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The Hindu : The mall has become the mainstay of American life. Malls house retailers but they are not owned, developed or built by retailers. Malls are made by real estate development companies. The modern day mall is an American innovation. The largest mall inNorth America is in Edmonton, Canada — over 5million square feet and in the U.S., the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is over 4 million square feet.I did a whirlwind tour of malls in three states of the U.S. — Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas. There could be about 144 stores in a mall. Befitting its middle class or upper middle class market there is a Versace and a Ralph Lauren, a Cartier and a Tiffany, a Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue. There is also a Gap and Victoria’s Secret. The biggest single category is women’s apparel. There is a record store, a toy store, a video games store, Toys R’ Us, several stores selling sneakers. There must be at least 20 places to buy cosmetics if one were to include the department stores and boutiques that sell it as a sideline. There is a beauty parlour, a multi-screen cinema, an aqua massage and a couple of national chain sit-down restaurants. The food court, a vast high-ceilinged arena offers multifarious outlets mostly fast foods.My first visit to a mall was to the Kenosha original outlet mall in Wisconsin. It has jewellery, furniture and plenty of discount retailers. I bought a stylish London Fog summer coat at a bargain price. Gurnee mills outlet mall in Illinois, 45 miles north of Chicago has something for everyone. The main attraction for children include Reptile Zoo, Rain forest café, Disney store, Rink side sports and Cineplex. Next I decided to explore the vertical mini malls along the retail corridor of Chicago’s magnificent mile. “The 900 shops” has a robust and dynamic retail environment. The anchor store is Bloomingdales…More

The Hindu : Each one of the four musicians is on the wrong side of 30, yet their music and their experience had often led people to believe otherwise. The Galatea Quartet comprising Swiss string musicians Yuko Tsuboi, Julien Kilchenmann, David Schneebeli and Sarah Kilchenmann are currently touring the country as part of 60 years of the jubilee celebrations between India and Switzerland.The four of them were friends at music school in Zurich when they decided to form this quartet. The quartet gets its name from a character in Greek mythology, Galatea, who is resurrected with the help of love and musicians.Yuko Tsuboi began playing when she was four but for brother-sister duo Sarah and Julien music was happenstance. “No one in my family is a musician,” says Julien, the spokesperson for the group. “When I was eight we discovered a violin in the cellar of their house and that’s how we began playing.” Sarah and Yuko play the violin while David plays the viola. For Julien, the violin gave way to the cello. “I like the deeper sound of the cello as compared to the higher pitch of the violin.My teacher also said I have big hands, so I should shift to the cello,” adds Julien jokingly.“Indians appreciate music better than most people,” says Julien. “Indian music is very deep, and developed and most people here have been exposed to that, therefore they understand and have a better appreciation for chamber music.” Sometimes, in some countries, he goes on to explain, people cannot tell the difference between good music and junk.Since their inception in 2005, the Quartet has won various prizes in Europe including the audience prize at the Geneva International Music Competition and the first prize at the Migros Chamber Music Competition in 2007, a prestigious award amongst chamber musicians. As part of their India tour and to promote brotherhood, the quartet has learnt a few…More

The Hindu : It was still dark. The air was laden with moisture, hinting rain. There, in the early morning silence, I could hear my footsteps hitting the gravelled, narrow lanes of Rishikesh. From a distance, came the sad, lonely song of the river. Soon, I would be by her side.Hands in pockets, shrinking into myself in the cool, still air, I walked past the closed shutters of the shops occupying both sides and thereby blocking the view to the river. The river still beckoned me through the narrow openings on one side, wherever the ill-matched structure of the shops let them be. The surroundings conspired to remind me of the childhood innocence, and not-so-distant memories of summer days spent here. The innocence has melted away and the summer days never feel the same. The congested lanes metamorphosed into vast expanse of water at one of the turns – holding me in an enchanted trance for a long while. The grand Ganga sang its sad song, like she has done standing there all by herself for years.I sat by the side of the river, while the sound of temple bells trickled in from a distance.I decided to take a walk in the direction from where the bells tolled.Stepping on the thin coated floor, letting the mild swings of the Ram Jhula sway me, I looked across through the trusses of the bridge at the steadily flowing river. On the other side of the bridge, as I stepped towards Parmarth Niketan, the sounds rose in decibels.Inside, people were singing at the top of their voices. I sat in a relatively quiet corner listening to the hymns being sung by Indians and foreigners in unison. The prayers penetratedthe day break. As sunlight streamed in I stepped out.Outside, the town was enveloped in an early morning mist. Peoplemoved around urgently doing their chores, which for most was taking a dip in…More

The Hindu : Hot fave*Mills & Boon is celebrating its centenary year. Yes, the queen of romance was launched 100 years ago, in 1908, by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon, general fiction publishers. By the 1930s the company began to concentrate specifically on romances. Incidentally, they alsopublished Shakespeare, and P.G. Wodehouse’s first novel.*Thirty five million Mills & Boon titles are sold each year worldwide.*Titles are available for a limited period – on stands for about a month and direct from Mills & Boon for three, or until they are sold out. Any remaining books are destroyed. That’s why they are so coveted at second-hand book stores.*They have one male writer, among their roster of over 1,300.*Harlequin Mills & Boon (what it’s called after a 1971 merger) sells in more than 100 countries, in 26 languages, at a rate of one book every two to five seconds.*The book is being launched this year in India at Rs. 99….More

The Hindu : Movie and tripCleartrip.com has launched the “Ek Ka Dus” that enables customers 10 movie tickets free from bookmyshow.com on booking a Deccan flight with Cleartrip.com. One needs to book a roundtrip or one-way flights for two people in a single booking. The bookings can be made online ( www.cleartrip.com) or by calling on 1800-22-5327/022-30014999….More

The Hindu : Leela Galleria and Effervescence are organising an exhibition of Höglund Art Glass, a unique form of art of hand blown art glass artefacts and jewellery from Hoglund Art Glass, New Zealand at Little Italy, 100 feet Road Indiranagar on February 18 and 19.Created by husband-wife duo Ola Höglund and Marie Simberg- Höglund, Höglund Art Glass is internationally renowned.In May 2002, New Zealand Post and the Royal Sweden Post released a joint stamp issue – Art meets Craft. Each stamp featured a Rainforest Graal vase designed and made by Ola Höglund and Marie Simberg- Höglund.The Höglund Art Glass collection includes vases, bowls, decorative centrepieces and platters, perfume bottles, and even a unique range of crystal glass jewellery, having been made using many complex glassblowing and glassmaking techniques. Adding to the uniqueness of the products is the use of plenty of bright hues, and bold colour combinations, to produce a collection which is modern and minimalist in style. Visitwww.effervescence.in…More

The Hindu : Everyone’s a sucker for romance. The very word inspires weak knees, a rose-tinted world image, a melange of memories, and of course, a longsigh. Tapping on this universal feeling of love and burying in its pages exotic Greek millionaires, dejected nurses from exotic places all coming together in the last page to say ‘I love you’, despite a thousand hindrances, convoluted and predictable plots, was this slim book they called M&B.To many it was more than just a book. I’m beginning to believe almost every young girl has sneaked in a Mills & Boon into her text book and read right through a boring lecture in college. And that almost every circulating library in cities stocked them. So many I spoke to had their own story to tell of their association with this little piece of romantic fiction, or stories of friends and relatives who were M&B freaks. It was considered a marker of ‘coming of age’ if you carried one in your hand or were found reading it. Many discard them with their teenage phase, with rose-tinted views of romance. Manyothers, stick on.Proof: Mills & Boon turns 100 this year. And in the centenary year, it will be launched in India with Harlequin Mills & Boon (India) all set to print and distribute the books locally for Rs. 99. For the past six decades Mills & Boon U.K. had been exporting books to India. And they have even hinted that there may be Indian authors and Indian characters too! Over the years the book has changed, the categories of romance have grown, they have gotten more explicit, and gone beyond the “doormat-meets-matador” formula. (In fact The Guardian, in a 2002 article observed that M&B has gone all outright raunchy.)Rekha Kowshik, a 38-year-old literature professor, who read M&Bs from when she was in class nine till she completed her M.A, says: “It kindles one’s romantic…More

The Hindu : The global village is truly here and if you want a feel of the sea in landlocked Bangalore, it can be easily done and not on highway 61 as Bob Dylan would have playfully commented but on 100 feet Road in Indiranagar.As you step into E-Studio, you feel like you are in different world altogether. It is a strange, kitschy space where centuries and countries collide to create bizarrely beautiful music.Within the riotously cluttered space you have full medieval suits of armour, Italian silver, chandeliers from the Sun King’s time and furniture that would not look out of place in Marie Antoinette’s pink, satin boudoir.There are rows upon rows of exquisite paintings that you can look at forever, matchlock pistols (gulp) and other similar weapons of mass destruction from an earlier time, statuesque grandfather clocks that tick away busily and surprisingly well-integrated graceful Masai sculptures.While all the goodies in the store are made for much delectable eye candy, the piece de resistance is the marine collection. One wonders whether it is a certain insouciant Capt. Jack Sparrow fluttering scarves, bad teeth and all, that has brought back the romance of sailing the high seas.Whatever the cause, the row upon row of compasses, anchors and steering wheels take one immediately to the sea where one can be the painted ship upon the painted ocean like yet another poet (Coleridge this time) wrote. And instead of being fixed with the glittering eye of the ancient mariner as he tells sad tales of casual killings of the blameless albatross, you could dwell lovingly on the infinitely intricate ship in the bottle.While the history of this immensely popular marine curio is lost in the mists of time, these fascinating little puzzles immediately take one back to a time when sailors would sit creating these beauties to pass the long hours at sea.All who have read Enid Blyton, would of…More

The Hindu : Take a hikeDiscover the beauty of CoorgThadiyandamol is the highest peak in Coorg at 1,750 metres above sea level. On clear days, you can see the Indian Ocean from here and the place also offers some good food. Those who want to check it out can contact Wishbone that is leaving Bangaloreon March 7. The trip will also include a visit to the Honey Valley, a quaint getaway at the base of the ridge that leads to Thadiyandamol. The team will arrive back in the city on March 9. The last date for registration is February 23. Those interested can contact Kaushik on 9886169698….More

The Hindu : The thing is, we have evolved enough not to mistake light drinking for alcoholism. What is light drinking? To be exact, it is having 1.5 ounces of hard alcohol each day, or 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer.It is meeting friends at a pub for a mug or two of lager before going on for dinner. It is opening a bottle of rose with a pasta dinner.It is just relaxing with your partner and sipping from fluted or cut glass. All activities that do not entail passing out on the roadside, crashing your car, visits to a doctor, checking into rehabilitation centres or severe tests on your will power.Activities which can and do destroy the fabric of your family life.You would think we as a society can now make the distinction, distil the grain from the chaff. We attend wine and cheese, fashion and art evenings.We read and cheer efforts to grow grapes and create wines on home-grown soil. However, for all that, liquor advertising still hides behind ridiculously fake fig leaves. People…men, all of them, but naturally… walk into wine shops in decent neighbourhoods in neighbouring states but do not catch each other’s eye while buying liquor.Liquor still rates as a top destroyer in India, not without some truth. All bottles containing spirits carry the warning that drinking is injurious to one’s health, as indeed it can be.Drinking is still placed at par with taking drugs, which the West quaintly terms ‘substance abuse.’India has a growing amount of moderate drinkers but their at best tentative voice is often drowned in the clamour for prohibition.The moderate drinkers are by no means addicts; they just relax with a drink or two, then wind up. Studies have proved that moderate drinking can benefit people, reducing rates of stroke, heart disease, kidney cancer and diabetes. However, all we read and absorb are the very real…More