Shamed And Crippled
With Tehelka.com's spy-camera taking a heavy political toll after the damning revelations of corruption in defence deals, the beleaguered Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government will have an uphill task restoring its credibility and undoing the damage to its image.

BJP: Old Hype

Interview:
Bangaru Laxman

Jaya Jaitly:
Jhola To Purse

Opposition: On A Roll

INDIA TODAY-ORG-MARG Poll: Outraged !

Defence Establishment
: Surgery For Graft

Interview: G. Fernandes

Barak Missiles:
Off The Mark

Tehelka:
Sting Theory

Highlights Of The Findings

Rakesh Kumar Jain: Gasbag Man

Wheeling A Good Deal
The battle for BALCO degenerates into a political chess match between Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, and Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie. Jogi holds most of the aces at the moment--but will he play them all when it could mean loss of investments to the state?

The New Targets
The 60,000 policemen in Kashmir are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, they are the target of militant attacks, and, on the other, the Army sees them with suspicion. It is not just themselves, but their families that the policemen worry about as they struggle to battle militancy and falling morale.

Crisis Of Confidence While stock prices haven't recovered since the collapse of March 2, the panic has spread from Mumbai to Kolkata. Underlying the fear is a deepening fear of the Securities and Exchange Board of India's will or capacity to regulate the stockmarkets.

Escape to Victory
Down and virtually out, India create a miracle at the Eden Gardens to stun the Australians and break their winning streak.

Mixing Metaphors Music, dance, and tourism synthesise in the famed textile centre of Maheshwar to provide sustainable synergies for its growth.

SUJATHA SANKRANTI
Rite Of Memory

Sujatha Sankranti has a "collection" of diaries. A compulsive jotter, her diaries are not just scribbled memories, but everyday records, raw material she harks back to time and again for her writings. They are records of "a range of experiences, especially ones that have disturbed me" that have in turn helped her put together her first collection of short stories, The Warp and the Weft and Other Stories (Srishti).

But none of Sankranti's stories has anything to do with her own life, "though a lot of me has gone into them". For this teacher of English literature and vice-principal of Sri Venkateswara College in Delhi University, they are a "mishmash", an outcome of careful observation, and of her many opportunities to travel abroad. And it is these memories that she has "tapped"-of China, the US, Russia, South-East Asia, of the paddy fields and outhouses around her two-storey ancestral home in Mavellikara, Kerala, and of her many sojourns across the Indian metros.

A teacher for 34 years, Sankranti has lived in Delhi all her life with her extensive travels only bringing her back home each time. It disturbs her that the Indian diaspora is always so full of conflicts, always wanting to "cling on to traditions and create a mini India wherever they go", yet wanting the best of both worlds. She has dramatised glimpses of this conflict in such stories as "Garage Sale" and "Fulfillment" in the book.

As she flits back and forth across locales, Sankranti weaves a tapestry of insights. So there's colour, but also black and white, death and life, drabness and light, particularly so in "The Warp and the Weft" for which she won the Commonwealth Award for Best Short Story in 1998.

Sankranti is working on her first novel-yet again-to do with the workings of "one's own life and whatever one sees". But it is the short story that fascinates her: "A story is like a miniature painting, concise and sharp, with an almost lyrical quality about it."

Lyric. Colour. Verse. Sankranti's offering has them all.

-Methil Renuka

MetroScape
Pop Corn
"You are the best audience in the whole world," the Vengaboys tell raving crowds
in Delhi.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi Exhibition:
Pop To Classic

Delhi Restaurant:
San Gimignano

Mumbai Accessories Store: Watches Of Switzerland

Bangalore Concert: Deep Purple

A bloody crackdown on Naxalites in the south-eastern fringes of Uttar Pradesh proves that only developmental programmes, not guns, can help fight the menace. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Subhash Mishra explains why in
Despatches.