The American town of Virginia Beach is the base for the commandos who killed Osama bin Laden. William Selway pays a visit.

Home of the SEALs

Business Standard

Obama displayed unimaginable amounts of savoir-faire during the run-up to the Osama killing. Consider this: not only did he appear relaxed at the White House dinner a day before Operation Geronimo, but his demolition of &ldquo;The Donald&rdquo; with wit and humour had the audience in splits.

As cool as Obama

Rewriting the Mahabharata from Arjuna and Ashwatthama&rsquo;s viewpoint, Lidchi-Grassi provides a novel perspective.

Epic double vision

Kolkata had the Marwari traders, Mumbai the Parsi businessmen; what about Delhi? For a long time now, it has been said that Delhi never had a strong business community. Indeed, the first factory came up only in 1886 &mdash; Delhi Cloth &amp; General Mills. In spite of being the seat of power for centuries together, Delhi did not develop a strong mercantile community, it is argued, because it was landlocked, unlike Kolkata and Mumbai.

Rise and fall in 1857

These are among the country&rsquo;s most exclusive clubs.

The ivory league

I haven&rsquo;t eaten at either Noma or El Celler de Can Roca, named the top two restaurants in the world in Restaurant magazine&rsquo;s highly influential list of the world&rsquo;s 50 best restaurants. Eating out at the Michelin-starred restaurants has become something of a blood sport, the foodie equivalent of climbing the world&rsquo;s highest peaks, with each prized menu from the Fat Duck or Alinea carried back reverentially as a trophy. But friends tell me that these two, like Thomas Keller&rsquo;s French Laundry before them, are truly temples of gastronomy.

Playing with our food

It&rsquo;s Tuesday, 5:40 pm at PVR Select City Walk at Saket in Delhi. The evening show of Men Will Be Men opens to mostly empty seats. A handful of young men and women have turned up to watch the movie. The &ldquo;free small combo&rdquo; of Pepsi and popcorn with every ticket hasn&rsquo;t quite succeeded in attracting the crowds. Ten minutes into the movie, which has four colleagues &mdash; two bachelors, one married and another engaged &mdash; hoodwinking their boss to head for Pattaya, and the audience is already getting restless. The next 70 minutes (the short duration of the film) fly by in a daze. Through them, the audience tries hard to follow the movie, a comic caper which at times does elicit laughter, but the comments in the end as people troop out of the hall say it all. &ldquo;What were they thinking?&rdquo; remarks one.

The 70-minute ad

A century-old house journal is more than a magazine for the armed forces.

A page from the forces

Three small-time lawbreakers have a bomb in their possession (it was in a bag they stole) and want to blow it up in an isolated setting, just for fun. But where and how? &ldquo;Mumbai mein ek bhi jagah nahin jahaan bomb ko shanti se uda saken,&rdquo; (&ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t a single place in Mumbai where you can go to peacefully explode a bomb&rdquo;) goes one of the funniest lines in the excellent new film Shor in the City. The story is set during the chaotic Ganesh Chaturthi festival: roads are jammed, people dance wildly along the streets. &ldquo;So much shor &mdash; how is a man even supposed to hear himself think?&rdquo; a character wonders.

Of sound and silence

He&rsquo;s a player with talent and potential.

The lost action hero

Gata Kamsky retained the US title beating Yury Shulman 1.5-0.5. Anna Zatonskih had a much rougher ride before beating Tatev Abrahamyan 2.5-1.5 In an Armageddon bid game, Zatonskih retained black by bidding the lower amount of 20 minutes. White got the statutory 45 minutes.

Chess (#677)

I&rsquo;m sitting in a room in the tiny rural hamlet of Vardenhalli near Bangalore, listening to a mild-mannered young man explain the origin of life through a squiggly chalk-drawn &ldquo;Tree of Life&rdquo; to roughly dozen children between the ages of 9 and 11. He is barefoot, as are the rest of us on the redoxide floor and in that 90-minute class peppered with words like &ldquo;protis&rdquo;, &ldquo;algae&rdquo; and &ldquo;arthropods&rdquo;, the young faces turned inquiringly towards him never once look bored.

Class action

Indulekha Aravind travels to Puttaparthi to find out the fate of an economy now bereft of the man it was centred on.

Life after Sai Baba

There are many ways to describe the new Honda CBR250R. However, if I had only one way to describe it, it would be &lsquo;path-breaking.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s right, ladies and gentlemen. Indian motorcyclists have always yearned for a &lsquo;real&rsquo; performance motorcycle, one that not only looks the part, but also goes the part.

Red alert

A movie that you simply shouldn&rsquo;t miss &mdash; and it's headed to a theatre near you this June! If you liked Cars, then it&rsquo;s only natural you&rsquo;ll like the animated Cars 2. After conquering the world of racing in America, Lightning McQueen now heads to compete in his first-ever World Grand Prix.

Auto reels

I need a baby diesel SUV that will cost below Rs 20 lakh. It should have good legroom, comfortable rear seats and a powerful engine. I can wait for a couple of months if required.

SUV case

    Morgan Stanley bailed out this company in 1993 when its IPO for Rs 13 crore was undersubscribed. Name it.

Answers to last week's quiz (#199)

Are women ascending the corporate ladder in lockstep with men? While they are entering the while-collar workforce in big numbers and also making gains at the middle and senior management levels, they just aren&rsquo;t making it to the very top. Women today hold just 3 per cent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, and in the C-suite, they are outnumbered four to one. The case is not much different in India &mdash; the number of women on top can be counted on one hand. A recent research by the Center for Work-Life Policy, a New York-based think tank, reveals that women who are qualified to lead simply don&rsquo;t have the backing necessary to inspire, propel and protect them through the straits of upper management. &ldquo;Women lack, in a word, sponsorship,&rdquo; it says.

Q&A: Kerrie Peraino

With a host of new features, the device is definitely worth a buy.

Should you be queuing up for the iPad2?

Take the waiting out of the waiter service at restaurants and let your fingers order your favourite dishes over the touchscreen tabletops with interactive menus.

A La Touche: Serving up a virtual menu

United Biscuits wants to give a bigger thrust to its McVitie&rsquo;s brand in India, and recently roped in actors Bipasha Basu and Shriya Saran to promote the range. The company is doing what competitor Parle Products had done in the past: banking on regional celebrities to push the brand in key markets. Early this year, Parle Products had engaged Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan and Bengali actor Rituparna Sengupta to connect with consumers at a local level.

United Biscuits: Regional bite

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

Page 970 - Supplements