Non-resident Indians (NRIs) are now permitted to own two residences in India instead of only one, according to new regulations. Moreover, they are able to repatriate their full purchase price after three years. Now, even foreigners can own property in India for the first time.
In view of this legislation, more and more NRI's are buying properties in India which can be prove to be good investment in years to come. For that, they are looking for properties which meet the international standard. One such property in the market is Modi International Villas. We recently met Mr Brian A Moran, an American designer and property developer. Mode Inernational Villas is a joint operation of Brian and Satish Modi which are being developed just 15 minutes drive from the Delhi International Airport.
According to Brian A Moran, some of Villas unique features include:
1. A total environment development concept which creates a beautiful yet functional community with a special indoor-outdoor lifestyle;
2. Enhanced privacy achieved by an grouping free-standing as well as attached villas in clusters along winding brick lanes;
3. Extensive site work to create an undulating landscape with ponds and mature plantings entirely surrounded by an attractive parameter sercuity wall.
4. Comprehensive common facilities and resient services.
5. Special services for absentee owners.
A limited number of villas is being offered through special Authorized representatives in major cities around the world. Seven basic models are available in 23 variations. Each can be further tailored to the buyer's preferences. This extraordinary flexibility, combined with the many different ways the villas are built into the undulating landscape, means that no two villas will be the same.
The Villas are close to all facilities of the Capital but too far for the pollution and high prices of New Delhi to touch them. It can be an ideal place for second home in India as well as a prudent investment.
EARLY MEMORIES OF THE INDIAN RESTAURANTS
London Weekend Television and Granada Television have commissioned Gavin Weightman Associates to produce a series of television documentaries on early days of restaurants.
What they are trying to discover, and to illustrate with colourful stories, is the way in which British people have taken to eating since the last war, and how they reacted in the early days to the novel experience of tasting unfamiliar food.
The other side of the coin is the experience of those who opened restaurants to cater for this new taste which came with post-war affluence.
For example, did those who opened "Indian " restaurants have an idea of what kind of customer they would get? Were there any big surprises? How did they decide on the atmosphere and decor of their restaurants? Did they imagine them to be for the customers "romantic" places? How did they decide where to open a restaurant, and how did they calculate how much money could be made? Were there models to follow -- was the earlier experience of Chinese restaurants influential in anyway? Did they themselves ever try English food, and if so with what result?
The television series comes right up to the present, documenting we hope all the changes and adjustments along the way. If any reader and has any memories which might be interesting may send us including a full address and phone number.
Oxford University Press, Delhi has just published a biography of Guru Dutt, a legend of Indian cinema. The book contains interviews with his family, colleagues and friends. It discusses the making of classics like Pyaasa, Kagaz Ke Phool and Mr and Mrs 55 in careful detail.
Guru Dutt - a life in Cinema includes 36 pages of black and white photographs from various films and the man in action. It uncovers aspects of Guru Dutt that are much speculated upon.
The biography traces the life and works of a remarkable director and actor. The sensitivity and compassion Guru Dutt brought to his depictions of screen characters endowed them with a rare depth, and during his brief thirteen year career, he succeeded in replacing the repititive ingredients of formulaic cinema with an individual and lyrical vision.
The enigmatic, romantic, often tragic undertones of Guru Dutt's screen personae became closely associated with his persona off-screen. From the days when he was an unknown actor to his eventual suicide at the height of his fame, his own life seemed to acquire the characterstics associated with the doomed, disillusioned men he played.
The author Nasreen Munni Kabir traces the life of this unusual man through accounts of his films and a series of interviews with his family, colleagues and friends. Several years of painstaking research and conversations with Guru Dutt's associates have yielded a complete and compelling account of the artist.
This book is essential reading for all movie buffs.
London, March 29, Bruce Willis stars in a new futuristic drama, '12 Monkeys' which is due to release in England very shortly. We saw it in a preview today and met Terry Gilliam, its director. This film is shuttles between the past and the future, sanity and madness, dreams and reality. According to the Terry Gilliam, this film depicts the time we live in where things are not as much in control as we are made to believe in. Mad cow disease is one example.
"In the 20th century we were made to believe that we are masters of the universe. Science and technology have all the answers. But we live in a strange time -there is a circle of dying and growing up. The Eastern philosophy and the machinery of time fascinates me. In my movies, I like to leave lots of questions for the audience to debate and sort out, " elaborated Terry Gilliam.
'12 Monkeys' is set in the year 2035 and humankind subsists in a desolate netherworld following the eradication of 99% of the Earth's population, a holocaust that makes the planet's surface uninhabitable and mankind's destiny uncertain.
When a film is so deeply ingrained in rich imagery, sumptuous sets and kaleidoscopic colours, it is not enough to narrate the outline of the story. The film captures variations of moods. We may be able to describe the film in the following manner.
In order to preserve their fate in this grave new world, survivors must rely on time travel as their only hope. Desperately hoping that the resources of the past might help them reclaim and rebuild the future, a group of scientist living beneath the once populous Philadelphia secure a volunteer to embark on an experimental trip back to the year 1996. There, they hope he can help mankind's desperate efforts to unravel this apocalyptic nightmare before it completely erases humanity form the planet.
In the film, Bruce Willis is Cole, the reluctant volunteer who may not be the ideal candidate to complete this dangerous assignment. However, he possesses a significant trait that supersedes the scientist' doubts - his obsession with a haunting image from his childhood, a memory whose meaning cannot be understood even though it replays itself endlessly in his tortured mind.
When Cole arrives in 1996, he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the unstable son of a renowned scientist, and Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), a psychiatrist and author who's expertise lies in the study of madness and prophecy. Railly first diagnoses Cole as delusional; more simply, a madman. However, as their relationship grows, her alarm over his prophetic warnings of the world's fate turns to conviction, and she comes to believe that mankind may indeed be doomed.
While also questioning his own sanity, Cole struggles with Railly to unravel the mystery with his only two clues: the haunting childhood memory and a series of puzzling symbols from a group known only as The Army of the Twelve Monkeys.
Terry Gilliam, the director told us in an exclusive interview that this film is about ideas-ideas which are inspired by the fatalism of India. Terry went to India several times, and he particularly appreciated the old Jain temple of Raunakpur in Rajasthan, where the ceiling of the sanctum (garbha-grah), are circular and made Terry believein the cyclic movements of the birth(not life) and death.