray Ganesha with his consorts, at Delhi&rsquo;s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) know that these prized works of art were nearly lost forever. About nine registered 19th century paintings by the artist from Kerala who died in 1906 were recovered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2003 after a raid in Delhi. After the recovery, the paintings were initially kept with CBI but later given to NGMA where, it was felt, they belonged. What is left with CBI now is images of those paintings which the bureau has proudly displayed in its newly-inaugurated gallery along with the story of how the agency has proved to be the &ldquo;savior of national heritage&rdquo;.

The crime history of India

Business Standard

Subhash Ghai&rsquo;s &uuml;ber-cool idea of treating cine-goers to two movies for the price of one crumbled at the 11th hour. The director of successful 1990s potboilers such as Pardes and Taal who also runs the production house Mukta Arts, had wanted to release Love Express and Cycle Kick together, and run them back-to-back in multiplexes, with a 10-minute interval in between the two 90-minute-long films.

Buy 1, get 1 free

Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume dictionary of the language of ancient Mesopotamia and its Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, unspoken for 2,000 years but preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions deciphered over the last two centuries, has finally been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.

A "dead" tongue

It&rsquo;s d&eacute;j&agrave; vu time at the country&rsquo;s largest car maker. Almost 11 years after a three-month industrial action led to a compromise between striking workers and the management, Maruti is being forced to deal with dour workers once again. They are demanding better working conditions, less monetarily punitive action and a new union.

Labour the issue

Interest in domestic football is on the wane. That hasn&rsquo;t stopped India&rsquo;s most famous footballer from launching the United Sikkim Football Club.

Bhutia's boys

Few of us in India have a wine cellar or even a wine chiller &mdash; at most one will have a few bottles of wine for a &ldquo;slightly special&rdquo; occasion. For the rest, it&rsquo;s a run down to a convenient retail shop when the need arises &mdash; something that can be done in all the metro cities (including Bangalore) and Goa.

Full-bodied, at home

Panchanathan Magesh Chandran led the Third Orissa KiiT Cup going into the last round but a loss to Alexsej Aleksandrov of Belarus pegged him back. Aleksandrov took clear first with 9 points from 11. Magesh tied for 2-4 with Abhijeet Gupta and Tigran L. Petrosian (all three on 8.5).

Chess (#681)

    This late animal celebrity was found on postage stamps. Tens of thousands of bank ATM cards featured its face. A candy maker used to churn out more than a million replicas of it as gummy candies a day. The zoo in which it stayed was listed in the local stock exchange and showed profits during the years of its existence and as a brand it generated more than $140 million in business. Name this celebrity and the place it inhabited.

The Strategist Quiz (#205)

Sakhidevi smiles radiantly as she serves chilled Coke at her shop. That&rsquo;s a real big deal for this store-owner in a small village off Agra which goes without power for several days at a stretch. &ldquo;My daily earnings have gone up three-fold,&rdquo; Sakhidevi says.

Coke's cool move faces cost heat

    The Streisand Effect. Named after actress Barbra Streisand because of her unsuccessful 2003 lawsuit attempting to remove photographs of her Malibu home from the web &mdash; which of course had people flocking to the site that hosted the pictures.

Answers to last week's quiz (#204)

Bikiran Roy from Bangalore downloads five movies every week through his broadband Internet connection with a 100-GB download limit and is not interested in paying for the live streaming services on offer. &ldquo;When I can download these movies for free and store them on my devices, why should I be happy watching them online just once,&rdquo; wonders Roy.

Live streaming woos online movie buffs

Touchscreens have changed the way we interact with handheld devices. Developers have started targeting &lsquo;touch&rsquo; features across a multitude of apps allowing users a unique experience to learn musical instruments on their smartphones and Tablet PCs. You can now invest a few bucks on a music app and learn playing piano, drums, tanpura or guitar &mdash; straight from your touchscreen device. We review some of the top-rated music apps.

Hit the right notes with your apps

In 2009, 36-year-old Sudha Rani used to look for excuses to keep her two children occupied during the holidays so that they do not play outdoor games under the scorching sun. &ldquo;Not anymore. With the simplest online games on offer now, specifically targeting kids it is not difficult,&rdquo; says Rani. &ldquo;Some of these games are actually useful for educational purposes. And, participating in those games is a great bonding experience with my children.

Games kids play with parents

Kissan acts as a catalyst, easing stressful moments at the dining table.

Food for thought

After its first venture in the FM radio space with BIG FM, Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd (RBNL) has diversified its business to step into television (BIG CBS), outdoor (BIG STREET), experiential marketing (BIG LIVE) and the digital platform (BIG DIGITAL). While radio continues to be the largest contributor to its revenue (70 per cent), the company expects its more recent ventures to make a bigger contribution to its total revenue in the short to medium term. Tarun Katial, chief executive officer, RBNL, speaks to Preeti Khicha on the way forward for the different business verticals. Edited excerpts.

Q&A: Tarun Katial, CEO, Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd

A young engineer with the vision of leveraging technology to improve the lives of people finds ways to make conventional robots more intelligent. In 2007 he founded Gridbots which develops robots with a solution-centric approach. They consume only a fifth of the power consumed by conventional robots, and weigh only a third of their weight. Audio- and video-based analytics technologies make them more intelligent than conventional ones. We bring you the case study on Gridbots&rsquo; venture into robotics in an exclusive arrangement with India Brand Equity Foundation. This is the first in a five-part series from IBEF&rsquo;s Innovations from India: Harbingers of Change. The series focuses on the innovation-driven entrepreneurial spirit of Indian companies.

Using robotics to solve real problems

Four years after publishing its first magazine in the country, Cond&eacute; Nast India is set to launch its corporate campaign. While its three titles &mdash; Vogue, GQ and Cond&eacute; Nast Traveller &mdash; target the affluent reader, the corporate campaign will target media planners and brand managers with reasons that make it the ideal vehicle for luxury advertising. Cond&eacute; Nast India Managing Director Alex Kuruvilla points out, &ldquo;We had a powerful story to tell with our three titles. While our readers are familiar with our magazines, the awareness that they come from the same group is low. The corporate campaign articulates our role in the luxury segment since we entered India.

Conde Nast India: Luxury matters

After Do Dooni Chaar, the first Hindi live-action movie distributed by The Walt Disney Company (Disney) in India, won a National Award, the Hollywood studio tied up with UTV Motion Pictures (UTV) for more. The two studios, which have had a long-standing association, have entered a movie co-production deal to bring out four to five new titles a year.

The Walt Disney Company: Disney's designs on India

FREEFALL
Author: Joseph Stiglitz 
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CONNECT THE DOTS
Author: Rashmi Bansal 
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SURVIVING THE STORM
Author: Dhiraj Nayyar 
Publisher: Penguin Books India 
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 9780670085255.
ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP - 2011 OFFICIAL GUIDE
Publisher: Living Media India 
Price: Rs 200
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MANAGERS WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Author: TV Rao
Publisher: Random House India
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ISBN: 9788184001372.
GEEK NATION
Author: Angela Saini 
Publisher: Hachette
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 9781444734096.
THE HABIT OF WINNING
Author: Prakash Iyer 
Publisher: Penguin Books India 
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 9780143068280.
THE MAN WHO SOLD AMERICA
Authors: Jeffrey L Cruikshank and Arthur W Schultz 
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Price: Rs 995
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ESSENCE OF GOOD MANAGEMENT
Author: K R Kim 
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The top 10 business bestsellers

The higher education system in India is largest in the world in terms of number of institutes and the third-largest in terms of enrollments.

KIT: Private universities in India

A year after French auto major Renault terminated its joint venture with homegrown automobile manufacturer Mahindra &amp; Mahindra (M&amp;M), the company is back to prove its mettle in the world&rsquo;s second fastest growing automobile market with its premium mid-size sedan Fluence.

Renault's second coming

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

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