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

SPORTS

4. No Fear

If anything flies across two cricket teams in a matter of minutes it is the sense of intimidating and being intimidated. On Australia's last tour of India, opener Navjot Sidhu who went after match-winner Warne scored four fifties from five innings.
"I wanted to make sure he did not settle into a line, I wanted to keep doing something different, to keep him guessing. You have to play the Australians on equal terms." In 1985, young leggie L. Sivaramakrishnan found the newspapers full of descriptions of how a batsman called Dean Jones would decimate him. "I told myself 'okay I'm ready for him too'. That's what you have to say-I can play better than them," says Siva today. His contemporary Maninder Singh warns, " If you go in to defend you are going to die a bad death." Sandhu adds, "The Australians are performing well at home. They are not performing well here already." When Kumble first ran into the Aussies, he was struck by their disregard for defeat. "They put it across to you that they were going to come in to win. To play them well you have to do the same." The Indians proved that they could walk the talk over two days in Nairobi, but what is needed is
not a temporary flash of inspiration but an attitude that fits
as naturally as their own skin.

5. No Surrender

Courage and confidence are not distant cousins, they are soulmates who gather strength and inspiration from each other. Pataudi asks only for unrelenting effort, "You should try three sessions a day, five days in a row and you should be seen to be trying and never giving up-that's the way a team learns to be competitive. Our problem is that we lose so often we look like we don't mind it. At least let us see India perform at its best levels and after that what happens, I don't mind." Sidhu has a favourite story of his own: it's about the 16-year-old Tendulkar playing the Pakistanis in his debut Test series and being hit on the nose by Waqar Younis. The Pakistanis rushed over in concern because the batsman was still a boy whose helmet grill couldn't hide chubby cheeks. Tendulkar waved them off and when Sidhu asked him whether he wanted to return indoors and get patched up, the kid replied, "Khoon ko roko, mein kheloonga (Just stop the bleeding, I'll keep batting)." What no opposition can ever prepare for or counter, what no cricketer can dissect through a video or shake through sledging is true grit.

Coach Wright says, "I don't know of a greater opportunity for our cricketers than to be playing against the best team in the world. I hope we fight hard, play good cricket and represent India with passion and pride."

Carpe diem, fellows. Seize the day.

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.