Automobiles
Cooking up a smooth drive
My office happens to be located on a main thoroughfare lined with big-name retail outlets and I, therefore, get to see a lot of rich people out shopping. They come in big, expensive cars with snooty chauffers at the wheel. Some of the cars are
imported, many are not. But virtually all of them have one feature in common: they run on diesel.
Consumer Notes
A hung verdict...
Chennai Telephones was recently forced to eat humble pie when the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (South) ordered the arrest of its Chief General Manager for disregarding the forum's decision awarding compensation to an aggrieved consu
mer. The arrest warrant was subsequently stayed by the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.
Corporate
The natural preference
Going places is nothing new to Jinendra Sancheti, Managing Director, TNT India Ltd. But what especially keeps him going are trips amidst the natural environs with his family. Nature, in fact, is a family favourite with wife Ranjana, son Saurabh (16) and
daughter Riddhi (13) too having similar tastes. Being based in Bangalore for the last four years, they have naturally turned to local offerings for their periodical breaks from routine.
Health
Slumber's friends
Sleepless in Seattle, Silchar, Seoul ...? Check out your `psychotechniques' -- ``behaviour in motion''. You toss and turn, say sleep-specialists, because you are in `road-rage mode' -- a higher-than-average body temperature, above-normal blood vessel con
strictions per minute -- more set to overtake old-slowcoach-ahead in rush-hour traffic than to relax.
Information Technology
Native lingo on the Net
Webdunia.com, which calls itself the world's first Hindi portal, went on the Net last September. Why a Hindi portal in an age when most Internet users in India appear to frequent English Web sites? India Ltd., the company behind Webdunia.com, has a simpl
e answer to this question: ``Hindi is the third most frequently spoken language in the world.'' According to the Webdunia team, there are around 300-450 million people in India familiar with Hindi as a language of primary use and it is a giant virgin com
munity waiting to be ``captured'' on the Web. Contrast this to the English-speaking population (less than 5 per cent) in India, says young Parvindar Singh Gujral at Webdunia.com (Gujral has been given no designation, in keeping with the trend among a lot
of dotcom companies).
Miscellaneous
`Nick' of the times
Now that the summer vacations have ended, and parents across the country are heaving huge sighs of relief, there is at least one schoolgirl who is going back with an experience of a lifetime behind her. This summer, on May 31, when 13-year-o
ld Anshu Awasthi from New Delhi won a children's sweepstake contest, she became Boss for the Day at Nickelodeon, being escorted to the office in a limousine and deciding what programmes ought to be run on her special day.
A tightly-sewn tradition
A shoe shine girl? An unusual career for a woman, surely. But Ludhiana is choc-a-bloc with shoe shine girls from neighbouring Rajasthan who have been reared in the trade, says Tripat Kaur.
Travel & Places
Kalapani kaleidoscope
It once had a self-contained township built entirely by convicts in pre-Independent India. A visit to Ross Island in the Andaman and Nicobar will bring your history text-books alive, says G. Suryanarayana.
Pied Piper shows the way
In the legendary German town of Hameln, Inder Raj Ahluwalia describes a unique tour that brings to life Robert Browning's popular poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
A `dakshina' of dance
Devotion mingles with the colours of spring at the annual Pooram festival in northern Kerala. Aditi De recommends a short excursion to witness this amazing spectacle in `God's Own Country'.
