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I know it's Mother's Day and all that jazz, and that I should be feeling tender and family-struck. But at times I can't help but wonder what living away from The Family does to one's sense of attachment. Does distance make the heart grow fonder?

Model ADITI was ready to start her day. One last look at the mirror, and she'd be off. She rather liked what she saw. Till she ran a hand through her hair and there they were. Several strands of grey. Aditi's day was ruined. After all, she was just 27 years old. Too young to have gone grey.

Can a book change your life? I've been thinking about this for a while. These days, wherever you go, whoever you meet, whatever you read, you are confronted with the stories of people who insist that their lives were never the same after reading a particular tome.

I have to say that the first time I came here, I really didn't see the point of Mauritius. It was the year 2000 or thereabouts and I was part of the press party accompanying Prime Minister AB Vajpayee who was on an official visit. It was not a trip that was expected to generate any news but I went along because I had heard so much about Mauritius.

Last year, the Desi Momz Club - a group blog of women known as 'Mommy bloggers', or in non-web-geek language, women who blog almost exclusively about their children - picked Mother's Day as its theme for the month of May. And so, over the course of four weeks, the club's 75 members wrote some 20 posts honouring motherhood.

Guess what? The Hindi film mom is no longer the archetypal white-clad widow, plying her beloved son with the gaajar ka halwa that she made with her own two hands (come to think of it, how else could she have made it? With her own two feet?).

'Mama, look, it's a she soldier!' said a boy in orange shorts to his mother. Amidst the guns, heavy weight army trucks, and bazooka-type warfare on display, the duo seemed a little out of place at the Defence Exposition recently held in the Capital.

Most of us know our myths from Amar Chitra Katha, but please do check out a lovely old book -that many of you have probably come across already - by Margaret Elizabeth Noble (1867- 1911). An Anglo-Irish associate of Swami Vivekananda, she did a very nice retelling in English of the wisdom stories we grow up with, called Cradle Tales of Hinduism.

Meet the Mukherjees, in several degrees of separation from Rabindranath Tagore and in close proximity to Thai art. Ramkrishna Paramhans - think Baba Ramdev without the yoga-baba routine and a million times more cultural and spiritual cachet - and Goddess Kali, the other two pillars of the Holy Trinity in drawing room aesthetics of Bengali homes are also missing from the walls.

His distributor in Singapore calls them the Harry Potter books on Islam. Soon, one of his books My First Quran could become part of a catalogue recommended to teachers in British schools. New Delhi-based Saniyasnain Khan, owner of Goodword Books, is perhaps the only publisher in India who brings out children's books on Islam, in English.

Looks like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's e-campaigns are in good hands. This could come as a surprise, but the same pair of hands is managing the Republicans as well. Ravi Singh, the 35-year-old Indian-American who is in Delhi to set up an R and D lab and to nudge Indian politicians to get on a web page, explains why the all-party clientele should not be puzzling.

For most of the 1980s, and for part of the 1990s too I would imagine, Kathmandu was the place to go to - at least if you lived in Calcutta. The Calcutta non-Marwari elite (the rich Marwaris went to London even then) treated Kathmandu as an exotic foreign destination, full of classy hotels, fancy restaurants, imported cars, glamorous casinos, and a swinging local jet-set.

Last year, Austin Pinto's preparation for her Class 11 exams was an uphill effort. Visually-challenged, even getting to the chapter he needed was a painstaking scroll through pages of notes.

To make the annual International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Goa a true global cinemascope, India will announce at the 61st edition of the Cannes film festival its decision of a four-fold increase in the prize money for the Golden Peacock award and introduction of an international critics' award.

He is credited with importing judo to India but Rabindranath Tagore's name had never been associated with sport in any way, barring a local car rally called Kabiguru Rally. Observed elaborately and almost religiously all over Bengal on both sides of the border, neither had his birth anniversary become an issue in any arena of sports.

Zafri Mudasser Nofil New Delhi, May 8 (PTI) Wacky titles and contents may sound interesting but such books have spawned more imitative work and might not entice readers who mostly like to gel

CHARBAGH HAD two unique visitors on Tuesday. Udham Singh and Mangal Singh, known for successfully chasing away simians from the Rashtrapati Bhawan and the PMO, were here to rid the junction of the monkey menace.

Ashley Vanristell can conjure up a dove out of thin air, but he can't wish his debilitating immune disorder away. So the nine-year-old magician has done the next best thing –- wielding the magic wand to pay his exorbitant medical bills.

It is indeed surreal for me to think that Pandit Kishan Maharaj is no more. My association with him goes back 45 years from our first concert together in Varanasi in 1963.