Light
Dark
Ten-year-old piano prodigy Ayaan Deshpande wowed Ahmedabad’s Western classical music aficionados at a Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) concert at Natarani on Saturday. Clad in a silk red suit vest and bowtie, the curly-haired youngster played Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21, a difficult, but very popular score. Composed in 1785, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 29 years […]
Everyone takes music for granted now. With the smartphone, we can summon up any kind of music we want, from anywhere in the world. But as Vidya Shah reminds us, this was not always the case. “Till the early 1900s, access to music was limited and restricted to live performances,” she says. “It was only […]
Natarani’s six-day theatre festival, Six and The City, ended with a lively performance of the play Love & Lavani on Sunday. Though all the songs in the 130-minute play are Marathi, the sentiment behind them are not hard to understand and the Ahmedabadi audience was thoroughly engaged by the performance. Egged on by the performers, they whistled, hooted, clapped […]
Located on Rajpath Bungalow Road in Bodakdev, Shreedev Enterprises is a medium-sized grocery shop that has always stocked Amul ice cream. It even carries the Amul sign board over its awning. Early this month however, Shreedev’s customers were pleasantly surprised to see a Hocco ice cream freezer installed in the store’s premises. Positioned at the […]
The Russian ice-show Scheherazade premiered in India at the EKA Stadium in Ahmedabad on Friday and will run for four more shows over the weekend. Created by Tatiana Navka, winner of the Gold Medal for Ice Dancing at the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2005, the show offers up a spectacle of figure skating with […]
EuroKids preschools plans to launch 150 new franchisees in Gujarat over the next five years. The Mumbai-headquartered company currently has 67 centres in the State, of which 38 are in Ahmedabad. Speaking at a news conference in the city, CEO KVS Seshasai said that company’s strategy is aligned to the government’s National Education Policy 2020, […]
Raymond Lifestyle is planning to open 650 new exclusive brand outlets over the next two years, taking the total number of stores in its distribution network to 2,000. Of these, 300 stores will be for the Ethnix brand of men’s wedding wear, launched 18 months ago. Addressing a news conference in Ahmedabad on Thursday, Raymond […]
TVS Motor Company has launched an improved version of its Jupiter 110 scooter, with a host of new features that include dual helmet under-seat storage, front fuel filling and an infinity light bar. These features have so far been available in the company’s 125 cc range of scooters, but this is the first time they […]
If the measure of a city is the art and artists it manages to attract from other parts of the world, Ahmedabad seems to be faring well. Over the past year, the city has seen several national and international art shows, including an exhibition of Dacca artists at iRam Art in July, an international art […]
On World Photography Day on Monday, VO! met up with Parmanand Dalwadi, a doyen among professional photographers in Ahmedabad. In an exclusive interview, the veteran lensman talks about new technologies in photography, the Ambani wedding and what makes for a truly great photo: VO!: What are the current trends in photography? Dalwadi: Photography was invented […]
On a bright Saturday afternoon in an office in Vastrapur, a group of 20 high society ladies sit around a conference room table learning techniques of Warli tribal art under the tutelage of Payal Rathawa. The 26-year-old transgender artist from Rajkot is in Ahmedabad at the invitation of the Swayam Foundation, an NGO that aims […]
Jewellery brand Tanishq is celebrating its three-decade presence in Ahmedabad with a series of two fashion shows over the weekend, where it has invited its customers to walk the ramp and model the company’s latest collections. A division of Titan Industries, Tanishq has six stores in Ahmedabad, with a roster of 3,00,342 families as customers. […]
Gallery iRam Art has brought some exciting work by two young Bangladeshi artists to Ahmedabad, in an exhibition titled Embodied Vestiges, which opened on Friday. This is the iRam gallery’s second exhibition since it opened in March. Speaking to VO! at the opening, founder Harssh Shah said iRam’s objective is to set a global benchmark for […]
The Darpana Academy of Performing Arts inaugurated a new performance venue, Gallery at Natarani, on Saturday, with Firefly Women, a dance spectacle on the theme of the persecution of political dissenters by the government. Speaking on the occasion, Director Mallika Sarabhai said the new air-conditioned venue would allow Natarani to extend its season beyond the […]
Exiled to the island of St Elba, Napoleon had time to define and reflect on the strategies that had won him the many battles he had fought before his defeat at Waterloo. The crux of Napoleon’s strategy, translated from French, was “we engage and then we see.” Napoleon would engage his enemies in battle and […]
The size of India’s furniture market is estimated at Rs 1.3 lakh crore, of which the organised sector accounts for Rs 8,000 crore. With 970 stores across the country, Godrej Interio claims a market share of 30% within the orgainsed sector, making it the market leader. In Gujarat, however, the company’s share is much less, […]
Long before personal computers and formal management information systems, Sam Walton instituted a strategy execution system that would endure for forty years at WalMart. Walton then owned 17 stores and the managers in charge of each store, along with the company’s eight buyers, would meet every week with an eight-point agenda. The first point in […]
After graduating from Ahmedabad’s CN College of Fine Arts in the early 90s, Sangita Khalsa plunged into business, setting up a firm that designs soft furnishings for clients that include the city’s 5-star hotels. Then during the Covid pandemic, when business came to a standstill, Ms Khalsa decided to bring her sensibilities to play in […]
In this age of bitcoins and digital payments, old banknotes can evoke a happy nostalgia. They certainly did at the opening of the Beyond Face Value exhibition of French banknotes at the Alliance Francaise (AF) Ahmedabad on Friday. The French expatriates present at the opening had many memories associated with these Franc notes which were […]
Many iconic brands have emerged from Gujarat, but the one most closely identified with the state is surely Amul. Amul symbolises Gujarat in the popular mind, just as McDonald’s symbolises America. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which owns the brand, has reinforced this perception in its widely aired “Taste of India” campaign, which features […]
