October 26, 1998

The onion issue may be a hot potato for the Government, but not for enterprising shopkeepers. Customers at Grasim Gwalior Suitings, a premier Chandigarh showroom, were pleased as peas last week at this offer: buy a suit length, get 1 kg of onions free. Of course, they went like hot cakes -- the suit lengths, that is. The shop usually sells 12-15 in a day; it notched up 32 on the first day of the offer. Says the man behind the idea, the showroom's MD Ashwani Kumar: "The onion offer brought a good crop of publicity for nothing." Give us a crop of the vegetable any day.

Flying Doctors

Mythology is obviously his strong point. So too is philanthropy. That explains why Dr C. Dayakar Reddy, chairman of the Hyderabad-based CDR Group of Hospitals, picked Sanjeevani as the name for his just-launched project -- flying specialists to towns and villages of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. The medicos in choppers will be preceded by state-of-the-art equipment in vans. "I was inspired," says CDR, "by Hanuman who brought the Sanjeevani herb from atop a mountain to nurse Lakshman." Myth meets reality now.

The Truth About Ajay Jadeja

There are rumours that he's getting married. Rumours that he's acting in a film opposite Madhuri Dixit. Here's something that we can confirm about Ajay Jadeja. He's starting a cricket cafe in Delhi. "It's a sort of theme restaurant on the lines of Planet Hollywood and the sports cafes," says Jadeja on that score. Meaning, lots of cricket memorabilia on the walls, big screens, and at tournament time, there'll be competitions with big prizes. The cafe opens before the World Cup next year. That's not a rumour either.

The Big Bi

Kofi Annan was not the only one in New York last week. Fatima Bi was there too. The sarpanch of Kalva village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, Fatima received the Race Against Poverty Award from the UN Secretary General at the UN General Assembly. The award is in recognition of her contribution, along with other village women, towards self-help poverty-eradication programmes in Kalva. "My goal is to make everyone in my village learn to read and write," says the 33-year-old. Have you ever wondered what greatness is? It's the unlettered wife of an unlettered fruit vendor who jetted her way to New York last week.

© Living Media India Ltd