If schools could be compared to cars, then Mumbai's 60-year-old Campion Boys High School would be a Rolls Royce. Most of the city's power elite- politicians, corporate heads, movie stars and socialites-send their children to this institution. Rated among the top five in the country, the south Mumbai school now finds itself in the news for all the wrong reasons.

CLASS PROTEST: Parents outside the cardinal's home

Ever since the school's management changed hands, from the Jesuit priests to the Archbishop of Mumbai five years ago, the school has been rocked by charges of nepotism and mismanagement.

The death of a principal due to a heart attack 15 months back has seen a rapidfire turnover of three temporary heads. The revolving door at the principal's office is said to have affected Campion's administration including such delicate matters as the marking of students' report cards. If the situation continues, fear parents, the school could soon lose its scholastic sheen.

Protests against the new management, specifically an official appointed by the cardinal to oversee school administration, have now spilled on to the streets. Placard-wielding protesters have besieged the cardinal's home and parents-teachers associations and parishioners, evidently inspired by the school motto Gaudium in Veritate (joy in truth), are agitating for greater transparency and a reinstatement of a principal allegedly ousted by the new administration.

The protests worked. The month-long stand-off was finally resolved when the Archbishop, Cardinal Ivan Dias, asked the Jesuits to take the school back into their fold. The Rolls Royce, it would seem, has been saved a further battering.

— Sandeep Unnithan

Summer's here and so is the king of fruits. This time it has new charm-the online magic.

Bangoes.com: Last year, mango-marketing whiz Prakash Bang sold 10,000 boxes of Alphonso in three months on his website. This year he has already got orders of over 500 boxes, a week before the mango season officially starts. Bang's mangoes are a touch expensive at Rs 625 a dozen, inclusive of delivery and gift wrapping.

Mangopeti.com: Launched a week ago, this website has already recorded over a hundred orders after aggressive marketing and e-mailers. Three crates of Ratnagiri Alphonso mangoes for Rs 1,025.

For options check out: Indiaflowerpalace.com, www.venubai-mango.com www.indiamart.com/leleexports

THE BABU POLITICIAN: Natwar

Career diplomat-turned-politician K. Natwar Singh is still to give up the petty and proper ways of babudom. Congress circles say the party's foreign policy often suffers the brunt of his inability to outgrow Cold War jargon. At the all-party meeting on Iraq crisis, Natwar did all the talking while Congress President Sonia Gandhi and senior leader Manmohan Singh kept mum. No, Natwar was not carried away by the sound of his own voice but by the impact of his Rajya Sabha speech. The Government, he declared, got the idea of opposing the regime change in Baghdad only after hearing him. Such delusions of grandeur prompted Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee to tell him that he had no monopoly over diplomacy. The snub, of course, failed to put down the supercilious Jat from Bharatpur. After the Government refused to move a resolution condemning the US attack on Iraq, Natwar got the Congress to issue a statement using the "C" word for "the war against Iraq". But it didn't mention who was waging the war. When this was pointed out, Natwar resorted to an obfuscating trick from the mea book. "It is implicit and explicit in the statement. It is not the Philippines that has attacked Iraq." His tacky attempt to conceal only revealed the Congress' own lack of appetite to bash the US.