Features - Comfortably Numb

Books: Is India Reading?

The book still rules Harry Potter notwithstanding, it’s been a parade of pretenders: the television, the Net, cineplexes, video games. Has this blitzkrieg killed the love of books in us? Sheila Kumar does a reconnoitre of the situation and brings in a clear verdict. Is India reading? What a no-brainer question, right? Of course India…

Feature: Walking on the clifftop

All in the mind Walking on the ridge of a windswept cliff, you suddenly get to see more of a cliffhanger way of life. It is a bleak day, a blue day…

Feature: When Army Wives Start to Throw their Weight Around

When wives put on the pips Even as the Armed Forces are in urgent need of restructuring — facing a shortage of good officers, and with a corresponding mountain of grievances piling up — one more arrow in the flank of this great institution is that of ‘senior wives’ throwing their weight about. To tell…

Feature: Unbelief in the Time of Fanatism

Unbelief In The Times Of Fanaticism As terrorism stalks the streets cloaked in religious sentiment, SHEILA KUMAR finds comfort in her unbelief. This is not an easy piece to write; it never is easy, coming out of the closet. However, September 11 happened to NYC and the ripples were felt all over the world. After…

Feature: Missing Sister

I can close my eyes and see her now. Bright sparkling eyes, a mop of black curls cropped close to her head, the widest grin ever, a body perennially poised for action, digging into the endless banana splits that were a staple food for her at the Lakeview ice-cream joint on MG Road. She was…

Feature: The Refugee

The Refugee Conditioned as I was by city mores, I tried not to stare. But she was truly beautiful, dirty pheran and dishevelled hair notwithstanding….

Feature: Farewell Friend

Farewell Friend When they called to tell me he was gone, dead of a heart attack just twelve days after he turned 39, I was filled with rage. An all-consuming, white-hot rage that robbed me of words,that even robbed me of tears. I placed the receiver carefully back in its cradle and took down the…

Feature: Senthamarai`s Love Life

Her name was, inappropriately enough, Senthamarai. With a wiry frame the colour of polished teak and a pinched look on an unremarkable face, she was more a hill-flower than a lotus, a thamarai. She was the maid I’d inherited along with the bungalow, when I relocated to the Nilgiri hills. Clean as a pin,…

Feature: On Residential Schools

A Child`s Choice Hostel’s not a bad word if the child decides so. I didn’t send my daughter off to hostel. She went. There is a subtle distinction, only it is lost on most people. And, as soon as she went away to school, my husband and I have been tried and sentenced on the…

Feature: Professor Julian Simon, profiled

“People are the solution, not the problem” Professor Julian Simon, who teaches business administration at the University of Maryland is an economist with a theory, a theory that has environmentalists and population control experts reacting with outrage. Directly contradicting the Malthusian hypothesis, Prof Simon claims that more people and more wealth correlates with more, and…