R. K. NARAYAN-THE MAN FROM MALGUDIÂ
It took me some time to discover Rasipuram Krishna swami Narayan’s house. Yadavagiri, the suburb of Mysore City, where Narayan stays, is an incredibly quiet…
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Mai-Baap re Baap
The Civil service still remain a big draw FRESH OUT of South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi made F a particularly strong speech in Benares in February…
INDIA, THE CLASS ACT
With this kind of rebellious example, how will fair play and right eousness prevail? Won’t the lower castes get out of hand? In this decadent…
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
Hiteswar Saikia was last Fortnight trying to settle into the hottest seat in India-the chief ministers hip of Assam. The diminutive, balding ‘politician had been…
The Burning Of Assam
The fuse has been burning for almost four years and the mood in the state has passed through all the faces of anger, despair and…
The Opposition-The Games Old Men Play
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from…
A State Ravaged
It was beyond the ken of a civilised society, a blood spattered vindication of a heartless government’s sudden constitutional piety. The carnage began with a…
MIZORAM-A RETURN TO ARMS
Not for nothing has Mizo National Front (MNF) President Laldenga acquired a reputation for being a cool and calculating man. Towards the end of 1981,…
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi La1 reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
THE DAISY’S PETALS
It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the Lok pal Search Committee of eight eminent persons might cap a five-year slow waltz just…
KILLING ME SOFTLY
He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odour nor perfume—just strange,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanashi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities listed by the World Health Organization are in…
THE AIR IS THICK
The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Partyand Congress seem to have finally woken upto the looming catastrophe of air pollution in our…