Jawaharlal Nehru and Ghanshyam Das Birla first met in 1924 when Mahatma Gandhi, just out of jail, was recuperating in the industrialist&rsquo;s beach-facing house in Mumbai. A year later, Nehru told Gandhi that he was a little tight for money. Gandhi mentioned Nehru&rsquo;s plight to Birla. Almost overnight, Birla turned up at Nehru&rsquo;s home at Allahabad and offered to help him out of the situation. Nehru was incensed, but managed to conceal his anger from his visitor. This was the beginning of the uneasy relationship between the two.

Political Birla

Business Standard

Antique carpets can be an owner&rsquo;s pride. But it&rsquo;s wise to get some sound tips before investing in them.

The big cover up

The other day Brett Lee was in Hyderabad, where India and New Zealand hammered another nail in Test cricket&rsquo;s coffin with a dreary draw. Lee&rsquo;s presence there had nothing to do with the match, or with cricket in general; he was there to perform with his band, White Shoe Theory.

The eternal quest

Levon Aronyan, Sergei Karjakin and Shakhriyar Mamedaryov made it a photo-finish at the Tal Memorial by each scoring 5.5 points from 9 games. Grischuk, Wang Hao and Nakamura all managed 5 points while Kramnik (.4.5) ended at 50 per cent. Gelfand, Shirov and Eljanov had minus scores. It was hard-fought with 17 decisive games from 45. It's noteworthy that every player in the 2757 field scored at least one win.

Chess #654

S Gopalakrishnan&rsquo;s passion for gizmos goes beyond BlackBerrys and iPods.

The techie CEO

The one element everybody seems to agree on is the growing popularity of Indian street food. Mehtaphor has an &lsquo;Indian Street Burger&rsquo;, a take on the vada pav and pav bhaji.

Masala dosa in the Big Apple

It&rsquo;s the triple witching hour for the government. Market men will tell you, in their parlance, it is simply a Friday that comes once every quarter, when a series of stock options, index futures and stock futures expires in the last hour of trade. What it does and can do is cause unprecedented volatility and mayhem. And traders who are less than eagle-eyed will get their fingers and books burnt.

The triple witching hour

In the last of this series on masters of Indian architecture, Himanshu Burte talks to three contemporary practitioners of the Baker tradition, who stay true to his basic principles yet have their own identities.

Following Baker

For a wine fair in only its second year, the recently-concluded Hong Kong International Wine &amp; Spirits Fair (November 4-6) was very well organised: nearly 700 exhibitors from 30 countries and regions, about 14,000 trade visitors (up 19 per cent from 2009), with some 1,300 wines entered for the Cathay Pacific HKIW&amp;S Competition.

Hong Kong's spirited story

When does a law become a guideline? Perhaps when it enters the Indian metropolis, where policy and policymakers use words in so convoluted a manner that their roar is reduced to a whimper.

Godzilla in Mumbai

An exhibition captures the many avatars of Delhi down the ages.

Much-lived city

    An aggressive corporate acquisition of an entity called TomorrowNow has become TomorrowNever. Name the owner and the reason for its closure.

Answers to last week's quiz (#175)

    This company has gone through a rebranding exercise with its logo and tagline undergoing a change recently. The signature tune of the company was jazzed up by its chairman, who is a sitar exponent, based on Raga Kaushi Kanara. Identify the person and the company.

The Strategist Quiz (#176)

The DTH industry has grown from 1.5 million homes in 2005 to 23 million today. By 2012, the number will double, making India the world&rsquo;s largest DTH market.

KIT: The DTH industry in India

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THE ART OF

The top 10 business bestsellers

Religare, promoted by brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, wants to become a global financial services group straddling broking, investment banking, insurance, lending and so on. It might still be early days for the company, but it has come out with a campaign that projects it as one: Global financial services growing with you, everyday.

Religare: Bigger picture

India is the diabetes capital of the world. It is estimated that 50 million Indians suffer from it. Look at it differently &mdash; diabetics make a sizeable market. Sanofi-Aventis, which sells insulin and anti-diabetes medicine worth more than Rs 200 crore in a tear, has flagged off two new initiatives to talk to patients more closely, rather than bank on doctors as the only medium.

Sanofi-Aventis: Patients to patients

HDFC Standard Life, the life insurance venture between HDFC and Standard Life of the United Kingdom, has given itself a new identity. Thus, it has shortened its name to HDFC Life. There&rsquo;s a new logo which looks like a picture frame. The house colours have changed from yellow and green to blue and red &mdash; HDFC colours.

A brand new Life

The much-hyped Rs 300-crore revamp of the largest telecom service brand in the country, Airtel, happened on Friday. But the response to the makeover has been mixed. Brand experts see a disconnect between what is on offer and the stated objective of the exercise.

Split verdict for new Airtel

Jacques Stern, Global CEO of French prepaid service voucher company Edenred, is thrilled with the growing number of red balls that is plastered on the walls of some of India&rsquo;s leading restaurants and merchandise stores. &ldquo;They are our biggest advertisement,&rdquo; Stern says, with a big smile.

'Ticket' size gets bigger in India

German luxury brand Montblanc has been known for generations as a maker of high-end writing instruments. In the past few years, it has expanded into accessories such as luxury leather goods, watches, jewellery, cufflinks and so on. It operates in over 70 countries and sells its products primarily through exclusive boutiques. Montblanc President (Western Hemisphere) Karl-Heinz Handke, who&rsquo;s been responsible for the company&rsquo;s expansion the world over, speaks to Amit Ranjan Rai about the brand&rsquo;s values and its growth.

Q&A: Karl-Heinz Handke, President (Western Hemisphere), Montblanc

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

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