Top 10 Colleges
Of India
As admission time approaches, students face the dilemma of making a choice from among the 10,000-odd colleges. INDIA TODAY-Gallup's fifth survey ranks the centres of excellence on key factors. The best in Arts, Science, Commerce, Law, Medicine and Engineering.

Foreign Policy Privatised
Leaked letters in London imply that Brajesh Mishra, principal secretary to the prime minister, trusted the Hindujas more than the Indian High Commission. The brothers even negotiated with Prime Minister Tony Blair on CTBT.

The Heat Is On
The Raja of Bihar is in trouble again. The CBI has filed yet another chargesheet against him in the multi-crore fodder scam, this time in Jharkhand. A non-bailable arrest warrant issued against him has Laloo in a panic.

Fuzzy Logic
Key nations, including India, are briefed by aides of Bush on the new nuclear doctrine he proposes, but find that there are more questions than answers.

Consumed By Hunger
Maharashtra has a surfeit of foodgrain. Yet, over 500 infants have died in Nandurbar district since January this year of malnutrition and related complications.

BOOKS

Known Erroneous Zones

Love, homophobia and sexual skittishness in memories of migration

By Margaret Mascarenhas

This is a collection of nine cath-artic stories, eight of which explore (predictably) the nature of diasporic angst. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni portrays the Indian immigrant to America as eager to fit in, willing to shed her Indianness, unable to pull it off. Her culturally confused female protagonists also grapple with universal challenges-lapsed communication, grief, guilt, desire. Writers of Divakaruni's poetic sensibility and talent are expert at luring us into their worlds, relieving us of our preconceptions, impelling us to surrender to their visions. And because she writes so well, she often succeeds in transforming even the incredible into the sublime. But there's a limit to everything.

It isn't that the subject of diasporic malaise endemic to her plots is worn out. It's that, with few exceptions, the angle of Divakaruni's lens remains the same. Many of the characters, with their signifying Atwoodian affliction of controlled hysteria could be the same person. As such, they risk becoming caricatures. Also, the ascetic quality that suffuses her storytelling would work better without awkward forays into sexual territory. Her claustrophobic approach to the human body compromises her ability to write unselfconsciously about sex. The protagonists have major intimacy issues and display an almost pathological sexual skittishness. Finally, there is the matter of authenticity.

"The Blooming Season for Cacti" uncovers Divakaruni's erroneous zones. It's a convoluted tale of a young, middleclass, Indian, immigrant virgin and her sexual debut which is tainted by grief over her mother's death. In a romantically indulgent passage, we are led to infer that the mother hides her daughter in a water tank during the Bombay riots, then commits suicide as if it were the norm. "In modern Bombay, death by hanging, a noose made from a sari, was the most common ... A few women swam out to sea." She finds her way to California, gets a job and moves in with her boss's mistress, a suicidal Indian woman who falls in love with her-a scene depicted in a farcically melodramatic and homophobic manner. Immediately afterwards, the protagonist (conventional middle-class girl, remember?) rushes off to be deflowered by a man she barely knows. Here, with our credulity stretched, we are subjected to confounding sexual ambiguity and squeamishness: the phallic image conjured by the cacti, a giant, terrifying metaphor encased in thorns; the immaturity and superficiality with which Divakaruni explores lesbian love-a place she is clearly loath to visit even in her imagination. In which case, why go there?

By contrast, Divakaruni demonstrates a haunting ability to capture familial love. "I breathed in their blended odour," she writes in "The Forgotten Children", "... his Teen Patti tobacco, her sweet neem soap-and in that way I came to know something of love, how complex it is, how filled with the need to believe." And two stories that make you inclined to forgive the author her transgressions are "Mrs Dutta Writes a Letter" and "The Names of the Stars in Bengali", both surpass the title story in their eloquence.

MetroScape

Summer Of 2001
Flippant and elusive, he can best be described by what he is not. Meet
Bryn Adams in an uncharacteristically forthcoming mood.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi Concert:
"United for Gujarat"

Mumbai Ceramics:
Zareen Mistry

Mumbai Club Music:
Melting Pot