Calcutta Diary


CERTAIN themes are conventionally popular, certain others are not. There is also the matter of the Defence of India Rules, anything and everything might come under whose purviewthe 1971 war lasted exactly fifteen days, but, so what, the D I Rules and the emergency would seem to go on for ever, for is not the nation riding from one crisis to the next? That apart, one must also be wary of not stoking parochial passions; already there is a sufficient stock of these to last, conceivably, for the next couple of generations.