Snapshots

Media Means Money, Too

If, for the briefest of moments, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha thought he was presiding over a meeting of industry leaders and not media luminaries at his North Block office in New Delhi on Friday, he wasn8217;t to blame. The poor man, as part of his transparency drive, had called a meeting of opinion-makers to get their views on what needed to be done about the Budget, the fiscal deficit, subsidies, and larger issues like that. This was the group, he told the hacks, that he would listen to closely, as they clearly had no axes to grind. No journalist, for example, would suggest that the import duty on PTA be raised while that on DMT be reduced 8212; something that clearly must have been done by industry leaders at their tete-a-tete with Sinha a few days prior to this. But to the FM8217;s surprise, one of the assembled editors actually, a manager who doubles as one spoke atlength of how the anti-dumping duty mechanism for newsprint was flawed. Sinha, clearly, had spoken too soon.

Science for Students

The Government may not have done much beyond giving the scientific community a new slogan, Jai Vigyan, but there are some who are taking the message out there. Far removed from the post-Pokharan fallout, the country8217;s eminent men of science have gone into a huddle for a new mission. Of making some of the most intriguing subjects accessible to students.Young IIT graduate Shekhar Phatak8217;s multimedia studio in Pune is playing host to some of the best brains, as he goes about the business of publishing the books and making them available at an affordable cost to students nationwide. Here, you can see Govind Swarup, the man who conceptualised the world8217;s largest radio telescope at Narayangaon, leafing through books to make information accessible, even as astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar has taken time off gazing at galaxies to adapt astronomical mysteries into stories forchildren.

Masala Offer

Uncle Chipps is anything but avuncular, or so mothers in Mumbai are discovering. The chips manufacturer may have changed the flavours to that of papri chat, but it is anything but swadeshi in its choice of free posters and postcards, those collectibles that your little one so loves to flaunt. So, if you want a Pamela Anderson-lookalike clad in the barest minimum of clothes, a mudbathing Juhi Chawla, or a skimpily-dressed Madonna, it8217;s not the latest issue of a girlie magazine that you need to go to, but a packet of Uncle Chipps. For those who think size does matter, there8217;s an even more generous offer: four postcards will earn a mega poster. Now, if that has not kicked up a row in the land of the original policeman of moral, Pramod Navalkar, there could be only two reasons: one, Navalkar really prefers the swadeshi chips; two, his children are grown-up.

Buy One, Get Another Free

If you8217;re better known to your friends as God, you cannot but be expectedto do things differently. Alyque Padamsee, advertising guru, impresario, husband of Sharon Prabhakar, and media adviser at large, has also discovered that there can be 25 hours in a day. Which is how he has found time to write his memoirs, A Double Life, to be launched with a live performance at Mumbai8217;s Nehru Centre on Tuesday by, yes, you guessed it, his wife. As Sharon croons numbers from, yes, you guessed it again, Evita, characters from many of the ads Alyque has created will be telling the audience about his other life as theatre man. No wonder then, the invite to the launch shows Alyque8217;s face split into two: one half showing him as Jinnah the part he played in Richard Attenborough8217;s Gandhi, clean-shaven with hair neatly combed back and the other, the trademark ad-man with carefully-tousled hair and goatee. Buy Alyque, and get to hear Sharon sing free.