Journal entries

The last two weeks in the Indian political scene can only compare to the US 2000 elections spectacle. If the United Progressive Alliance, as they call themselves, lasts five years (something I am betting against) and if the BJP does indeed go back to its Hindutva-based underpinnings, then the suspense-filled fortnight in early May of 2004 shall not be forgotten for some time. It says something about the disparate US and Indian demographies that despite the respectively putative reputations of one electorate being a developed and progressive one and the other a largely rural and underprivileged one, the president of the United States is a former oil businessman dubiously known for his (deliberate?) malapropisms while India's president is an eminent rocket scientist and the prime minister is a reputed economist. The new Prime Minister has already signalled that some of the policies, with the disinvestment policy in particular, of the earlier government will be reviewed with the intention of possible revocation. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, which some chief ministers found particularly handy to invoke in order to inflict humiliation and rebuke on their predecessors is also due to be repealed. Laloo Prasad Yadav is the imminent minister of railways, much to Ram Vilas Paswan's chagrin. We can expect a Shatabdi and a dozen other express trains plying between Patna and Delhi, with a special coach attached to each to carry the Minister and his family entourage of twelve children and the animal husbandry.

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A (second) hand for a book

I am a sucker for used books. In Urbana, plundering the book sales at the Urbana Free Library and the Champaign Public Library used to be a favourite pastime for quite a few of us (Prakash, Niranjan, Vignesh amongst others). What appeals to me about a used-book sale is the esoterica that is on display and the reassuring sale-price posters that are blind to the quality and repute of a book or its author and dictate prices only on the basis of the nature of binding -- an otherwise inconsequential feature to the avid book-collector (no doubt, given a chance one would prefer to opt for a hardcover over a paperback of the same title). And so it passes that the autobiography of Bertrand Russell, The Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley, Steinbeck's East of Eden and Hedrick Smith's The Power Game are valued without prejudice at $3-a-piece while Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Shaw's Plays Unpleasant are mine for $2. It also got me embarked on a tedious project to draw up a catalogue of my book collection, something the gang at Urbana embarked upon in great zest but never got around to realising completely. I seem to remember there used to be a public peer-to-peer library wherein members could put up lists of their collections on a site and trade books with each other but I cannot seem to find a link to it now.

The Master is in

Hindu's analysis of the elections

Annual FOCAL book sale

January 2004 - March 2004

October 2003 - January 2004

July 2003 - October 2003

May 2003 - June 2003

April 2003

January 2003 - April 2003

2002

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