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Dec 25, 2018 - Deccan Chronicle brings you the latest news from India and around the World, Sport, Football, Cricket, Business, Bollywood, Hollywood
Protect heritage and culture sites, says Magsaysay winner
Kakinada: Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Dr. Rajendra Singh, known as Waterman of India, stressed upon the need to protect national heritage and cultural sites in and around Kakinada.
Viksit Bharat@2047 ambition of every Indian, states can play active role to achieve this aim: PM
New Delhi: Making India a developed nation by 2047 is an ambition of every Indian, and states can play an active role in achieving this aim as they are directly connected with the people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday. Modi is chairing the 9th Governing Council meeting of NITI Aayog.
Mamata walks out of Niti Aayog meet, says she was stopped midway in her speech
New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee walked out of a Niti Aayog meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Saturday and claimed that she was unfairly stopped midway in her speech, despite being the sole representative of the opposition. Government sources, however, rejected her claim and said her speaking time was over.
Paris 2024: Athletes Ready to Break Records—and a Few Beds!
The 2024 Paris Olympics are in full swing, and while the world’s top athletes are busy competing for gold, a different kind of prize has caught the attention of the internet: Olympic condoms. These prophylactics, adorned with cheeky slogans like “In the field of love, be fair, ask for consent” and “No need to be a gold medalist to wear it,” have become the talk of the town, sparking a wave of hilarious reactions and commentary. It seems that the Olympic Village is not just a hub for athletic prowess but also a playground for romance and mischief, where the athletes might just be aiming for a different kind of medal.
One Twitter user couldn’t help but draw a comparison to the long-awaited video game, quipping, “We got Olympic condoms before GTA 6.” The irony of receiving these condoms alongside a fancy Olympic-branded cellphone that costs around $1,000 each has not escaped the notice of the masses. As one sarcastic commenter pointed out, “They give every athlete a fancy phone that costs like $1000 each but can’t provide a decent mattress for them to sleep on?” Clearly, the Olympic Committee believes that love, like sport, requires the right equipment. After all, what’s a little competition without a few “extra-curricular” activities?
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The Paris Olympics have been boasting about their commitment to sustainability and environmental friendliness, but the contents of the athletes’ welcome kits seem to tell a different story. As one user hilariously pointed out, “I love how the Paris Olympics were boasting about how environmentally friendly they are but still give the Olympians TWO water bottles and a toiletries bag like they don’t already have them???” It’s almost as if they expect athletes to hydrate and have a good time in equal measure.
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It’s a classic case of “do as I say, not as I do,” and the internet is having a field day with it. The juxtaposition of eco-friendly initiatives and excess has created a perfect storm of sarcasm and wit, with one commenter quipping, “They give every athlete a fancy phone that costs like $1000 each but can’t provide a decent mattress for them to sleep on?” Perhaps the athletes are expected to get their rest in the arms of a fellow competitor instead. After all, nothing says “team spirit” quite like sharing a bed—or a few intimate moments—after a long day of competition.
Of course, the real star of the show is the Olympic condom. With 300,000 of these prophylactics being distributed to athletes, it’s clear that the organizers are taking the safety and well-being of their competitors seriously. As one user aptly put it, “I love the condoms; it’s so funny. Apparently, it’s a big thing.” Who knew that the Olympic Village would be the hottest spot for both athletic and romantic encounters? One can only imagine the late-night “training sessions” happening behind closed doors, where athletes are perfecting their “technique” in more ways than one.
For the athletes competing in the Olympics, safety is top of mind! Rumors about the happenings in the Olympic Village have infamously swirled over the years, particularly talk around intimacy between athletes residing in their home away from homes during the Games. The topic continued to make headlines during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to the "sex ban" that was enacted, in part due to the enforced social distancing requirement amid the COVID-19 pandemic (which caused the postponement of the Games to 2021).
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Summer Games, Team USA's Olympic Village Director Daniel Smith confirms to PEOPLE that the ban has been lifted for athletes competing in the "city of love" and organizers are taking proper — and creative — precautions to ensure the safety of all. Daniel says "it's true" 300,000 condoms have been distributed to the Olympic Village. Plus, he points out, "The packaging is quite spectacular!"
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Since athletes began their move-ins to the Village, many of them have taken to social media to share glimpses of the swag bags and toiletry gift bags they were gifted. The "really quirky packaging" was showed off in a TikTok video posted by Canadian sailor Sarah Douglas. In the clip, the athlete held up blue and pink condom holders emblazoned with messages such as “On the field of love, play fair [and] ask for consent” and “No need to be a gold medalist to wear it.” It also includes the Paris Games’ mascot, the Olympic Phryge.
Three years ago, there were claims that they were intentionally designed to be ‘anti-sex’ and would fail under physical exertion. However, McClenaghan dispelled that myth in a viral video, and the often-shirtless 25-year-old has now addressed it again with renewed vigor. “Maybe I wasn’t rigorous enough,” says the pommel horse world champion before demonstrating a dynamic routine that features a belly flop and a handstand.
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While the condoms are distributed to the Village, Smith tells PEOPLE that they also keep them in their "athlete resource center," which he says "is a space for athletes only and they can take as they need." As for whether athletes can have sex with athletes from other countries? Smith says, "We try to avoid that, to be frank." He clarifies, "It's not so much for the sex, it's more for security reasons."
Regardless of whether the athletes want to be intimate or not, Team USA's Olympic Village delegation has various rules and regulations in place regarding who's allowed access into its housing. Each country's team lives together. Therefore, Smith says athletes from other countries "can come into a common area," but he says, "we try to keep athletes from other countries out of our residential space... out of our sleeping rooms." Another rule Team USA enforces to ensure "a distraction-free environment" within the Olympic Village are quiet hours. Residence halls enforce them from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. local time. "We want to be very respectful," Smith says, stressing "not only of our athletes, but of other athletes."
For Team USA, specifically, alcohol is prohibited in the Olympic Village. "It is a dry Village for Team USA," Smith makes clear. The Olympic Games are near, and another sacred, long-honored tradition is returning along with them: free condoms. Every four years, the number of condoms heading to the Olympic Village becomes a hot, titillating topic — from the record-breaking 450,000 condoms at the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro to the intimacy ban at the 2020 games in Tokyo, sex (and the amount of contraceptives) at the games always sparks a very heated, very horny discussion.
This year, Olympic Village director Laurent Michaud told Sky News that there are a whopping 300,000 condoms available for the 10,500 athletes competing at the 2024 Paris Games (that's almost 29 condoms per athlete, mind you). "It is important that the conviviality here is something big," Michaud said. Over email, a Paris 2024 spokesperson confirmed to PS that there will be 200,000 male condoms, 10,000 male condoms without latex, 20,000 female condoms, and 10,000 oral dams — all of which are accompanied with a lubricant pouch — available in the Village. "We don't know how many people are likely to use them and obviously we'll adapt to the requirements if needed," Laurent Dalard, who's running the first aid and health services at Paris 2024, told Agence France-Presse.
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Along with the condom program, this year's Olympics will "be rolling out a campaign to raise awareness of the main STIs and their modes of transmission at the Polyclinique des Jeux," according to the aforementioned Paris 2024 spokesperson, and the messages will focus on consent and pleasure. There will also be screening tests, mainly for HIV, at the polyclinic, with treatment and medication available for these STIs if needed.
In the week leading up to the Opening Ceremony on July 26, athletes, shared this year's branded condoms, which feature the Paris 2024 mascot, the Olympic Phryge, and have on them various expressions like, "No need to be a gold medalist to wear it," and, "On the field of love, play fair: ask for consent."
While seemingly salacious, condoms have been distributed at the Olympics for almost 40 years now. The first reported instance of condoms being handed out to athletes was in the summer of 1988 when the games were held in Seoul, South Korea. Around 6,000 condoms were sent to the Village to draw awareness to HIV and AIDS prevention and to promote safe sex and "healthy behaviors," according to the International Olympic Committee. After that, you could say the rest was history, and condoms at the Olympics became a tradition. One packaging said "Don't share more than Victory. Protect yourself against STDs"
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Now, condoms aren't handed out in the Olympic Village to encourage sexual activity, per se — again, they're mainly brought in to raise awareness of the spread of STIs and for the athletes to bring back to their home countries. But at the 1992 summer Olympics in Sydney, it was clear that the athletes may have been getting more use out of the condoms than a sex-ed lesson. The organizers for the Sydney games had to order 20,000 more condoms after they realized the initial 50,000 wasn't enough for the nearly 11,000 athletes. While it's unclear how many condoms are being used in the Village, Ryan Lochte told ESPN in 2012 that he guesses 70 to 75 percent of athletes are sexually active.
But not all athletes are amused at the spectacle the condom program brings to the games. "It is an absolutely huge allocation of condoms," Zac Purchase, Olympic rowing gold and silver medallist, said in a 2016 interview. "But it is all so far from the truth of what it's like to be in there. It's not some sexualized cauldron of activity. We're talking about athletes who are focused on producing the best performance of their lives."
The condoms have also sparked a more serious conversation about accessibility and equality. One commenter pointed out the irony of providing free condoms to athletes while neglecting the needs of the homeless population, saying, “France gives athletes sanitary products (even if they have the money to buy it) but doesn’t help all the people who really need it like the homeless people ... that’s really sad; all that money should be for the people who need it.” Still, one can’t help but wonder if the athletes will be using these condoms for more than just their intended purpose—perhaps to create a new sport: “Condom Toss” or “Bed Olympics,” where the only requirement is to keep it playful and safe. After all, who wouldn’t want to see a little friendly competition in the bedroom?
Of course, no discussion of Olympic condoms would be complete without a healthy dose of conspiracy theories. One user jokingly wondered, “What if condoms are already broken because they want to make super athletes? Or baby Olympics?” Imagine a future where Olympic champions are not just celebrated for their athletic feats but also for their prowess in the bedroom. The thought of a new generation of “Baby Olympians” training for the games of the future is enough to make anyone chuckle. Who knows? Maybe the next Olympic event will be a “relay race” of a different kind!
In the end, the Olympic condoms have become a symbol of the games themselves: a mix of seriousness and silliness, of competition and camaraderie. As the world watches the athletes compete for gold, they’ll also be keeping a close eye on the condoms, waiting to see what other surprises and sassy reactions they might inspire. After all, in the Olympic Village, it seems that the motto might just be: “Faster, Higher, Stronger... and a little naughtier!” So, let the games begin—both on and off the field!
Read More 27 July 2024 | 2:59 pmSreeleela Eyes Solo Heroine Roles, Declines Sardar 2?
Hyderabad: If Chennai sources are to be believed, hotshot actress Sreeleela has reportedly thumbed down a role opposite Tamil star Karthi since the film had two heroines. “Sreeleela prefers solo heroine roles even in Kollywood and didn’t want to share screen space with another actress. Apparently, she declined a role in ‘Sardar 2’ which was launched recently since the action-adventure was planned as a two-heroine movie,’ he says and adds “It is a good decision considering Sreeleela’s popularity in Tollywood and looking to retain her brand value in Kollywood as well,”
No doubt, Sreeleela’s last Telugu release ‘Guntur Kaaram’ was a commercial success, and her energetic dancing with superstar Mahesh Babu in the song ‘Kurichi Madathapetti’ became a rage the world over. “She is an excellent dancer and proved her mettle in varied Telugu movies like ‘Dhamaka’ and ‘Skanda’. Right now, she is busy promoting retail brands in Chennai and minting some money and biding her time for a plum role with a big Tamil star,’ he points out.
In fact, Sreeleela worked with big stars like Ravi Teja, and Ram Pothineni and played a key role with Balakrishna in ‘Bhagavanth Kesari’. 'Working with stars always pays well and gets more mileage," he concludes.
Several Trains From Mangaluru Diverted Due to Landslide
Mangaluru: Due to the landslide between Yadakumari and Kadagaravalli in the South Western Railway, several train services have been diverted. The affected trains, starting their journeys on July 26, will follow alternate routes.
Book Review | How books transform lives
This book, originally published in German, and very well translated into English by Melody Shaw, is a story set in an old bookshop in a small town in Germany. Like all bookshops that have persisted against the odds over the years, the City Gate bookshop, too, is in a state of transition. Its owner, the formidable Gustav Gruber, is in a care home. His most beloved employee and trusted friend over so many years is Carl Kolhoff, now employed part-time with the limited responsibility of delivering a few books to particular customers.
Sabine Gruber, the new owner and Gustav’s daughter has rung in sweeping changes, modernised the delivery with customers ordering online and preferring to attend to walk-ins herself. Carl has no place in her scheme of things. She has done her best to marginalise Carl.
The one thing she has not reckoned or perhaps can never reconcile to is Carl’s knowledge of books and of his customers. We see early evidence of this. “Can you recommend a good book?” a stock question every bookseller has faced is asked by Ursel Schafer to Sabine Gruber. Sabine recommends a historical family saga with a green cover, a colour Ursel detests. Carl recommends the ideal book for bedtime reading, a romance set in Provence, which Ursel accepts happily.
Carl has a set of loyal customers whom he has named after characters in their favourite books. Christian von Hohenesch, a fabulously wealthy man, looks as if he had stepped out from the pages of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. So, he is called Mr Darcy. Andrea Cremmen is Effi Briest, a tragic heroine. Sister Maria Hildegard, a Benedictine nun, is Sister Amaryllis, based on the pious monk from Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund. Another customer is simply the Reader based on Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. Along with his book order, Carl also carries throat pastilles to soothe his throat.
Carl is accompanied on his rounds by a three-legged cat aptly called ‘Dog’ because it barks! Dog and Carl, more at home in the street, are one day joined by a 10-year-old girl, who has given herself a name Schascha. Her real name is Charlotte. Schascha determinedly accompanies the Book Walker on his rounds and his customers are charmed by her. She observes Carl’s interactions with his customers closely. The books selected are always the ones they like to read. Why not give them ones they ought to read, Schascha asks instead.
Schascha emerges as a pivotal figure. Along with Carl, they transform the lives of their customers. One is rescued from her abusive husband, another is taught to read and the Reader is persuaded to read from his own manuscript which Carl pronounces as a masterpiece.
Schascha’s heroic role is in the rescue and rehabilitation of Carl. Carl is formally sacked by Sabine on a complaint from Schascha’s father. But he continues to gift books to his former customers from the sale proceeds of his own books. The redoubtable Mr Darcy agrees to fund Carl distributing antiquarian books on a book mobile fashioned by Schascha’s father and the Book Walker ‘walks’ again.
This is a heart-warming book about the power of reading and how books can spread friendship and camaraderie.
The Door-to Door Bookstore
By Carsten Henn
Manilla Press
pp. 250; Rs 399
Read More 27 July 2024 | 2:21 pm
Tamil Nadu: CM’s Relief Handed Over To Kin of Driver Who Saved Kids
Chennai: A compensation of Rs five lakh from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund was handed over to the parents and sons of Semalaippan, the bus driver of a private school at Vellakovil in Tiruppur district who saved the lives of the children on board the bus despite suffering a fatal heart attack.
Chief Minister M K Stalin, who announced the relief, instructed the State Minister for Tamil Development and Information, M P Saminathan, to visit the grieving family members of Semaliappan, who stopped the bus on the side of the road when he developed chest pain on Wednesday, and hand over the cheque.
The bus was taking children back home after school on the Coimbatore to Trichy highway when the incident took place near the Vellakoil old police quarters.
Nitish skips Niti Aayog meeting
The state was represented at the meeting by deputy chief ministers Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, they said.
The cause for Kumar's absence from the crucial meeting could not be known immediately.
"This is not the first time that the CM is not attending the Nitish Aayog meeting. The CM did not attend the meeting earlier as well, and Bihar was represented by the then deputy CM. This time also both the Dy CMs went to attend the meeting," JD(U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar told PTI.
"Besides, there are four Union ministers from Bihar who are members of the Aayog and they will be present in the meeting. There is nothing to say on this," he added.
The ninth governing council meeting of the Aayog discussed the 'Vikshit Bharat@2047' document with an aim to make India a developed nation.
The council, the apex body of Niti Aayog, includes all CMs, Lt Governors of Union territories and several Union ministers. PM Modi is the chairman of Niti Aayog.
NITI Aayog's Governing Council meeting begins under chairmanship of PM
NITI Aayog's 9th Governing Council meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi began here on Saturday.The meeting focuses on making India a developed nation by 2047. It aims to foster participative governance and collaboration between the Centre and state governments, enhancing the quality of life for both rural and urban populations by strengthening the delivery mechanisms of government interventions.
The meeting also focusses on recommendations of the 3rd National Conference of Chief Secretaries held in December last year.
During the conference, recommendations were made on five key themes--drinking water: access, quantity, and quality; electricity: quality, efficiency, and reliability; health: accessibility, affordability, and quality of care;schooling: access and quality and land and property: accessibility, digitization, registration, and mutation.
A vision document is being prepared to help India become a developed economy of USD 30 trillion by 2047, the 100th year of its independence.
In 2023, NITI Aayog was entrusted with the task of consolidating the 10 sectoral thematic visions into a combined vision for Viksit Bharat @2047.
The vision encompasses various aspects of development, including economic growth, social progress, environmental sustainability, and good governance, among other.
Book Review | The audacious flight of IndiGo
The story of IndiGo airlines was long overdue and the author has scripted a book just the way a hard-nosed reporter would. He has utilised the vast experience he has gathered from his civil aviation beat to give us what can be called a detailed ‘report’, probably a shade beyond a ‘book’. Innumerable interviews add value to every argument presented.
This is a fact-based ‘report’, though the author did not always have his ducks in-a-row – and the presence of a chapter called Cabin Crew does not add much meat to the narrative – yet the lucid prose does not get in the way of robbing you of attention. Sky High may not read like the autobiography of Lee Iacocca or Kishore Biyani’s It Happened in India, but it surely wasn’t meant to be. This is a book for information junkies. We could have done with some better editing, though.
The planning and germination stage of a business is always interesting. IndiGo was promoted on the lines of some foreign low cost carriers (LCC), and the fact that Air Deccan had experimented with an LCC in India pretty successfully, added to the promoters’ confidence. Deccan’s founder Capt. G.R. Gopinath has written a morale-boosting foreword to this book.
Shukla takes us through the back-routes that airline promoters have to go through to get even a single aircraft in the air in India. While an LCC was an obvious choice, the level of micromanagement needed to keep it afloat in an overtly price sensitive market is a gripping story.
If you sit back and think, the book tells the story of a hustle like no other. The sheer audacity of the unknown unit of the Rakesh Gangwal-Rahul Bhatia-combine pitching with Airbus for a 100-aircraft order underscores the depth of planning that preceded it. This became evident as Gangwal used his experience in the airline industry to strike deals with not just Airbus, but with every individual OEM, squeezing concessions that made the planes cheaper than what Airbus quoted to even its loyal customers.
Frankly, such stories have always emanated from the US business landscape, never in India. In India, Biyani’s story sold till it didn’t, ending up in court within a messy Amazon-Reliance brawl. Growth is great, as long as it incorporates pragmatism, and the IndiGo story seems to be really reaching skies, the new Tata-Air India chapter notwithstanding.
The story of how InterGlobe (the holding company of IndiGo) managed to fund its initial buys quickly is a lesson in smart business practices. As Airbus, pushed to wall to cut corners and reduce price, delivered a jet, Indigo would immediately sell it at a handsome profit to an aircraft leasing company. IndiGo would then lease it back. In the process, IndiGo would make a good profit out of a purchase and then, with tight management, would be able to service the lease payments. Later, with funds in surplus, IndiGo started buying planes directly.
Also, the Gangwal-Bhatia amalgam was the perfect promoter system, with Gangwal a hard-nosed Marwari out of Kolkata and Rahul Bhatia a seemingly relaxed operator, weaving his way around the corridors of power with ease. The two created a sort of ‘good cop bad cop’ routine. It worked. Their fallout later, including Gangwal exiting the company was sad, but remains par for the course in any major business venture around the world.
The entire effort of the promoter duo has to be viewed in the backdrop of the economic situation of the country at the time. The hangover from the Licence Raj remained thoroughly entrenched in the psyche of the babus, and there was also an air of uncertainty as to the real financial strength of the burgeoning middle class of India. And then 9/11 happened and airlines were all bleeding if at all in the air. The duo’s dream carpet had to be woven with tender fingers.
Cost control and brand building were two exercises well dealt with in the book. IndiGo, using several modes available to it (many of which Air Deccan missed out on), made a splash without actually making a splash. The brand fights across hoardings and other platforms are a pleasure to read, and reminds one of gems in the Jaguar-Mercedes ad tussles.
Cost reduction methods (mainly through fuel saving) were novel. The composition of onboard food (to sell) was one item much researched. It reminds one of how just cutting an olive from the dinner salad saved American Airlines US$ 40,000 in the 1980s. However, how safe is the replacement of printed technical manuals (many desperately needed in emergency situations) by iPads is not clear, though the DGCA cleared it.
The chapter, Lobbying, lays out the slimy and underhand deals that are struck by lobbyists in India with top government officials and ministers. Indigo slowly learned how to game the system and the book mentions some of the questionable acts of the then civil aviation minister Praful Patel and his coterie. The CBI closed all cases as he shifted to the BJP. To the author’s credit, he does not mince words while laying bare even Bhatia and his company’s officers.
Overall, this is a book for keeps, and needs further, updated editions.
Sky High: The IndiGo Story
By Tarun Shukla
HarperCollins
pp. 272; Rs 699
On-Site Inspection of Tungabhadra Reservoir to Address Safety Concerns
Hosapete: Amidst the surging waters from the Tungabhadra Reservoir, Deputy Commissioner M S Divakar conducted an on-site inspection of the riverine areas on July 26 to address safety concerns.
Tirupati: Couple Arrested For Alleged Rape, Blackmail
Tirupati: Tirupati rural police on Friday arrested a married couple in connection with an alleged rape and subsequent blackmail attempt. According to police, a 34-year-old woman identified as Sadasivam Pranav Krishna invited a female acquaintance to her home. Then Pranav Krishna and her husband Venkireddy Krishna Kishore Reddy allegedly offered the victim cold drinks laced with sedatives, causing her to lose consciousness.
Book Review | So many windows to minds of great Indian poets, seers
Welcome to language scholar and sitarist Srinivas Reddy’s distillation of the multifarious texts that together comprise classical Indian literature. The quality of the translation is just a wee bit uneven, faithful to script but lacking in nuance. The pieces, themselves, are all too brief and often unrelieved of the circumlocution of imagery and expression that characterises many traditional narratives.
The real surprise, however, lies in the selection of these texts. These appear as little windows on a time machine that can transport the reader into different eras of Indian history and let one contemplate the universe through the eyes of famous and lesser-known romantics and ascetics, poets and thinkers, see inside their minds even. On some occasions, they entice one to read the treatise in full, and explore the original. Which would be an insurmountable challenge for most readers as these are written or were recited in Sanskrit, the early Prakrits and Tamil. Herein lies the significance of this work. All credit to Reddy for illuminating lost worlds.
The timeline of the texts range from 1500 BCE (Rigveda) to 750 CE (Bhaja Govindam by Sankara). Multiculturalism is a much-abused concept today, but an appreciation of not only the diversity of language but also the panoply of, often complementary, philosophies, religions, regions and geographies they originate from might evoke wonder.
This reader was particularly enthused by the inclusion of the doctrines of the heterodox Ajivikas, many of whom were atheists. They were a sramana movement that existed around 500 BCE side by side with mainstream Jainism and Buddhism. The Buddha’s Samannaphala Sutta provides fascinating introductions to the antinomian ethics of Purana Kassapa, the “Theory of Everything” fatalism of Makkhali Gosala, the materialism of Ajita Kesakambali, the atomism of Pakudha Kachchhayana and the agnosticism of Sanchaya Belatthiputta. These are indeed fodder for great imagination.
Then there is the Buddhist Therigatha. The songs of the elder nuns Therika, Mutta, Uttara, Uttama, Soma, Vimala and Siha are cute in their confessional content and candour and talk about sensuality and renunciation.
A majority of north and east Indian readers are unfamiliar with the actual corpus of Sangam literature written between 100 BCE and 300 CE over a 400-year span of time. For them, Reddy acts as guide, bringing them a taste of their richness and beauty. And he does this successfully, conveying the elegance, emotion and drama immanent in the Akam and Puram poems with a deftness and sincerity that make the words come alive. Sample these lines: “You grab the wooden post in my hut and yell, ‘Where’s your son?’ But I don’t know where he is. This womb that gave him life is the den where a tiger once lived! So be sure, he’s out there on the battlefield.”
What a smorgasbord of stories and ideas!
Illuminating Worlds
Tr. by Srinivas Reddy
Bloomsbury
pp. 380; Rs 799 � � � �
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