Opinion

Every creature has its uses, I am told. Even the mosquito does. But given the harm it causes, I tend to overlook its uses. The mosquito is not just deadly. It is a master-manipulator, a little beast that loves to play with its victims before going for the kill.

It is never a good idea to wait until it is too late. This, unfortunately, is a lesson that India never seems to learn, especially with regard to disaster management. The response to the floods in Kerala - the worst the state has faced in a century - bears testimony to this. 

Whose forest is it anyway? Does it belong to the animals or the people who have traditionally cohabited with the animals and tended to the forests or to the modern institutions charged with the running of the country and conserving its resources? The Uttarakhand High Court has said that the Van Gujjars - a forest-dwelling community - are a constant threat to wildlife and as such should be seen as encroachers. 

Brilliant form

• Sir - The Spanish tennis star, Rafael Nadal, won the 80th title of his ca... | Read»

Admirable legacy

• Sir - The former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, passed awa... | Read»

Parting shot

• Sir - It is no surprise that M.K. Alagiri, the estranged son of M. Karuna... | Read»

What, in human evolution, came earlier - consensual intercourse or marriage? The answer is obvious. One could say that the institution of marriage is Time's embroidered garment placed over Nature's plain truth. To what was spontaneous, instinctive and un-guarded, it introduces three new harnesses. Exclusivity is introduced to intimacy, constancy is brought to immediacy and the free-falling dice of animal procreation is replaced by selective processes of legacy-creation. The institution of marriage reflects society's seeking of order, method and system in human relationships as against the anarchy of unruly 'jungle' contact.

Dates at the click of a mouse do not mean that sexual aspirations have matured with the maturing of technology

By a whisker

A cricketer and a banker

New game

Check the list

Fleet feet

Footnote

Hang on

• Sir - Today is International Orangutan Day. There are three species of or... | Read»

Dire state

• Sir - It is shocking to see the condition of the healthcare system in Wes... | Read»

Foul taste

• Sir - The article, "Fishy tale" (Aug 8), paints a dire picture. For a maj... | Read»

Parting shot

• Sir - One of the pictures accompanying "Those timeless notes" (Aug 10), h... | Read»

Do not begin to imagine fancy chambers, no please. Chambers of pots more like it, the place where chamber pots are stationed. Now you can imagine all and any manner of chamber pots, fancy ones too. Things happen around chamber pots. Fancy things. Furtive things. Fruitful things. Forbidden things. Fuming things. Were you to someday sit down with the authoritative "Chamber Pots, A Complete & Comprehensive History", you'd discover for yourself the astonishingly spectacular array of things that have happened around chamber pots, or in chambers appointed for chamber pots. Illicit assignation. Vile whisper. Plotting. Preening. Conspiracy. Incest. Assassination. Private violation of public facade. Such things and many more things.

As the Kenyan Airways Boeing 737 circled around the British built-1950s era Robert Gabriel Mugabe Airport, I could spy out the dark blue waters of Lake Chivero to the southwest and the hills of Mashonaland to the north, and a colonial city of tall buildings in the centre surrounded by neat colonies of bungalows set in a dry, rocky plain.