The Truth About Ourselves
The human genome sequence has been completed and shows some surprising findings. Despite having one-third less genes than estimated, human beings are still very complex. With access to disease genes, medicine and diagnostics will be revolutionised. However, this will also raise ethical questions on cloning and genetic privacy.

Hope In Hell
Four weeks after the earthquake, Gujarat is still coming to terms with the devastation. True grit is emerging from the rubble but it will be some time before lives are rebuilt. INDIA TODAY's teams went out across these death zones, capturing stories which record this renewal.

Simmer Time

Profitable Loss
36 With over 90,000 employees opting for the VRS scheme, PSU banks are set to get over their problem of overstaffing. But is it going to make banks more competitive in this age of automation? Besides, it is also going to cost more than Rs 7,500 crore and will deprive the banks of skilled workers.

Paper Money

Spreading Terror
The attacks on Delhi's Red Fort,
the Srinagar airport and the city's police control room show the Lashkar-e-Toiba is increasingly catching the Indian security forces unawares-and emerging as the most daring terrorist group from Pakistan.

Face Off
It's David Vs Goliath as India play an Australian demolition squad at home. What makes the Aussies tick and how can India take them on?

Cricketwatch:
Ashley Mallett

METRO FEATURE

A Different Beginning

FILM ON FAMILY: Madura Jasraj

It was what Bankim, chief producer, Films Division, calls "a festival with a difference". Last week Delhi saw the launch of diff2001, a festival of short, documentary and animation films from 15 countries. One of the highlights was the package of films on artists, especially musicians and dancers. Madura Jasraj came down from Mumbai to show her film on hubby Pandit Jasraj and Delhi's Sabina Gadihoke was there showing her marvellously crafted Three Women and a Camera. And from Australia Maree Delofski dropped by for the screening of her A Calcutta Christmas, a poignant portrait of Anglo-Indians in a Tollygunge home.

A good start. But asks Sushi Surendranath, of the Indian Documentary Producers' Association: "Unless the government creates a regular space for documentaries on Doordarshan where is the hope for films that spread education, awareness and information?" Is Shastri Bhavan listening?

-S. Kalidas

Classical Example

Tata senior executive S. Gupta was driving through the Himalayan countryside near Kalimpong, West Bengal, when, unexpectedly, strains of Mozart wafted through the chilly mountain air. "I could hardly believe it," he said, "I followed the music to a dilapidated tin shed, and there were these children in bedraggled clothes playing violins in a most enchanting manner." That is how an orchestra of 43 barely literate tribal children from the Gandhi Ashram school near Kalimpong, aged between 9 and 15 years, arrived in Delhi to play western classical and Hindi film music at a packed British Council auditorium last week. Their sundry repertoire had Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel and Strauss and wistful classics like Jeena yahan, marna yahan from Mera Naam Joker and Kuchh na kaho from 1942-A Love Story. Says Father McGuire, the Jesuit priest who runs the school: "Music makes them feel there is more to life than what they experience everyday."

-Supriya Bezbaruah

Unputdownable

Aashlok Hospital in Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave was a beehive of activity last week when Rajya Sabha MP and Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh, still recovering from an intestinal surgery, presented a cheque of over Rs 3.5 crore to IT Minister Pramod Mahajan for the Prime Minister's Relief Fund for quake-hit Gujarat. Singh's fundraising effort became a powerful weapon to silence his critics who had raised objections to his birthday revelry on the same day as the quake. Accompanying the wheel-chair bound Singh was close friend Amitabh Bachchan, and stars Raveena Tandon and Ajay Devgan who lent a spot of glamour to the cause.

-Methil Renuka

MetroScape
Delhi On My Mind...
I'm very flattered to have this act of 'piracy' take place," laughs William Dalrymple, as extracts from his engrossing travelogue City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi were interpreted by photographer Agnes Montanari and art historian Nathalie Trouveroy in an exhibition.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi: Restaurant

Delhi: Exhibition

Mumbai: Exhibition

"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.