Have you heard of the Burning Man festival? Or the Monkey Buffet festival?
'The corporate sector says by 2022 they will create 300 million jobs.' 'In the last 70 years we didn't do it, how will we do it in 5 years?' 'Only agriculture can bail out the economy. Unfortunately, it is not being looked into.'
A buoyant economic mood and tempting discounts, both online and offline, are fuelling a shopping frenzy this Diwali.
'The ISI has given a stunning display of its capacity to do with impunity what it likes within Kabul. Incensed over the triumphalism of the hardliners in Kabul, the ISI has hit out; it is a typical ISI reflex action that Indians are familiar with,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Thanks to a well-sorted chassis and Renault's motor, the car induces confidence in the driver to take it for a faster spin
For a phone which is marred with heating issues, does not provide a Quad HD display, is incapable of recording 4K videos, and whose camera performance in general is not in the league of flagships, Himanshu Juneja wonders if Sony has once again got is pricing all wrong.
In terms of ride quality, the Lodgy is just brilliant.
Lupita Nyong'o's speech at the 2014 Academy Awards is a classic example of a brilliant speech says Rakesh Godhwani, author of What to Say and When to Shut Up!
'By his very presence in Delhi on Republic Day, Obama is revisiting the most defining relationship of the 20th century after a period of stagnation,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'I believe in India people should have, up to a certain age, compulsory military training. I also believe that voting should be made compulsory. I have some violent idea, that all candidates should sign an affidavit that whatever they have promised to the people, if they are unable to fulfill they won't stand in elections again.' 'I addressed a meeting near the Kalandari mosque where more than 8,000 Muslims had come to listen to me. I said Muslims have nothing to fear, you fear only Allah. You should be afraid of no one... Some people are creating a fear about Modi in your community. I only want you to understand that.' Paresh Rawal, the BJP candidate from Ahmedabad East, speaks to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
How much money the Modi government has already spent and is going to spend on all those foreign trips, muses Sunita Iyer
'What if Modi becomes the fascist the leftists paints him as? What if he does suspend the Constitution and declares himself the ruler, with support from the army? What exactly will you do, Mr Leftie?' asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
Round-up of the Ranji Trophy matches being played in different parts of the country
M K Stalin might not have his father's charisma, but he has learnt the ropes the long, hard way, says T E Narasimhan
'The unique achievements have been made by engineers from small towns who have had a non elite upbringing and who have grown with the programme,' says R Aravamudan, one of the pioneers of the Indian space programme.
How many of these have aged well?
'The starting point of the Udta Punjab casting was that we didn't think stars would do a film like this, so we'd take non-stars. As the names kept rolling in and we had Kareena Kapoor and Shahid and Alia Bhatt, I was like yaar yeh ho kya raha hai?'
A round-up of results from the matches played at the Mushtaq Ali Twenty20 cricket tournament across the country.
'It's very expensive for a girl to become an actress. I remember I was nominated at all the award shows for Tanu Weds Manu, and conscientiously, like a new actress, I attended all of them and I was bankrupt by the end of it! I had to find a costume stylist, a hair stylist, a makeup stylist...!' Ronjita Kulkarni/Rediff.com gets inside Swara Bhaskar's mind.
Social media teams of the Aam Aadmi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress are trying to engage with the voter on Facebook, twitter and Whatsapp as they try to set the agenda in the online space. Upasna Pandey/Rediff.com reports.
'The path to a resolution of the ethnic conflict is likely to be complicated and controversial with the majority Sinhalese community, and will become less likely if delayed.' 'It will certainly give Rajapaksa fresh political oxygen with which to revive himself and rally the opposition.'
Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street could set a bad precedent, feels Aseem Chhabra.
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
'If fame, money and comfort are the only factors that drive us, then we are playing cricket for entirely the wrong reasons.'
Full transcript of President Obama's speech at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi.
'Understand one thing, if you want immediately and magically that things should become cheap, it's not possible. It's a long-term policy.' 'Inflation is linked to the storage system and with the production system. Whenever production rises, prices go lower. So if we store when the prices are low and release them when prices rise, prices can be maintained.' 'The problem is that in our country fruits and vegetables worth Rs 110,000 crore go to waste as they rot. And grains worth Rs 85,000 crore rot. So the storage system is another big reason for inflation.' Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari in an exclusive interaction with Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Rediff.com's Love Guru has answers to all your relationship problems.
Rediff.com reproduces the 1997 feature about Laxman, his passion for crows, and of course, his genius.