LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight…

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READING THE BAR CODES

“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp” STRANGE HOW time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…

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Wanted- A Big Bang Budget

These are extraordinary times and we witness extraordinary phenomena. Three weeks before the Union Budget, when finance ministers customarily crawl under their carapaces, the honourable…

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The Enemy Within

Iran’s much-vaunted Islamic revolution appears to have finally spilled over into India. Chanting Allah-o-Akbar and wielding primitive weapons like lathis bristling with nails, bicycle chains,…

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THE AFTERMATH

GANESHA’S temple had never seen so many supplicants, all with unanswerable prayers Colombo’s Tamils call it Pillaiyar Kovil, and its ornamented gateway on Galle Road…

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Panic Button

Reading An Account of the Great Fear, or Grande Peur, that swept across France in July and August of 1789, I was struck by the…

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