The 20th century visionary and founder of the Ramakrishna Mission, Swami Vivekananda, loved lentils, especially the ‘kalai’, a traditional Bengali variety cooked with fennel, salt, slit green chillies, and a pinch of turmeric.

One of West Bengal’s top contemporary writers Sankar, or Manisankar Mukherjee, in his new non-fiction ‘The Monk as Man: The Unknown Life of Swami Vivekananda’ has said that Vivekananda appealed to those who were close to him to cook ‘kalaier dal’ for him.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

Sankar, who researched the book for years in libraries and pored through faded newspaper and magazine writings of the time, says ‘it appears that Swamiji was fond of cream too’. Once when he was eating with his companions in the US and they enquired whether he liked strawberries. Swami Vivekananda answered that ‘he had never seen one’.

‘At this, his companions were surprised and amused. They pointed out that the monk had been eating strawberries every day. Vivekananda explained that the strawberries were covered with cream; even stones covered with cream would taste good!’

His American host, the Legget family with whom the seer was boarding in the US discovered that the easiest way to keep him at the dinner table was to announce: ‘There will be ice-cream for dessert’. ‘Then Vivekananda would wait patiently for his ice-cream like a little boy and consume it with great satisfaction,’ Sankar says in his book.

The book that probes the simple childlike man behind Narendranath Dutta alias Swami Vivekananda has been published by Penguin-India.

Metro, the free daily newspaper, is to expand its online presence with the launch of a major new website aimed at urban professionals.

The newspaper unveiled a major relaunch of its website, introducing more celebrity and real-life stories for increasing its appeal to readers and boost advertising revenue.

From Guardian.co.uk:

It will be updated four times a day with news featuring heavily in the morning, before giving way to quizzes and games at lunchtime, restaurant and bar recommendations in the afternoon and dating and gaming features overnight.

“The new site will work hand-in-hand with the newspaper and reflect its tone and style, with consistent, imaginative and creative linkage between the two,” said Doug Read, the executive director for Metro.

“We know our readers are responsive and this new site will encourage them to interact with the brand throughout the day, by commenting on stories, writing their own reports and sending their own pictures. We want them to shape the site.

“For our advertisers, it will provide additional opportunities to communicate with our urbanite readers.”

Metro has been a huge success since launching in London in 1999 as a free newspaper for morning commuters, hitting sales of paid-for papers and reaching a circulation of 1,010,866 copies last month.

The new site will be carrying the same mix of news and lifestyle features as the paper that distributes around 1 million copies nationally.

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The world’s top personal computer maker, Hewlett-Packard Co, recently announced that it will be purchasing security software firm ArcSight Inc for $1.5 billion in cash on Monday for further diversifying its computer business.

The offer of $43.50 a share is a 24 percent premium to ArcSight’s Friday close of $35.10 on Nasdaq.

From Timesofindia.indiatimes.com:

Shares were trading at $44.36 in heavy premarket trading on Monday, indicating that some shareholders are looking for a higher bid. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year and is HP’s second major deal since the departure of Mark Hurd as chief executive. Hurd, who left HP after he was accused of falsifying expense reports and concealing a relationship with a female contractor, is now a co-president at Oracle Corp. Earlier this month, HP won a bidding war against rival Dell Inc to buy data storage company 3PAR Inc for $2.4 billion.

This deal is seen by market experts as the latest sign of consolidation in the security software sector. Last year, McAfee Inc was purchased by Intel Corp for $7.7 billon while payment authentication unit of VeriSign Inc was purchased by Symantec Corp for about $1.3 billion.

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