It was Jagdish Khattar’s pet theme when he started True Value about 3 years back. Khattar, Maruti’s exuberant MD, could foresee that time may soon come when faced with onslaught of new models, people will prefer switching over to new cars selling off old ones that would still command fair value. [Image source left] Today, […]
Mr. Asha of Liverpool
The Asha, sans frills! [Image source]When Dipak Choudhary and his wife, Chandana, first set feet in Liverpool, UK in 1963, all he had with him was a princely sum of seven thousand pounds and that elusive treasure called ‘hope’. No wonder then that the restaurant he opened on April 4, 2004 at the ground floor […]
The pachyderm mess
A tusker in Chapramari forest, Dooars – life at stake! [Image source] The story repeats again and again, only this time the tragedy is too hard that will haunt animal lovers for ling time to come. Thursday late night, 5 elephants of which one was an expectant mother, lost lives apparently due to lightning. The […]
Slurppp!
Slurp is Yahoo!’s web-indexing robot. But slurp is also how you sound when you try to control your tongue at the sight of a mouth-watering food. Those who relish the juicy crunchy jalebi that is dished out at every sweetshop of the city twice a day, would need no telling the concept of slurp. I […]
Darjeeling
A Darjeeling tea garden – lush green! [Image source] For once it’s not to sing paeans of the Queen of Hills. That it is so is beyond doubt, though the crowd makes a mess of the setting in the Darjeeling of today. But if you brush aside your nosy feeling for a while, and especially […]
Dhaka by train
Bus already plies, and now in 3 months time, trains will run to the Bangladesh capital. Initially, the trains will stop 35 km short of Dhaka at Joydebpur since this length doesn’t yet have broad gauge line. Gede this side and Darshana across the border are the stations where respective customs and immigration checks will […]
12 coaches for local trains
Badurjhola, translated to English, would mean ‘hanging like bats’. If anything that comes to mind when one sees the rush-hour local trains in Kolkata, it must be this term, badurjhola. For millions across the suburbs of the metropolis, local trains are the only viable connection. [Image source]The trains are more or less crowded throughout the […]
Sunderbans now nearer
At last the Sunderbans Development Council (SDC) is waking up to protect its turf. The council, working against heavy odds like paucity of funds and inaccessibility of the unique mangrove forests famous for Royal Bengal Tigers, has nevertheless made the place what it is today. Tourists can visit the fringes of the dense forests, venturing […]
And now, quaint locales
Fiji (8N+9D): Rs.37,414Bora Bora, Tahiti (6N+7D): €853 (approx. Rs.50,000)Lima (3D+2N): R.5,928Phnom Penh (3D+2N): Rs.15,000Seychelles (4D+3N): Rs.13,000 You may have by now guessed what these figures mean. These exotic destinations are now being increasingly promoted by travel agencies in Kolkata. With airfares becoming cheap and more travel loans being available, people are no longer constrained to […]
Flying cheapest
Rome and back is just Rs.15,000 (plus tax) and to London and back via Dubai is Rs.18,500 before tax. Traveling to Europe is perhaps never so cheaper. What takes? The reason is that several airlines have now started operating from Kolkata, and so the capacity increase has caused the fares to nosedive. The Rome trip […]