Archive for October 25, 2007
Festive offers
Cookie Man has brought out a range of gift tins to celebrate Deepavali. This time you can choose from fresh baked muffins and brownies. The gift section offers cookies that are cream filled, chocolate dipped or with coffee walnut and brandy snap to n
ame a few.
These come in gift boxes with the imprints of Ganesha and Laksmi. You can also custom create your gift box by choosing from the wide array of festive cookies and gift boxes.
Those who want to choose or design their own gift boxes with their own message can log on to enquiries-ordernow@cookiemanindia.com or www.cookiemanindia.com.
These special Cookie Man gift tins are priced at Rs. 85 onwards. The premium gift packs come at Rs. 1,250 onward.
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Nirvana Diamond Jewellery is also offering Deepavali gifts to those who shop at its store between October 12 and November 7. Those who buy jewellery priced between Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 10,000 can look forward to winning a Portico Home Décor set. Bills worth Rs. 10,001 onwards can win an Artd’inox Lifestyle set.…More
Looking for change boss?
The Hindu :
How does a company find a new CEO? The top guys aren’t going to have their profiles up on jobsites like we lesser mortals do.
You’re probably not going to attract the cream of the crop with a classifieds ad either.
Where do you begin to find a person you can entrust an entire company to? “In today’s scenario, most CEO hunts are done through executive search firms like ours,” says S. Krishna Prakash, managing partner of EMA Partners International, a multinational company operating in 35 countries.
A company like EMA does very niche work — they do searches only at the board level (managing directors, directors) or of CEOs and functional heads (CFOs, CIOs, CHMOs). “Most of the mandates we handle are one crore plus,” he says. Translation: that’s the kind of money the people their clients are searching make.
Which means it’s all about discretion. “Often, our clients can’t even be seen to be ‘looking’,” says Prakash. “Confidentiality is valued above all else.” In fact, he says, their employee contracts come with a clause saying that they can’t even talk about negotiations with their spouses.
Tight lipped
“An executive search company depends on their credibility for survival,” agrees Hastha Krishnan, CEO of Ma Foi Global Search Services. “Indiscretion on our part can mar careers and we’ll never live that down.”
There are other unique challenges in this business. For one, they operate within a limited universe — at that level, the list of people who fit the bill is going to be necessarily short.
“We generally have a wish-list of three or four people who can do the…More
Love and war
If it is not about religion, then it is about caste or class. The arranged marriage pattern has never died down in this caste-ridden, class-conscious and deeply communal society – sons and daughters are declared outcasts, are hunted down and brutally murdered. And they say they do it in the name of “honour killings”. Society is undoubtedly one of the most powerful man-made institutions in our world. Society in the name of ‘culture’ and ‘moral-policing’ elect themselves above the law and turn a blind eye to anything that is just, humane and rightful. How many times have we heard the tragic stories of couples being pulled apart, ‘put in their place’, eloping, being separated, struggling to live in this prejudiced world and making both ends meet. Actor Chiranjeevi’s daughter Srija who have “married against their parents’ wishes” – these are just high-profile cases – there are thousands of others which go unreported. The matrimonial industry is a profitable industry that has also crept into every medium and technology. Loving someone of your own choice is a social crime as the partner “will not understand your social customs and not continue the prestigious bloodline”. Looks like only our cinema will triumph in the same old story of love and war.
In step
The Hindu :
Most people in the entertainment business have to break stereotypes to make it big. While many highlight these hardships, a few take them in their stride. One example is Mini Mathur, who moved from one metro to another. She worked her way to fame, cl
imbing one step at a time. As she entered Mumbai from Delhi, it was a different experience, she hardly knew anyone. It was with MTV that she attained popularity and friends. Then there was “Indian Idol” and from anchor to contestant in the celebrity dance show “Jhalak Dikhla Ja”, Mini has come a long way.
Ask her about her experience in “Jhalak…”, and she says, “It is fun. However, I am not taking it too seriously. You can call me a guest participant on the show.” She laughs, adding, “I was not a big dancer before the show. I didn’t even dance in the discos, let alone perform.” In “Jhalak…”, she is amidst many friends. With whom does she enjoy the best rapport on the show? “Cyrus, mostly because of our MTV days. Since this is my first time on the dance floor, beginners’ luck might work for me,” she says with a laugh.
The rain within
The Hindu :
A small room. Low lights. 25-odd people huddled close to each other. At the other end of this tiny space is what seems like the drawing room of a modest apartment.
It is Rangashankara’s near perfect-setting for intimate theatre, up on their terrace.
The eager-beaver audience, who had seen Revathi, the sensitive Tamil film actor on silver screen for almost two decades, wait for the drama to unfold. They can’t wait to see her from up close; her first attempt at theatre, in a performing space so completely deglamorised.
“No. 1, Madhav Baug”, written by the eminent Marathi playwright-director Chetan Datar, leads you to believe that it is the story of the middle-aged Vyjayanti (played by Revathi), who has three grown up sons. Vyjayanti, a romantic at heart, bunks office on a rainy day in Mumbai for sheer indulgence. She does everything she loves: drinks endless cups of tea with hot bhajias, reads poetry, listens to music, even as she does a recap for you, for herself, the story of her life.
She keeps – again and again – talking about her youngest, favourite son, also to talk about his father; the man she loved deeply, not her husband.
Every now and then, in this engaging stream of consciousness narrative, Vyjayanti suggests, how this man, the only man who made a dent in her life, gave her a hearing (“I wish I could talk to him, he understands”).
She goes through the break up of her marriage, upbringing of her sons…
As she is enjoying this wonderful time with her own self, there is this anonymous caller, who, at once, severely disturbs the balance of her life.
Young hearts, run free
The Hindu :
Young adult problems might make for dramatic lives, but they do not always make for good drama. Ram Ganesh Kamatham’s “Crab”, lauded as one of the “younger” plays of the Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival, for instance, see
ms to fall short of its potential because it bears a distinct bias towards its young actors.
Staged on Tuesday by Q Theatre Productions, Mumbai, the play follows the tangled lives of four young adults. Zamiel, the existentialist hero of the play, climbs mountains to get away from a world he doesn’t like. Jojo, abused and now abusing marijuana, is frustrated by Zamiel’s distance from her. Priya is the other woman, withdrawn from her life because she can’t take the bleakness of her world. And Rocky seesaws between his concern for Jojo and the shame and guilt of his darkest violence against her.
On the face of it, the story has a great deal of material to work with. Particularly the relationship between Zamiel and Jojo, with its debate on where one draws the line between personal space and uncaring distance. In the same vein is Rocky’s dilemma, a decidedly grey texture in Rocky’s otherwise black and white view of the world. And in a larger sense, there is the very futility of young adult lives and possibilities squandered on angst.
In a sense, the play does explore these ideas. At all points, there is a sense that playwright and director both recognise there is more to this tale than the characters realise. Occasionally, you can see that shine through, in a character’s description of artificially stuffed top-heavy chickens on broken legs, for instance. There’s a grain of it even in the big line of the play: “Anyone who’s moved in a relentlessly straight…More
