Talk of the Town

CAPT. E. CHANDRASEKHAR, Indian Airlines Airbus-300 Pilot, could well be called ``crisis manager'' of mid-air situations. This comes after he piloted a jet caught in extreme weather to safety with over 200 passengers on-board.

The 42-year-old pilot is now busy compiling statistics on varied parameters of weather conditions to help pilots fly safely.

``I am planning to seek the assistance of both national and global level Pilots' organisations to turn my experience into a handbook''. A potential bestseller in the airline industry?

KWHEN PART of the roof of the Chennai Mofussil bus stand project came down with a thud, it was a defeaning noise heard over a long distance.

But ever since, an eerie silence has descended on the project. Whatever happened to the `expert committee' report which was supposed to be ready in the first week of December?

Indications are that there is much more than mere contractor glitches and technical inadequacies which brought the roof down. The manner of report preparation seems to convey that this is the second most confidential exercise carried out in Indian history - after the Bomb. For now, mum is the word.

THE CITY is full of shopping offers for the New Year. If some stores are trying out wells of fortune and other abracadabra to draw customers, one store in T.Nagar promises that money will literally grow on trees.

One tree, that is. The tree is to be found at the Rathna Fan House, and the whole idea works like this: those who loosen their purse strings shopping for electricals and notch up the highest bill, will then be allowed to ``pluck'' the gifts from the tree. The fruits of this tree can be taken back by the customer.

It must of course be heartening that some people want to grow trees, even those that provide some cash, than follow the city trend of chopping them down.

THINK ABOUT a KBC with participants only from Tamil Nadu. No, we are not talking about ``Koteeswaran'' and the homegrown host, Sarath Kumar. We are talking about the real KBC with the original script and the original host, the big B.

Even as Sarath Kumar is trying to get his ``Computer Click'' accent right, Star TV and Ambitabh Bachan are putting together an episode exclusively for Tamil Nadu.

To be telecast sometime in January or February, this episode will have only participants from Tamil Nadu.

The master of the national quiz-coup, Star TV, will open separate telephone lines only for participants from the State.

The lines, according to Star TV sources, will be open on December 28 at 6 a.m. till 6 a.m. the next day.

The show on December 20 will be a kind of harbinger of things to come. Ms. S. Gayatri Devi, a System Analyst from Chennai, will be on the ``hot seat'' on that day. ``Meeting my childhood hero was great,'' she says, concealing her regret that while exiting the show, she still had two ``lifelines'' unused.

Computer, don't ``kilick,'' when you can lock it.

THE STATE police appear to be poor chasers. If in the jungle the brigand is still playing a tough hide and seek game, on the mainland, it has to come to terms with an elusive political functionary turned fugitive, the Deputy Mayor of Madurai who is accused in the murder of a financier.

But the Department is adept in quick-fix solutions, achieved through transfers and postings. The question many ask now is if the transfer of a senior Police Officer in the city has any link with the slippery deputy mayor.

By T. S. Shankar,

R. K. Radhakrishnan,

N. Ravi Kumar,

G. Pramod Kumar

and S. Shivakumar.

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