Namita Gokhale?s new book to be launched in Hindi and English

Going desi

Readers of books in Indian languages have reason to be intrigued; Penguin Books India is about to start publishing regional language books to tap the growing market for books in India. It?s the first time anywhere in the world that Penguin is venturing into non-English publishing. Starting with four Hindi titles this month, they?ll be moving to Marathi and Malayalam soon and into more languages from 2006. Publishers worldwide are seeking to tap the potentially huge Indian and Chinese language markets, and this is a good first step. For readers, it means better production, design, distribution, and most importantly, increased access to a wide range of books. Hopefully other publishers will follow this initiative as well, and soon.

Flying high

Think about high-flying Indians, and these two probably aren?t the first people on your list. But Indian Air Force pilots Wing Commander S.K. Sharma and Flight Lieutenant A.B. Dhanake are being inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in the US (they?re the first IAF pilots to achieve this distinction) for a daredevil high-altitude air rescue. They rescued three injured mountaineers from a world record height of 23,260 feet in May last year, landing a helicopter on Mt. Kament in the Himalayas braving jet-speed winds and severe turbulence. Sharma, who won the Kirti Chakra gallantry award for this feat, takes his inspiration from Sachin Tendulkar, but it?s clear which one of the two is flying higher at the moment. Sharma and Dhanake join two other Indians on this lofty pedestal ? famous aviator J.R.D. Tata, who also made steel, and our current President.

J.K. Rowling said in a recent interview that the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was one of her favourites in the entire series. This is the latest in a series of teasers bound to keep Potter fans in a state of continuous excitement until D-Day, July 21.

Shorter than shorts

After the Oscars, Indians, shorts, and films are clearly inseparable. Consider this: Rising Hollywood writer/director Jay Chandrashekhar is directing Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke in an upcoming flick, The Dukes of Hazzard. Daisy Duke, for the uninitiated, is an American sitcom character whose attire led to her name being used as a term to describe a pair of really short shorts.

Wanna blog?

Speak easy

In Look last month, fellow blogger Nilanjana S. Roy wrote of the new generation of frank, fearless female Indian bloggers (BridalBeer, The Compulsive Confessor, Dwarf At Large, Wakaw et al.) thus further guaranteeing fame and notoriety for their weblogs. This was only the latest in a series of articles in papers all over the country chronicling the explosion of the personal blogging phenomenon in India. And now the ladies (bloggeresses? Blogettes?) in question have a new problem ? cyberstalkers. Lovelorn young men, distracted from cyberporn by the ladies? hard-hitting observations on life, love and losers, have flocked to their blogs seeking romance and much more. Thus giving them headaches, and, inevitably, something more to blog about.

AWARD OF THE WEEK

To Salman Khan, compulsive public undresser and champion of the underclad everywhere, for filling the media with quotes about how he finds ?exposing? disgusting.