Price Of A Deal
Musharraf may have bent backwards in a bid to make his country the standard bearer of the US in the region. Of course, there are financial rewards for Pakistan, but the fear of a fundamentalist backlash continues to keep the nation on tenterhooks.

Circle Of Death
Violence fuelled by bigotry and foreign money brought the Taliban to power. Now as things come full circle the Islamic militia may meet an equally brutal end.

Afghanistan 1978-2001
Its women once enjoyed social freedom, and there was joy and peace. It is now a country perverted by the missionaries of a grim utopia. A social history in pictures.

BOOKS

Book Of Soul

Amrita Pritam violates the grammar of memories

By M. Mukundan

Amrita Pritam's Shadows of Words is no ordinary autobiography. A few pages into the book and you tell yourself she is violating the grammar of memories. Autobiography is the art of remembering and a good autobiographer adheres strictly to grammar. But how can you expect Pritam, who has scant respect for syntaxes and idioms of life, to follow the rules of writing?

SHADOWS OF WORDS By Amrita Pritam Macmillan Price: Rs 245 Pages: 176

To say that Shadows of Words is a sequel to her earlier autobiography Rasidi Ticket is pointless, more so since it doesn't progress along linear time. It is more of a fragmented dream. Not a word about her birth, school days, family, marriage and old age. What Pritam remembers is the history of her soul and her poetry for they are inseparably blended.

In the 13 chapters of the book-all have titles prefixed with the word "Shadows"-the author reflects on subjects as diverse as birth and death, religion and weapons, dreams, ancient memories and authoritarian power in an extremely subjective manner. The book also contains numerous poems and two short stories.

As Pritam's very raison d'etre is writing, it is quite natural that she uses all forms of writing. Above all this is an ode to relationships of all kinds-between man and woman, birth and rebirth, earth and sky, present and past, poetry and love. Sahir Ludhianvi is an invisible river that runs through her, nourishing her poetry. He is an intense poetic presence in the book. There are also versified images of another man in her life-Imroz, who stepped into her life "as a concrete reality". And all her relationships, she claims, reside outside the body. Of Sahir, she writes, "In that long relationship over the years, it was only the heart which was beating through the verses ..." This is a book of soul and heart and the absence of the body is intriguing all the more since the author is the daughter of Punjab, a land known for its unbridled celebration of life in all its earthiness.

Pritam's perception of the world is through poetry. Everything, even history, percolates into coagulated poetry. There's something mysterious about all good poetry. Perhaps that is why in this book there are only shadows: "Shadows of the word were seen on the moon." Thanks to Jyoti Sabharwal's sensitive transcreation of the Hindi original, countless non-Hindi readers get a chance to read this book-and they will hold it close to their hearts.

MetroScape

Fort Of Arms
In the 16th century, a Portuguese governor fortified a strategically located house to defend ships in the harbour of an island on the west coast of India acquired from the Sultan of Gujarat. Mumbai grew first into a fort and then into a city from here.
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Looking Glass

Delhi Photography:
Pradeep Bhatia

Delhi Music Concert: Pandit Ram Chatur Mallick Dhrupad Foundation

Delhi Sculpture: Sculpter Hemi Bawa