Opinion

A potion brewing over the return of Bru (Reang) refugees from Tripura to Mizoram may well eclipse the 'toil and trouble' of Macbeth's witches. The Union home ministry has signed an agreement with the governments of Mizoram and Tripura and the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum to repatriate over 5,000 Bru families sheltered in relief camps in Tripura to Mizoram by September 30.

Sudden discoveries have a charm all their own. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre seems to have suddenly discovered, charmingly, that the Supreme Court has wisdom. The stiff-necked tussle with the court in recent times over approval of names for appointment, for example, apparently has nothing to do with the Centre's recognition of the Supreme Court's wisdom.

Sobriety seems to be returning to Bihar. The monumental failure of the draconian prohibition that was clamped down in the state in 2016 seems to have brought the government out of its stupor. It has now decided to water down some of the rather extreme clauses of the legislation. 

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Rare gold

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Many prizes, such as the Nobel, can't be conferred posthumously, not even on the very recently dead. However, India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, has often been awarded to dead people to recognize distinction that might have been unjustly overlooked in the past.

Journalists are not the flavour of the season. They have not been so for a while in India. One computation finds 12 journalists murdered in 2017 alone, and 2018 has not been much better. In an environment in which speaking up is punished in anybody, it is no surprise that journalists who speak up are not popular. The ideal of independent journalism is not welcome. 

Right step

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History retold

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Stunned star

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This too. That too. Ivy too. Poison too. League too. Beleaguered too. Neck too. Tie too. Garland too. Noose too. Murder too. Mubarak too. Eulogy too. Apology too. Layak too. Naalayak too. Poot too. Kapoot too. Baap naalayak. Beta layak. Baap layak. Beta naalayak. All in the family. SangParivar - hum saath saath hain. There is khoon. And there is ApnaKhoon. Rishtey mein to hum tumhaarey Baap lagtey hain, naam hai ( Baap re, unka naam naa lo, Bhagwan ke waaste) Shah. OmAdyaNetwork. Rings any bell, anyone? That famous network? Check it out. Check out its funds. Check out who it funded. Check out who brought those funds. OmAdya. Layak beta. Networked. Perhaps we are getting the spellings a bit mixed up here. OmAdya? Perhaps there is a different way to spell it right. But what's to be done? Happens. We mix up spellings. We mix up much more than that. We mix up sophistication with sophistry. We mix up Ivy and Poison. We mix up garlands with nooses. We mix up Layak with Naalayak. We mixed up hope with hype all those years ago, don't you remember, bhaaiyon aur behnon? AchheDin!!!! AchheDinn!!!! AchheDinnn!!!! We got mixed up. It was all KachchheDin! You can at least afford kachchhe, can't you? You get the drift, mitron, don't you? That's half the job done. Next term. Give him a next term, and you'll know. Can't you be naked for your country? Are you an anti-national? Are you really going to complain you have been stripped naked? That you have no more than a kachchha? No. Can you not see your Emperor? In his new clothes? He's rendered himself naked too, so you can see all of those famed inches called Chhappan, no less. Behold. Flinch. Lynch. Pay your respects. Shame on you that you complain about being stripped naked. Now you know. Yes, now you know. Relax, listen to a bit of MannKiBaat, calm down. But you'd agree we do mix things up. We should not be surprised, it's so unkind on ourselves.

We arrive in Canning, the nearest railhead to the Sundarbans, by road after 9pm. Us two, not a couple, both on work. Her baby, the baby's caretaker - a dude with a mohawk and blonde highlights - and the driver.

Marriage of convenienceThe appendixCaught in the act