The Neighbours skin
Fair but not always lovely. abhishek sikhwal offers an unconventional take on advertising I despise fairness cream ads. I’m afraid I may be too frank in saying that the people who market such product

TRIVIAL TRAVAILS
sunny lyngdoh Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s 120th birth anniversary yesterday was celebrated as Children’s Day in India as is done every year, but not many are aware of Universal Children’s Day, which fa

Answer & Win
current connections vivita sequeira 1. Released on 20 October 1995, this musical love story has been running successfully in a movie theatre in Mumbai ever since that day. Now running in its 15th

Straight jacket days are over
Well-fitted jackets are in, Manoviraj Khosla tells payal shah before showcasing his spring/summer 2010 collection The man who defined style for men is equally adept at designing for women. Manoviraj

Everything You Wanted To Know
... But wish you hadn’t asked Can you tell me the basic criterion of a good friend (not someone special)? Debashis Basu, Hooghly On the contrary, a good friend is someone rather special. There are ma

Feeling Helpless?
Breast cancer is a disease women fear most ~ and new discoveries about genetic causes only make us feel more helpless. Yet there are changes we can make to help prevent it The fear of breast cancer i

Eye on the road
Do you know how to drive, asks tarun goswami SBI Kolkata on Wheel Car Rally 2009, a unique training programme for car owners who drive their cars, was recently held Kolkata and it brought together 1

Malignant Humour raouf gangjee
If there’s a cow in the house, the milkman might be up to something. GOODBYE DADDY One night a little boy was heard saying his prayers: “God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, God bless Grandma, goodbye G

Royal repast
Spice world purabi dasgupta Ghostaaba Pound a kilogram of boneless mutton (a leg portion) till extremely soft. Gradually add four big cardamoms, salt and 350 gm of ghee while pounding. It should bec

Web rush
Listen to a lecture on Milton’s use of similes in Paradise Lost or get a virtual view of the moon… Here’s a cool way to spend your time this weekend WorldWide Telescope Far, far away in a distant sat

Pump up the pressure
Cyber criminals are using new tricks to market old spam messages. Excerpts from the latest McAfree report Goodbye Pirate Bay. How does that help? Has it curbed online piracy? No. The number of new fi

Haste makes no waste
The Acer One D250 netbook boasts of 18 second boot-up time and three-second shutdown. Say hello to Android If you simply have to type in documents, browse the Internet, make presentations and handle

But where’s Santa?
Every year as tree ornaments are dusted off, old chestnuts are dug up with musical acts releasing their interpretations of holiday tunes. Great as gifts and perfect for setting a merry mood over Chris

Who’s that girl?
Madonna’s three-decade career gets captured in a two-CD compilation Celebration offers a comprehensive selection from a career that has rarely seen downsides, offering listeners enough reasons to app

Gee whizz it’s Cliff
Bachelor Boy reunites with The Shadows to relive memories I always wanted to attend a Cliff Richard concert to appreciate better why dad still asks for songs like Bachelor Boy and Theme For A Dream t

Do you remember... Bhagyashree
She was one of the most promising faces of 1989 but it only takes only one wrong decision to disappear from the spotlight. The daughter of Meherban Shrimant Raja Vijaysinhrao Madhavrao Patwardhan, Raj

Breath of fresh air
Tchaikovsky is thought of as a gloomy fatalist, but a rarely staged humorous opera and a book about his gay lifestyle promises to reveal the unseen master in all his glory, says jessica duchen AN ope

Diet matters
A meat-eater contributes 1.5 tonnes more of greenhouse gases per year than a vegetarian. This means that your diet change will make more difference than if you sold your standard petrol car for an eff

Books Received
Exploration in Tagore Translation By Swati Datta KP Bagchi and Company; Rs 450 Considers the phenomenon of translation into English of the Bengali short stories of Rabindranath Tagore n Think

Making an impact
A documentary made by Akhra, a cultural organisation based in Jharkhand, recently won the IDPA Award for the Best Film on Environment. shoma a chatterji takes a look IT’S a story about people surviv

A tale of two cities
Spotlight The two novels might be considered travelogues with an element of fiction and, at least in the second case, a strong element of fantasy... A review by sudeshna chakravorty Jeff in Venice,

Snippets
Che ~ A Memoir Fidel Castro LeftWord pp 237, Rs 350 THE book is, well, a classic biography of one revolutionary by another. Fidel Castro writes with great candour and emotion about a historic rev

The art of sublime laughter
Life & Letters Parashuram lampooned idiosyncrasies with disarming indulgence, making satire delightful, writes sudipta chatterjee HE lent the impulse of laughter a new dimension, but actually had a

Laughter as the dominant emotion
The very effort to analyse the evolution of laughter in the changing backdrop of literary judgement is, possibly, the first of its kind and may generate new perspectives... A review by sudipta chatter

CHEF’S CHOICE
Manju Malhi was raised in north-west London where she grew up surrounded by Indian culture, traditions and lifestyles. She comes from a non-conformist Asian family. As an Asian girl growing up in Wes

The caregiver
Short Story someeta das MASHI was my mother’s caregiver. My father had died some six months earlier and my bedridden mother had debilitating diseases like Parkinson and Alzheimer and needed special

We’re Godliness
While praying has always been an act of faith, a new consciousness is gradually now emerging and changing the way we pray inner beauty manoj khatri How we pray and what prayers mean to us depends o

Crying need
Pets & Vets subir bhattacharya That a glitzy metro like Kolkata doesn’t have a proper crematorium for animals shows that we have yet to attain that level of civilisation we boast of ‘I WOULD prefer

Pastoral emperor
Strings Attached kishore chatterjee THIS has been an amazing year for music anniversaries. Not only have there been celebrations around Handel, Mendelssohn and Haydn, but Beethoven has contributed a

Confessions on the dance floor
Young choreographers are making urban Indians sway to their business beats as interest in Latin and ballroom dances resurges, observes jayalakshmi sengupta Amidst thunderous applause choreographer Ir

Dance diets
Salsa and tap-dancing are most effective if you want to lead a happier and longer life Club or freestyle dancing It’s hard to believe that shaking your booty in a nightclub can meet your weekly exer

Stanza
janmejoy gupta The Wail of the Azaan On a cloudy morning, The sound of the Azaan wafts to my ears, I sit in my small cubicle, The wail of the Azaan… Five times a day, Come the wails, Allah hu Akbar,

BEAUTY SPOT
Moschino: Light Clouds A pleasant and carefree perfume, just like the sky in springtime, like a walk amongst freshly bloomed flowers. Intense like emotions, exhilarating like a summer day, light as a

Where how when what
Access: Travel on 1 January 2010. Delhi to Jaipur: Air India IC 896. Rs 2,245. Information from cleartrip.com. Accommodation: Hotel Jaipur Palance, Bani Park Palace, Hotel Shalimar, Jaipur Inn. (All i

Magic of Pushkar
chandan sen explores the desert sands at one of the most colourful and celebrated tourism fairs in India The internationally famed annual Pushkar Fair of Rajasthan (25 October - 2 November 2009) is o

Shall we dance again?
Reality TV captures the dreams of the huge Indian middle-class population. Stage shows are becoming popular and mothers are encouraging their children to learn the steps seen on Boogie Woogie. While t

How to do it
Jive talkin’ LG Electronics has launched three new handsets ~ GW525, GT505 and GM73 that offer features requiring powerful processors, abundant memory, easy operating systems and social networking ser

Q&A
Salon threety irani & nilufer babaycon I am 29 years old and have thin hair. What should I do to make it look full? Nandita S, Kolkata Fortunately, these days there are volumnising shampoos and cond

Upper lip stiffener
Champagne’s funny stuff. I’m used to whiskey. Whiskey is a slap on the back, and champagne’s a heavy mist before my eyes... ~ Jimmy Stewart, The Philadelphia Story Tom Collins Requires: Requires: One