Indholdsfortegnelse for June 24, 2019 i India Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP won the battle of 2019 by pulverising their opponents and earning another five-year term. His government now has to win the war—to fix a rapidly slowing economy. The prime minister began his first day at work with government estimates of a decelerating economy and of India losing its tag of being the world’s fastest growing large economy. The GDP estimate for the January-March quarter of financial year 2018-19 was 5.8 per cent, the lowest in the past five financial years. The 6.8 per cent GDP estimate for FY2018-19 was less than the 7.2 per cent of the previous financial year. It’s a gloomy picture wherever you look. Economic activity across sectors is in the grip of a slowdown. Agriculture, hit by back-to-back droughts…

The year has been a difficult one for the IAF. Just about half way in, 22 personnel have died and 10 aircraft have been lost. Missing for over a week, the wreckage of an Antonov An-32 plane was found in Arunachal Pradesh. A decade ago, another An-32 had gone missing under similar circumstances in the state. Also underway is an investigation into the ‘friendly fire’ between India and Pakistan that resulted in a helicopter crash in Kashmir on February 27. A MiG-21 Bison was downed and IAF wing commander Abhinandan Varthaman was briefly taken captive the same day. In January, a Jaguar fighter crashed in UP and just days later a Mirage crashed at the Bengaluru HAL airport, where, also, at a practice for an air show, two Surya Kiran…

Much will surely be written about Girish Karnad’s intellectual prowess, his contribution to progressive cinema, qualities as a playwright, personal erudition, no-nonsense nature, good looks and the myriad other aspects of this fascinating man and it will be written by those far more qualified to assess him than I am, so I will focus on Girish, the person I knew and owed much to. His name, which I encountered first, evoked a grey bearded, bespectacled professorial image for all us callow drama students. So, it was with a gasp of astonishment that this swarthy thirtysomething, jeans and black kurta-clad dreamboat was greeted when he appeared to participate in a seminar at the drama school. The kindly eyes, straightforward opinions and baritone turned female students into limpid puddles and the boys…

The government recently amended a line in the National Education Policy 2019 requiring students not from Hindi-speaking states to include Hindi among the three languages—apart from English and their mother tongue—in their school curriculum. The policy also requires students in Hindi-speaking states to learn a regional language. In Tamil Nadu, particularly, the backlash against the ‘Hindi imposition’ was swift and fierce. While a lot of anger has been focused on Hindi, the wisdom behind the three-language formula has been questioned since 1968. While Hindi has been widely taught in non-Hindi-speaking states, Hindi-speaking states have not really reciprocated by teaching students a third, particularly southern, language. Having two languages in the curriculum will effectively acknowledge English as a pan-Indian ‘link’ language, but since Hindi is spoken more than any other language…

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is in course-correction mode after its debacle in the Lok Sabha election. Party supremo Mayawati has asked all district presidents to come up with reasons for the BSP’s drubbing. Contesting 38 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, as part of an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the BSP won 10 seats. The party’s vote share of 19.3 per cent was a notch below the 19.6 per cent votes it polled in the 2014 parliamentary election, where it drew a blank. At the first post-poll review in New Delhi on June 3, Mayawati hinted at breaking the pre-poll alliance. “The SP failed to transfer votes to the BSP. Yadavs, who are considered the core base of the SP,…

Even as Narendra Modi was taking oath as India’s prime minister for a second term, along with 57 central ministers on May 31, came the grim news the next day on the Indian economy. India’s GDP grew just 5.8 per cent in the January to March quarter of 2018-19, lower than market expectations and behind China for the first time in two years, a ringing reminder to the new government of the immense task at hand. Growth for 2018-19 was 6.8 per cent, lower than 7.2 per cent in the previous financial year. India had just handed the world’s fastest growing major economy tag to China. THE PRESSING ISSUES But many had seen this coming. Nearly all economic indicators were pointing towards an economic slowdown. Growth decelerated at a worrying…

"FILM HAS BEEN DEVELOPED FOR YEARS AS A WAY TO CAPTURE HUMAN SKIN TONE MORE NATURALLY, BUT DIGITAL’S MOVING INTO A WIDER RANGE OF CAPTURE Robert Richardson, 63, has won the Academy Award for cinematography three times, for JFK (1991), The Aviator (2004) and Hugo (2011). He received a Lifetime Achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers in March. We caught up with him on a brief visit to Delhi. Q, You’ve been a cinematographer for nearly four decades. The technology has changed a fair bit. Has what makes a good cinematographer changed? The techniques have changed. The speed of film altered first. In the studio system, with highlighting, to trying to do no lighting, yet having slow speed so you had to do lighting. And then you moved…

THE SCENT OF GOD by Saikat Majumdar SIMON & SCHUSTER ₹499; 248 pages Saikat Majumdar’s new novel, The Scent of God, is a “twice-born fiction”. The term comes from the critic Meenakshi Mukherjee’s title of her study of Indian-English fiction. But, unlike Mukherjee’s metaphorical phrase referring to the rebirth of the western novel form in colonial India, Majumdar’s novel talks about a privileged rebirth into spiritual consciousness of the three upper castes. It tells the story of Anirvan’s rebirth and how he becomes a yogi. The protagonist must bridge not just the distance between his secular education at a boarding school, run by a Hindu protestant monastic order in West Bengal, and the modern, secular world outside, but also between his juvenile homosexual longings and the “maturity” of heterosexuality. Reversing…

AS SPICE CELEBRATES 14 YEARS OF BRINGING curated luxury memories to your doorstep we choose to focus on returning to one’s roots. Designer Tarun Tahiliani has moved with the times but he shares how in fashion, there is a definite return to simple drape forms that have defined the Indian aesthetic for decades. Designers like Gaurav Gupta, Amit Aggarwal, Rimzin Dadu, Shantanu & Nikhil and Tahiliani himself have delved into their fashion archives and made the simple Indian art of draping big again. The unstructured drape is popular among all the top designers today who have given it a contemporary form. Similarly, Kavita Khosa founded a beauty movement that would not exist without the pristine beauty, simplicity, and deep spirituality of the Himalayas. She returns to the wisdom of ancient,…

The entire concept of wellness or health as it is understood across many cultures is actually rooted in Indian philosophy. The world has adopted, even inherited yoga from us and while yoga was always used as a preventive tool and focussed on holistic healing, we never paid too much attention to many of the tenets of wellness as they had always existed; instead we were busy looking to the West for solutions to our health problems, both physical and spiritual. Over the last few years though, there has been a gradual recognition of the fact that in order to heal oneself and stay ahead of the curve it is important to reconnect with and delve into the roots of wellness as they once existed. For example, you will find that…

Soon after a four-day visit to India in May, Jim Murray tasted his 20,000th whisky in England. His observations, done using the famous Murray Method, will go into the 2020 edition of his highly acclaimed Whisky Bible, hailed as the world’s most comprehensive guide on malts, blends, bourbon and rye. His journey into the world of whiskies began in 1975 when, as a trainee reporter with a British newspaper, he visited the Talisker distillery in Scotland. That, for him, was “truly a life-changing experience”. For several years, he tasted every single whisky he could “find or afford” and is now the world’s leading authority on the beverage and a much sought-after blender. In India, he conducted four blind tasting sessions arranged for whisky aficionados by sommelier Nikhil Agarwal’s All Things…

A fresh infusion of newness is a welcome addition, especially when it’s an icon in the reckoning. Le Cirque Signature, the first ever signature restaurant of New York’s fabled Le Cirque, recently launched some new dishes on its rather exclusive menu. Famous for offering popular specialties from the brand’s outposts around the world, the one at The Leela Mumbai is all set to sample its new offering by Chef Matteo Fontana, corporate chef of the brand. Currying favour with a a focus on flavours, the menu will offer a modern twist to classic Franco-Italian cuisine. Each dish on the new menu comes with its own flavour palette such as the selection of Anti Pasti like beetroot cured Scottish salmon Fillet served with chilled asparagus, creamy fresh burrata served with caramelised…

Media as a branch of study and practice is highly creative. One of the key demands of the profession is thinking out-of-the-box and students aspiring to be journalists always need to be on their toes. K Ganesan, Director-General, Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), throws light on the interface between technology and media studies and the rising popularity of regional journalism. Entrepreneurship and media education The audience is always the focus. The needs and wants of the consumer are constantly changing and imagination and creativity form the fundamentals of the profession. In this era of social media, a journalism student therefore, needs to have the ability to sell and deliver the idea to the audience smartly. There is ample scope for entrepreneurship and start-ups in this field. Technology and learning…

Aishwarya Pissay’s love for riding began at 18 when she started going for weekend rides with her friends. Soon after, she participated in a show on MTV that covered 8,000 km from the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat to Cherrapunjee in Meghalaya over 24 days. “My friends suggested that I should hone my riding skills on the race track and that’s how my journey began,” says 23-year-old Pissay, who is based out of Bengaluru. But, it was only in 2015 that she started training for racing at Apex Racing Academy, Bengaluru, and decided to make a career out of racing. Spotted by TVS Racing during one of the races, she has now been part of their factory racing team for three years. Passionate and driven, she is the only Indian…

Almost a week after the BJP’s emphatic re-election, a still giddy Ram Madhav wrote a newspaper column in which he excoriated the “pseudo-secular/ liberal cartels that held a disproportionate sway and stranglehold over the intellectual and policy establishment of the country”. Madhav follows up his insecure little tantrum with a threat—odd when you consider that Hindutva has been the country’s prevailing ideology since at least 2014 and the likes of Sadhvi Pragya are elected to Parliament, and Yogi Adityanath is chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the subject of sycophantic profiles. “Under Modi-II,” Madhav writes, metaphorically rubbing his hands with relish, “the remnants of that cartel need to be discarded from the country’s academic, cultural and intellectual landscape.” As Arundhati Roy pointed out in a recent interview in The New…

Glass Houses On Twitter, Rahul Gandhi made an uncontroversial point. The arrest of a journalist in Uttar Pradesh for sharing a video on social media of a woman claiming to have a relationship with the state’s chief minister Yogi Adityanath was high-handed. The “UP CM”, in Rahul’s words, was “behaving foolishly” by not censuring the police on their overzealous arrests. The Editors Guild described it as an “effort to intimidate the press”. The Supreme Court ordered the journalist’s immediate release on bail, citing his right to liberty as non-negotiable. The court also said it did not approve of the journalist’s social media post. But is it necessary for ordinary people to behave with the dignity of institutions? Politicians are public figures. The bar for ‘defamation’ when it comes to public…

May 29 Nitish Kumar refuses the BJP’s offer of one berth for the JD(U) in the Union Cabinet June 2 Kumar inducts eight JD(U) MLAs in Bihar cabinet, offers one berth to the BJP June 4 Union minister Giriraj Singh taunts Kumar for attending iftars; Rabri Devi says the RJD is open to the JD(U)’s return to the grand alliance June 6 JD(U) vice-president Prashant Kishor agrees to offer electoral consultancy to Mamata Banerjee for 2021 West Bengal assembly poll June 9 JD(U) says it will go solo in the Haryana, J&K, Jharkhand and Delhi elections…

The south is not the only region opposing the central government’s attempt to impose Hindi on the entire country via its June 3 New Education Policy. The streets of Kolkata are also set to register their protest. Signage in the West Bengal capital will now only be in Bengali, followed by English. The ones in Hindi and Urdu, in areas where the concentration of their speakers is higher, will be removed. It brings to mind the Amra Bangali movement of the mid-’80s, when Hindi and English signboards were blackened with tar so that only the Bengali name remained. A few days earlier, on May 30, Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee floated the Jai Banga Janani (JBJ) for women and the Jai Hind Vahini (JHV)…

Kanika Dhillon’s films all know how to make a headline. Manmarziyaan (2018) was said to have hurt Sikh sentiments. Kedarnath (2018) was accused of promoting ‘love jihad’. Mental Hai Kya, releasing in July, has done damage with just its poster. Twitter users were outraged to see Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao balance a blade on their tongues. One thought the image was a trigger, while others objected to the film’s title. Screenwriters aren’t usually in the firing line, but Dhillon has been credited on the contested poster. Happy that her name is out there, Dhillon, 34, says, “A poster never conveys the overall story. As a society, we have very strict definitions of ‘sane’ and ‘normal’. I feel the story of Mental Hai Kya tries to portray people who don’t…

COMEDY SHOTS This latest stand-up comedy show boasts of an impressive line-up—Anubhav Singh Bassi, Gaurav Kapoor, Rahul Dua, Sumaira Shaikh, Pratyush Chaubey and Sanjay Rajoura. ZEE5 HUMOUROUSLY YOURS In the second season of this rib-tickling show, we’ll see Vipul Goyal move from being a struggling comic to a more popular star who has to busy himself with brand-building. TVF MEET THE MALHOTRAS A remake of the Israeli show La Famiglia, this sitcom details the lives of a middle-aged married couple, Shefali (Mini Mathur) and Rishabh Malhotra (Cyrus Sahukar). AMAZON PRIME…

MOTHER INDIA by Tova Reich PAN MACMILLAN ₹599; 265 pages Mothers and daughters, religion and fanaticism, life and death, spirituality and identity all meld to form American novelist Tova Reich’s fractured, burning universe in Mother India. Its theme is the flawed mother as opposed to the ideal one. The novel is divided into three sections named after three women, covering specific, dramatic episodes in the lives of orthodox American Jewish matriarch, ‘Ma’, and her daughter, Meena, and granddaughter, Maya. When Ma, dying of cancer, moves to Varanasi from America to die, she summons Meena to make one last, blasphemous wish: she wants to be cremated, not buried. It sets the novel rolling for Meena and Maya and their catastrophic journeys. Meena, a divorced lesbian who runs a Mumbai-based spiritual tour…

DR ISSAC MATHAI FOUNDER, SOUKYA Dr Mathai comes from a family with a tradition of practising homeopathy spanning four decades. He established Soukya, under the Bangalore Holistic Medical Centre in 1998, and has a network of over 10,000 patients across 40 countries. KAVITA KHOSA FOUNDER, PUREARTH A former Wall Street firm lawyer and director at Deutsche Bank, she sheds her corporate avatar to reconnect with India. She is passionate about clean beauty, wellness, and creating a positive social impact through her brand. MANISH MEHROTRA CHEF, INDIAN ACCENT Chef Manish Mehrotra changed the way the world looks at Indian food. He launched the modern Indian restaurant, Indian Accent, in New Delhi in 2009 and took the brand to New York in 2015 and London in 2018. TARUN TAHILIANI DESIGNER Founded in…

Packing a Punch This red silk printed shirt from Amiri is summer season in a nutshell. Pair with khaki shorts for a casual do or acid washed denims for a night out. Price $699 Availability www.amiri.com Wearing the Pants With comfort being the leading trend for summer ‘19, these Tobias Birk Nielsen niccolo trousers are roomy and ultra chic. Price On request Availability www.farfetch.com Pure Lines Inspired by the sky and the sand, Giorgio Armani’s latest eyewear collections is beautifully fluid. These rounded amber coloured ones are our favourite. Price ₹24,000 Availability Sunglass Hut Baggy Style The belt bag aesthetic is taking over runways and Givenchy’s fun streetwear version is the piece to own to make a statement. Price $1,204 Availability www.mrporter.com Eye of the Tiger Capture the glamour of…

YEARS AGO, WHEN  we had started Ensemble, the first thing people would ask for was embroidery. While embroidery has reached fantastic heights in India and the rest of the world—not just in terms of fashion but also as a means to create jobs for our exquisitely talented karigars— it is not what draws me to India as a fashion inspiration. What fascinates me far more is the way people drape fabric in different parts of the country. If time travel was a reality and one landed up in some unknown corner of the country 200 years ago, one would still be able to tell where they are by the way people draped their fabrics. For instance, if three men were given the same yardage of cloth, they would each drape…

What are the current make-up trends that you endorse? I am not someone who follows trends but what we must look out for is natural make-up, contouring and eye shadow. I don’t understand this sudden love for red eyeshadow. My training is in theatrical make-up and if we wanted to make a character look like an alcoholic or sleep-deprived, we would put some red on the eyes. How should one choose make-up? What I like to do is look at a woman and see the natural colours on her skin. To me, a woman looks most beautiful if her make-up enhances her natural beauty. What are some of the disruptions in the make-up industry? There are many. When I started out in the world of make-up several years ago in…

It is often considered the Michelin star of champagnes, given its impeccable lineage and is almost always the top choice when it comes to selecting bubbly for special occasions. Dom Perignon is produced in the Champagne region of France and is a vintage champagne which is made using only the top grapes from a year. Its vintages are few and far between as not every harvest lends itself to such exacting standards. On its journey from wine to champagne, each vintage goes through what are called plenitudes, key points when the bubbly displays its personality as it ages, and now, the Second Plénitude of Dom Pérignon, called P2, has been unveiled in India. It is the result of 17 years of hard work and patience as the wine has gone…

IIM CALCUTTA OFFERS COURSE ON COMPETING ON DIGITAL MINDSETS INDIAN INSTITUTE of Management (IIM) Calcutta has rolled out a programme on competing on digital mindsets (CDM), which aims to equip aspirants with the ability to think about technology and business differently. The programme, which starts in July, will have one session of three hours every week for a period of 11 months. The aspirants will be taught through lectures, case studies, experiential learning, an integrative capstone project and also enjoy guest lectures. A few focus areas will be ontology of the digital shift, cognitive tools for the digital world, competences and skills for the digital landscape, and organising and executing for digital business. HEALTHCARE AT HOME INTRODUCES UPSKILLING COURSES FOR NURSES AND PHYSIOTHERAPISTS HealthCare at HOME (HCAH), a home healthcare…

The journey My husband Rohan and I discovered some cashback sites when we were both working in the UK. We found the concept interesting and started Pouring Pounds, our UK-based cashback venture in 2011. Its success encouraged us to launch a cashback site in India and we launched CashKaro in 2013. It saw immense growth in a short span of time and reinforced our belief that Indians love to save money and would take an instant liking to cashback as a concept. Interesting anecdote It has to be when we met Ratan Tata over a meal and discussed how CashKaro works. When we explained how we drive sales to retailers and pay users cashback while retaining a small commission as profit he said, “You’re giving people free money in a…

The Modi government’s avowed commitment to national security is not just lip service—it means business. We can expect a series of measures to be set in motion. But it’s important in matters of such great complexity to get the roadmap right. Here is one that might help. The first step to signal that the government means business is to announce an additional capital budget of Rs 10,000-15,000 crore for the current year, with clear directions to the ministry of defence that this allocation will be spent against planned projects; carrying it forward or parking it with PSUs should invite censure. Concurrently, a comprehensive review should be initiated of the entire defence budgeting process. The MoD apparatus has remained practically unchanged in the past 70 years, barring the creation of the…

There is no question that the incessant need to commemorate every personal ‘milestone’ with a selfie is irritating. Many middle-aged people might have felt some kinship with Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar for physically rebuffing a young man trying to grab an unasked-for selfie at an event where the CM was being showered with petals. Except, a large part of Khattar’s job is to interact with the public that votes for him. Unasked-for selfies come with the territory. Is anyone going to volunteer to point out to these chief ministers that a little grace and humility go a long way?…

The pre-monsoon climbing season on Everest this year has seen 11 deaths so far; three of them were Indians. There have been photographs for some years now, of long queues of climbers, even hundreds on a given clear day, being herded up a flank on the mountain like a train of shackled sheep. Even so, the photos of the traffic jam on the summit ridge this year, accompanying news of climbers dying, having run out of bottled oxygen just waiting, had a touch of the scandalous. Climbers and hired mountain workers die on Everest almost every year. It is hardly news anymore unless someone famous, or a large number of them die in a single episode. But it’s the very odds themselves that are part of the attraction for a…

RAJASTHAN Drought-hit districts: Barmer, Bikaner, Churu, Hanumangarh, Jaisalmer, Jalore, Jodhpur, Nagaur, Pali MAHARASHTRA Drought-hit districts: Ahmednagar, Akola, Amravati, Aurangabad, Beed, Bhandara, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Dhule, Gondia, Hingoli, Jalgaon, Jalna, Kolhapur, Latur, Nagpur, Nanded, Nandurbar, Nashik, Osmanabad, Palghar, Parbhani, Pune, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Satara, Sindhudurg, Solapur, Wardha, Washim, Yavatmal KARNATAKA Drought-hit districts: Bagalkote, Ballari, Belagavi, Bengaluru Rural, Bidar, Chamarajanagara, Chikkaballapura, Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga, Dharwad, Davangere, Gadag, Hassan, Haveri, Kalaburgi, Kolar, Koppal, Mandya, Raichur, Ramanagara, Tumkur, Vijayapura, Yadgir TELANGANA* Drought hit-districts: Adilabad, Bhadradri-Kothagudem, Jagtial, Jangaon, Jayashankar-Bhoopalapally, Jogulamba-Gadwal, Kamareddy, Karimnagar, Khammam, Kumaram Bheem-Asifabad, Mahbubabad, Mahbubnagar, Mancherial, Medak, Medchal-Malkajgiri, Mulugu, Nagarkurnool, Narayanpet, Nalgonda, NIrmal, Nizamabad, Peddapalli, Rajanna-Sircilla, Sangareddy, Siddipet, Suryapet, Vikarabad, Wanaparthy, Warangal Rural, Yadadri-Bhuvanagari UTTAR PRADESH Drought-hit districts: Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Jhansi, Jalon, Lalitpur, Mahoba, Sonbhadra BIHAR* Drought-hit districts: Aurangabad, Banka, Bhagalpur, Bhojpur, Buxar, Darbhanga, Gaya,…

Three days after a 23-year-old student tested positive for the Nipah virus in Kerala on June 3, Aashiq Abu’s film about the Nipah outbreak—Virus—hit theatres. For Parvathy T.K., her role as a doctor was a revelatory experience. She says she grew more aware of the clinical specialties that exist in the medical profession. The actress feels that by portraying certain characters, she has a chance to see beyond herself and understand what’s happening around her. “I’ve always enjoyed the pre-production stages of a film more than the production,” says Parvathy, insisting that the joy of acting is in the research. The 31-year-old is also excited that love or to be loved is no longer the motivation of her characters. Released in April, Uyare, for instance, saw Parvathy play an acid…

Adapted from Prayaag Akbar’s dystopian novel, Leila, a new Netflix series, is set in 2049 India, but could easily be mistaken for 1940s Germany. There’s a call for racial purity. There are labour camps with tattooed prisoners and gas chambers. While all hail the Supreme Leader Aryavarta (Sanjay Suri), dissent is suppressed. It’s against this grim backdrop that Shalini Pratap (Huma Qureshi) sets out to find her daughter Leila, the child of a Hindu-Muslim union. Qureshi says she couldn’t have asked for a more compelling streaming debut. “It felt so urgent, a future we all fear we may end up living in,” she says. It’s an added bonus that in Shalini, she got to play a complex character, one who realises the limits of her past, as she struggles in…

Q. From Bareilly to Bombay, how has the journey been so far? When I moved to Mumbai, I used to stay in a modest apartment with foreign models who were 16 or 17 years old. They couldn’t speak English, but lived here on their own. That inspired me. I am from Uttarakhand and coming here was a big decision. Beneath the glamorous exterior, I’m still a pahadi girl. Q. You can do a back handspring, butterfly kick, slap spin tornado. Are you preparing for an action role? Being fit and healthy is my life’s mantra. Acrobatics help me stick to that and trying new things just adds a twist. Q. Is the idea to empower women and show them they can match men in martial arts? Martial arts or any…

Kashmir is as much a strong emotion as it is a geographical location on a map. The natural beauty of the valley is only rivalled by its rich history of art and craftsmanship, which is now slowly disappearing thanks to the conflict rife in the region. Christie’s is celebrating the craft of handmade Kashmiri shawls with its auction of rare finds from the 17th to the late 19th century. These hand-woven Kashmiri shawls were created as items of luxury for both men and women and later became treasured heirlooms that were handed down from generation to generation. These shawls were prized the world over for the very fine quality of wool used and their intricate embroidered decoration, a trade craft that is passed on within the family. Known as pashmina,…

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The soft, creamy light as air texture is a mesmerising sight to watch as I rotate a round bottomed copper lota into the A2 desi ghee and water in a large copper pan. Ten thousand rotations. Washing away the water a hundred times after every 100 rotations. This is the recipe for Shatadhauta Ghrita—a deceptively simple yet phenomenal recipe—from classic ayurvedic texts that is made from just two ingredients: water and A2 desi cow ghee. Infused with copper and other trace minerals, the Shatadhauta Ghrita cream is cooling, soothing and excellent for both dry mature vata skin types as well as for pitta-type oily acne-prone skin. In India, we have all grown up immersed in indigenous knowledge where ayurveda has been an essential part of our everyday lives. We have…

Think Monte Carlo and it conjures up images of Europe’s chicest living it up on the French Riviera. It is this ultra glam feel that One Monte Carlo has tried to capture with its luxury development in the heart of the city. Nestled between the Hôtel Hermitage Monte Carlo and the iconic Place du Casino, the concept building currently houses apartments, luxury boutiques and office space. Located along the new Promenade Princesse Charlène and on Avenue Princesse Alice and Avenue des Beaux-Arts, One Monte Carlo has its pulse on art, music and fashion. The houses of Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Fendi, Prada Homme, Boucheron, Dior, Piaget, and Alexander Mc-Queen, are some of the names that find space in the district. One can also stay at one of the 37 decadent…

Enamel compositions, in jewellery or watches, are a colourful interplay of craft and craftsmanship. Luxury watch marque Jaquet Droz does it once again with the Petite Heure Minute. The class act from its Ateliers d’Art comes in two variations of a hummingbird, with plique-à-jour enamel work, on its dial. Limited to a mere eight pieces, the Petite Heure Minute “Smalta Clara Hummingbird” uses the smallest Jaquet Droz movement, a descendant of the Charming Bird, for this magnificent rendition. With its striking plumage, the hummingbird offers an extraordinary spectacle of colour that changes with orientation and the light. In the first, pink and light blue tones echo a mother-of-pearl dial within a red gold case set with 100 diamonds (0.89-carat), while in the second, the hummingbird is adorned with green and…

A positive and never-say-die attitude are qualities that managers look for in candidates during the hiring process. The ability to multitask and learn and unlearn on the go and take lessons from failures is on the other side of the spectrum. Emotional intelligence (EI) is never taught in B-schools, but we need leaders who can improve their EI quotient more than their intelligence quotient (IQ). While hiring, we look for various elements but the core is functional expertise. A key requirement for our hires is to infuse fresh thinking into the organisation. We grill candidates to understand if they have the ability to question and challenge the existing processes, if they can bring in new ways of working, and suggest innovative yet grounded in reality solutions that have never been…

➔ While you are in the process of coming up with an innovative solution, keep an open mind. ➔ Accept failures. Be willing to learn, unlearn and relearn. ➔ The overnight success story is backed by at least five years of dedicated hard work and perseverance. ➔ For any business and start-ups, in particular, it is vital to inculcate the spirit of curiosity and lateral thinking to succeed in the long run. ➔ Understand what your customers need and direct all efforts towards providing the best possible solution.…