Desiree

(column by Akansha Pradhan)

Villain Chair
311,497 INR

Ok, this one thing that Lex Luthor, Auric Goldfinger, Darth Vader, Dr. Hannibal Lecter and, not to forget, Gabbar Singh must wage war for. The ultimate ‘Villain Chair’. It comes in leather, chrome, steel, and aluminium finish and promises to ensconce the sitter in a world of his own. Comfortable, well that’s for you to discover. Hey, how many of you, though, just found the ‘perfect gift idea’ for your boss? He he he… no, still not quite evil enough. Sit and practice dear villains. May the force be with you!

Petit Grenada
302,337,120 INR

It is so beautiful, that it seems nothing can go wrong here. Tucked away in the Caribbean, it lies enchanting and beckoning spellbound wanderers into its arms. A true tropical and ‘volcanic’ wonder – the paradise has exquisite white sandy beaches, scores of palm trees, tropical forest mountains, pristine turquoise lagoons and even a virgin coral reef. Ravaged by Hurrican Ivana in 2004, the island’s Plantation Villa would require complete renovation, but it is this very seductive past that adds character to the petit 20 acre island. A case of fatal attraction? Or fatalism, Dr Watson?

Asger Jorn's Oil Painting
17,421,269 INR to 26,131,902 INR

A rebel. That is how one could perceive Asger Oluf Jorgensen alias Asger Jorn. Born to staunch Christians, Jorn worked to break away from his religious stranglehold. His rebellious nature manifested in art forms that broke away from reality through deformed human representations, a sense of violence in brushwork and incredible colour chemistry. This was also the concept of COBRA – a group he co-founded to promote semi-abstract paintings; he even formulated a weird form of football that was three sided and didn’t believe in goal scores, but focussed on the skill of defending goals. Guess, Zidane would agree with Jorn’s explosive and ‘heady’ spirit.

2006 Viper Venom 1000 Twin Turbo SRT Coupe
11,867,133 INR

The Hennesseys are a name to reckon with in the automobile arena; John Hennessey, in fact, has been tweaking these screamers for the past 12 years! His modified 2006 Viper Venom surely doesn’t fail to excite the senses. Claimed to be “the fastest and most powerful limited-edition street car in the world”, the Viper goes from 0 to 100 kph in merely 2.9 seconds! No wonder, that already three of the 24 cars have been booked. Almost everything on the menu is upgraded – from the Brembo upgraded brake system to Hennessey Venom 7R forged aluminium wheels to even custom made floor mats! Well, at least the car gives one good reason to start looking at the world’s richest banks... to rob them of their money, dude!

(End of Akansha Pradhan column)

New Middle-East? Surely, you were born yesterday!
A critique on political muddles & the resultant social mess in the Middle-East

(column by Thomas L. Friedman, Pulitzer Prize Winner Formerly with New York Times)

Damascus, Syria – Over Turkish coffee the other morning, I picked up a copy of The Syria Times, the local English-language paper, and my eye immediately went to a small box at the top of the front page. It said, “The Middle- East on the Eve of Modernity P. 5.” I thought: What a perfect way to describe the Middle-East today – going back to some pre-modern era? Alas, The Syria Times was not trying to be ironic. It turned out the headline was the title of a book about Aleppo in the 18th century. But had it been a news headline, it would have been apt. Condoleezza Rice must have been severely jet-lagged when she said that what’s going on in Lebanon and Iraq today were the “birth pangs of a new Middle-East.” Oh, I wish it were so. What we are actually seeing are the rebirth pangs of the old Middle-East, only fuelled now by oil and more destructive weaponry. Some of the most primordial, tribal passions, which always lurk beneath the surface here – Sunnis versus Shiites, Jews versus Muslims, Lebanese versus Syrians – but are usually contained by modern states or bonds of civilization, are exploding to the top.

There is nothing that you can’t do to someone in the Middle-East today, and there is no leader or movement – no Nelson Mandela and no million mom march – coming out of this region, or into this region, to end the madness. And I mean madness. We’ve seen Sunni Muslims in Iraq suicide-bomb a Shiite mosque on Ramadan; we’ve seen Shiite militiamen torture Sunnis in Iraq by drilling holes in their heads with power tools; we’ve seen Jordanian Islamist parliamentarians mourning the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, even though he once blew up a Jordanian wedding; we’ve seen hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli cafes and buses; and we’ve seen Israel retaliating by, at times, leveling whole buildings, with the guilty and the innocent inside.

Now we’ve seen the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, take all of Lebanon into a devastating, unprovoked war with Israel, just to improve his political standing and take the pressure off Iran. America should be galvanizing the forces of order – Europe, Russia, China & India – into a coalition against these trends. But we can’t. Why? In part, it’s because our President and Secretary of State, although they speak with great moral clarity, have no moral authority. That’s been shattered by their performance in Iraq. The world hates George Bush more than any US President in my lifetime. He is radioactive – and so caught up in his own ideological bubble that he is incapable of imagining or forging alternative strategies. In part, it is also because China, Europe & Russia have become freeloaders off US power. They reap enormous profits from the post-Cold-War order shaped by the US, but rather than become real stakeholders in that order, helping to draw and defend redlines, they duck, mumble, waffle or cut their own deals. This doesn’t bode well for global stability. A religious militia that calls itself “the party of God” takes over a state and drags it into war, using high-tech rockets – mullahs with drones – and the world is paralyzed. Those who ignore this madness will one day see it come to a theater near them.

In part, though, this madness is homegrown. I sat with some young Syrian writers and listened to a discussion between a young woman, talking about how she would prefer to see Israel disappear, another writer who argued that Nasrallah was an Arab disaster, and an Arab journalist who described the “pride” and “dignity” every Arab felt at seeing Hezbollah fight Israel to a standstill. When will the Arab-Muslim world stop getting its “pride” from fighting Israel and start getting it from constructing a society that others would envy, an economy others would respect, and inventions and medical breakthroughs from which others would benefit? There will be no new Middle-East – not as long as the New Middle Easterners, like Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, get gunned down; not as long as Old Middle Easterners, like Nasrallah, use all their wits and resources to start a new Arab-Israeli war rather than build a new Arab university; and not as long as Arab media and intellectuals refuse to speak out clearly against those who encourage their youth to embrace martyrdom with religious zeal rather than meld modernity with Arab culture. Without which, we are wasting our time resources, and the Arab world is wasting its future. It will forever be “on the eve of modernity.”

(End of Thomas L. Friedman column)