It's About Politics
The limits on Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's budget this year are political. He has the prescription to put the economy on a high growth track, but hampered by vested interests, vote-bank politics and stubborn opposition parties, he is unlikely to deliver.

The Rot in Farming
Falling prices, stagnating production and diminishing returns are brewing an unparalleled crisis in farmlands across India. Ironically, the alarming situation has arisen despite an unprecedented 12 consecutive normal monsoons.

Creeping Paralysis
Doubts over Keshubhai Patel's fitness to rule are growing after his government failed to provide basic relief like tents to those affected by the earthquake. Despite having speedily restored electricity and water, which earned praise from some international agencies, criticism over Patel's poor marshalling of resources continues.

Artless Artistry
The festival tried to exhibit the widest selection rather than the best, making it a disappointing show.

Stillness of Change
The legendary bamboo curtain is lifting to reveal that Myanmar isn't quite the "fascist Disneyland" it is made out to be. The winds of change have brought back English as the medium of instruction and Aung San Suu Kyi is talking to the military. After prolonged isolation, Yangon wants to face the world, but on its own terms.

Making It Happen
John Buchanan gives an exclusive insight into what it takes to coach the world's most successful team. He also enumerates what
he feels will be the Indian strengths that the Aussies
will have to watch out for.

Strategic Partners
As emphasis shifts from relief to rehabilitation, Care Today is selecting regions to focus on and NGOs to help it channelise aid. The involvement of victims is integral to the plan so that their dignity remains intact.

BOOKS

The Passions of Bengal

What impresses the reader, in the first place, is the construction technology that has gone into the making of First Light. It resembles a high-rise, with dozens of well-lit, airy rooms-chapters-which a critic's fury, even an 8.1 on the Richter scale, cannot cause to bite the dust. Sunil Gangopadhyay is a remarkable architect and builder of fiction.

Though spread over more than 700 pages, this is not a novel of ideas. It is rather a novelscape of events with a multitude of characters thrown in. With perennially recharged creative energy and dexterity, Gangopadhyay constructs event after event and carves out a stream of vivid characters one after another. A raconteur par excellence, he is comparable to master storyteller Kambar whose characters peremptorily narrate stories to each other even as they are drowning in the swirling river.

The novel comprises an unending string of stories, each crafted
to perfection. One of the personages is none other than Rabindranath Tagore, a poet in an imagined novel. Jose Saramago did it too, placing the late poet Fernando Pessoa at
the centre of his novel, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Pessoa is good company for Dr Reis as he loiters onto the rain-washed, deserted Lisbon river banks swept by cold winds and when he makes love to the hotel maid Lydia, entering the room through the closed doors.

FIRST LIGHT By Sunil Gangopadhyay Trs by Aruna Chakravarti Penguin Price: Rs 395 Pages: 793

Saramago's is virgin imagination whereas Gangopadhyaya's description of Tagore's acts are not born of imagination-Tagore sounds trivial writing a poem the moment he is in the company of a pretty woman. However, Gangopadhyay sounds original when he describes with subtlety Tagore's love for his sister-in-law Kadambari.

But then First light is not a fictional work on Tagore, neither one on Swami Vivekananda or Ramakrishna Paramhansa who also show up in the novel briefly. The main personage of his work is time, a brief history covering over 30 years, from 1880 to 1910. Brief though it is, for Bengal it meant a period marked with turbulence. The novel paints events like the partition of Bengal, the rise of nationalism, the nascent movement for the country's independence. Above all, First light is a novel on human relationships. Gangopadhyay is at his best when he talks about love and great passion for women, as that of king Birchandra Manikya's illegitimate son Bharat's for the bondmaid Bhumisuta.

The narrative is studded with flourishes and flamboyance. Words of many hues ring tinsel: "The Ganga, rippling and shimmering like a sheet of silk..." And, "He saw the stars winking and glowing, pale and gold against a purple sky". When Shashibhushan sees Bhumisuta for the first time, she was holding a bunch of white flowers in her hand. Men have "dark eyes and wavy hair".

While passing through the grand Bengali narrative, your nose craves for the smell of fish and mustard oil. But alas, there's none. All that is there is gold, silk, the moon, the stars, birds and flowers.

Many a passage in the novel, right from the first chapter-describing throngs of tribals coming out of the forest to attend the village festival like a "rainbow-hued river" wrapped in colourful loin clothes-is spectacular. So are the wedding scenes and the death of Kadambari. The novel, eminently rendered in English by Aruna Chakravarti, is a spectacle of life and time. It bares, though, a certain amount of historical material, including the fact that Tagore had piles.

MetroScape
Charitable Mood
In the backdrop of murky allegations about underworld connections, philanthropy by the Bollywood badshahs comes a little more easily.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi: Lifestyle Store

Delhi: Film Festival

Mumbai: Restaurant

The Indian Navy's International Fleet Review was a fine effort at naval diplomacy which the Government would do well to build on, writes INDIA TODAY's Principal Correspondent Sandeep Unnithan
in Despatches.

"The only obvious competition is in bhangra," say the Pakistani duo of the music group, Strings, in an exclusive interview with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro.
Interviews.