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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Earthy Tales

Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai About two hours in, the captain an- nounced that there was unseasonal heavy rain ahead and…

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Garam hawa

India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘FOOD PRICES set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does…

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FRIEND IN NEED

The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (Rss) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…

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AN HEIR SPLITTING LEGACY

The story is as complicated as the whorls on a fingerprint, a ready-made screen-play bursting with grandeur, feudalism, pretension, and the tattered remnants of pomp…

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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,…

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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…

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Waterless World

Time was when ‘Glacial Speed’ used to mean ‘very, very slowly’. That has changed forever. We know that our planet is warming. New research shows…

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