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Saturday, February 21, 2009
Vol. 3 No. 8
LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE
LA’s new
Lady She’s expertly navigating the red carpet, one gorgeous dress at a time. How ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ debutante Freida Pinto became Hollywood’s latest style icon (their words, not ours)
BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH DAVID LINLEY >Page 6
INSTANT CLASSIC
A new voice from Pakistan beautifully captures the ebb and flow of human longing >Page 13
PLUS: Five Indian designers show us how they would dress Pinto >Pages 1012
MONUMENTAL DISAPPOINTMENT A trip to the Taj Mahal shows how poorly we treat one of the world’s greatest works of art >Page 14
Pinto at the Screen Actors Guild awards in a Marchesa gown.
REPLY TO ALL
AAKAR PATEL
N
SALIL TRIPATHI
SHOBA NARAYAN
WHY ‘SLUMDOG’ IS THE CULT OF CAFÉ UNBELIEVABLE COMMUNITIES o, really unbelievable: It could never happen. Not the money (a slumdog may have every chance of making a fortune), but the manner. It could never happen through the dignity and repose of Dev Patel’s Jamal, an utterly improbable slumdog. Director Danny Boyle has reported on the Indian slum with the Westerner’s thoroughness. He has shown its squalor, the randomness of its violence and the distance of the state from its problems more precisely than an Indian could have. >Page 4
DETOURS
THE GOOD LIFE
T
his is why I love Bangalore. I am sitting at WSJ Koshy’s—at the older Parade Café, not the fancier, air-conditioned Jewel Box just across the hall. Around me are eight men of indeterminate age, mostly retired, bound by what one of them, Nausher Hameed, an IT consultant, calls “an interest in non-material things”. Ha, I think. The rest of India may be preoccupied with greed and governance; GDP and beating China; Charvet ties and Brioni suits; markets and inefficiencies. >Page 4
IN THE LIGHT OF BERGMAN
F
riends had warned me that the sun never sets in Stockholm during the summer months. I was there in late June, and the sky was filled with clouds, and the boats in the blue harbour bobbed gaily in the wind. Sails fluttered, and even though the sun was not visible, it was bright and you needed sunglasses. The light was crystal clear. It was nearly 7pm, and I was headed with my friends to a boat which would take us around the archipelago as we sipped chilled wine and looked at other pleasure boats... >Page 15
AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... The five films in the running for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture— and when you can catch them >Page 16
DON’T MISS
For today’s business news > Question of Answers— the quiz with a difference > Markets Watch