India146;s twelve

The FT also suggested the proposals may have been framed with an eye on western opinion. It cited suspicions expressed by unnamed diplomats that the Indian measures were 8216;8216;facilitated8217;8217; by the US government8217;s recent decision to classify Dawood Ibrahim as a terrorist and to freeze his assets 8212; which India saw as a 8216;8216;clear sign that Washington was broadening anti-terrorist operations to include groups that also targeted India.8217;8217;

Bewitched by Bollywood

A bollywood 8216;8216;hipper, edgier, more professional8217;8217; was on the TIME cover this week. The face was Aishwarya Rai. The story was a breathless listing of the ways in which 8216;8216;an increasingly sophisticated Bollywood8217;8217; 8216;8216;makes a bid for global dominance8217;8217;, Superstar Ash 8216;8216;leading the way8217;8217;.

Many good things were said about New Bollywood that is Breaking The Mould. In which, 8216;8216;cheesy song and dance numbers8217;8217; are being replaced by 8216;8216;a slick urban realism8217;8217;. Stars like Rai, Aamir Khan and Rahul Bose are becoming natural choices for leading roles in international productions. Indian directors Shekhar Kapur and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, apart from Ugandan-Indian Mira Nair and British-Indian Gurinder Chadha, are unmissable on the world stage. Hollywood studios are drawing up plans to release Bollywood films abroad. There8217;s a flurry of East-West co-productions. And suddenly Bollywood is only a business idea away from Hollywood. Everyone is beginning, as Mira Nair put it, to see the commercial sense of combining the world8217;s two biggest film audiences.

So are they finally coming true then, those whispered rumours of an Indian invasion that have long been doing the rounds of western theaters, especially in London? Is the day of the formula and the cliche fully over? Bound scripts, meticulously detailed schedules, less murky sources of financing. No songs, all urban middle class angst. Is this really the beginning of the happy ending?

An essay by Richard Corliss in the same magazine introduced a dash of unintended irony. Corliss wrote frankly about being 8216;8216;bewitched by Bollywood8217;8217;. But he described himself as the 8216;8216;strange, nearly solitary creature: a non-Indian fan of Indian movies8217;8217;.

Look at Bangalore

NEWSWEEK was tracking a trend: the end of minimalism. It said that fashion, furniture, interiors and architecture have been moving 8216;8216;away from austerity, and toward a richer, more colourful, emotional kind of design8217;8217;. Among NEWSWEEK8217;s Top 12 hot spots for design 8212; Bangalore.

Bangalore rubs shoulders with other unexpected centres of design chic like Beirut and Tallinn, Estonia. And the entirely predictable ones like New York and Milan. Bangalore is a milestone in a new story of design that is being scripted in part by globalisation, which is 8216;8216;disseminating a broad range of cultural influences around the world8217;8217;. And then by the dot com crash and global recession which 8216;8216;took their toll on the customers who once bought into luxurious austerity.8217;8217; Like all contemporary tales, this one also arranges itself into a before and an after 9/11. After that day in September, 8216;8216;there8217;s a return to the realities of family life, and people want homes that they can actually live in8217;8217;, an editor for the design publisher TASCHEN told NEWSWEEK.

Bangalore was also the motif for another story in NEWSWEEK. In a special edition, the magazine covered the 8216;8216;Boom Towns8217;8217; and asked: 8216;8216;Is Asia8217;s Urban Explosion a Blessing or a Curse?8217;8217; It pointed out that Asia is becoming urban in half the time it took Europe and America. But as 8216;8216;rice fields8217;8217; give way to 8216;8216;skyscrapers and pestilential slums8217;8217;, should we be scared of what this tidal wave will bring?

Bangalore, according to NEWSWEEK, showcases the 8216;8216;promises and perils8217;8217; of rapid urbanisation: it is economically vibrant, outward looking. But it is devouring the countryside. A burgeoning population is straining the local water supply, social structures are crumbling, migrants hunker down in slums infested with diseases. Yet, per capita income is more than twice the national average; fewer than one in three Bangalore residents is a native speaker of the local language; there are more than 50 colleges and thousands of Internet connections, dropping infant mortality rates, greater access to medical care.

Arab chic

And in Lebanon8217;s THE DAILY STAR, a startled report on the latest issue of the Parisian VOGUE HOMMES INTERNATIONAL, often described as the style bible for men. Well, the fall/winter issue8217;s cover features a headshot of Olympian champion flyweight boxer Brahim Asloum. The title is: Ch8217;adore. The entire issue is devoted to the Middle East. Ch8217;adore is a play on words referring to lifting a veil and Christian Dior8217;s slogan, J8217;adore.

Reportedly, the issue includes a profile of 93-year-old Nobel Prize winning writer Naguib Mahfouz, Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, novelist Sorour Kasmai and essays on subjects such as the vision of the Arab world in the western media. The fashion pages are shot in Cairo, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Istanbul, Ramallah. 8216;8216;How can you not think about the Middle East?8217;8217; asked Richard Buckley, American editor of the magazine, during an interview in Paris.