The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Star wars

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 16, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Star wars

The war seems to be hotting up among big textile brands in the city to rope in film stars for inauguration of their shopping malls.

Even as one leading brand managed to get charming actor Trisha for the opening of its new five-floor family shopping mall on the downtown Mahatma Gandhi road, another rival brand tried to do one better.

This brand too is fast readying its shopping mall, which is bang opposite the first one on the same road. This brand even displayed a huge cut-out announcing that not just one, but three south Indian sirens – Charmee, Shweta Prasad (of ‘Kotha Bangaru Lokam’ fame) and Kajal – would inaugurate its mall on Dec.22.

Recession and slowdown seem to have no meaning, at least in this part of the business.

Disappointing

Students of a management school were shown the other day an example of poor time management and communication by a high-ranking official of the district administration. The official invited to talk on the requirements of a good manager turned up several minutes late and asked the organisers to cut short their function because he had to leave early. He stressed the importance of communication skills without actually communicating much. The students seemed more than a wee bit disappointed because they expected a lot from him, a product of one of the best training facilities for administrators in the country.

Diamonds are for all!

Wary of the clear tilt of jewellery-lovers towards diamonds, some of the traders participating in the fifth Vijayawada Gold & Diamond Jewellery Fair at Seshasai Kalyana Vedika discovered a novel way of luring customers to their stalls. Taking a slight deviation from the clichéd adage of ‘Diamonds are forever’, they coined a new slogan ‘Diamonds are for all.’ The soaring price of the yellow metal and the fact that diamond jewellery looks superior in elegance had a visible impact on the buying trend. “Why buy gold when you can afford diamond at the same cost?” observed a Hyderabad-based retailer who made a brisk business on diamond-studded ornaments.

Belated realisation!

Guntur MP Rayapati Sambasiva Rao seems to have realised, rather belatedly, that there was no development in the city. Mr. Sambasiva Rao who had been trumpeting the achievements of the YS Rjasekhara Reddy Government in developing the Corporation declared -- rather admitted -- that `there was no development’ in the city. All this, according to him, seemed to have happened only due to Municipal Commissioner Siddhartha Jain and made an oral complaint to the Principal Secretary, Municipal Administration, in front of mediapersons through his mobile phone. It is surprising that he did not realise that there was no development till his brother’s son Rayapati Mohan Saikrishna completed several months as Mayor. Mediapersons wondered if development of the city was solely dependent on working of a single Municipal Commissioner.

(K. Srimali, G. V. Ramana Rao and P. Sujatha Varma in Vijayawada and Ramesh Susarla in Guntur)

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Andhra Pradesh