Opinion

Perhaps we will now stop referring disparagingly to women cricketers as "Eves", since we don't call the men "Adams". Maybe sports pages will give them as much space as men. Lawrence Booth, the innovative editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2018, has put a woman on its cover for the first time in 155 years. But then Anya Shrubsole wrested victory from the jaws of defeat in the World Cup final against India at Lord's last summer by taking six wickets for 46 runs. It was a heartbreak year for India as the men lost to Pakistan in the Champion's Trophy final at the Oval.

Original Indian drama in English offered two excellent visiting exemplars recently, their content and style at completely opposite poles. Nilanjan Choudhury's The Square Root of a Sonnet, by Centre for Film and Drama (Bangalore), brings science to the popular ken in ways that recall Michael Frayn's Copenhagen and Complicité's A Disappearing Number. Like the former, it extracts the drama in the career of a Nobel laureate in physics; like the latter, it sheds light on the achievement of an Indian scientist about whom our general public knows precious little. The second reason is a compelling one to persuade the organizers, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, to make the edifying text available to school and university students.

The year 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Italy. Thus, to commemorate the occasion, a slew of cultural programmes were organized across Indian cities. Among these was the highly-anticipated concert of the chamber orchestra, Cameristi della Scala, at the Victoria Memorial on March 16 - its debut performance in Calcutta. Cameristi della Scala has as its members the musicians of the orchestra of Teatro alla Scala di Milano. Interestingly, it often performs in the formation with and without a conductor, and alongside playing chamber orchestra masterpieces from the 18th century to the present, it works actively to promote the works of lesser known Italian composers.

What, one wonders, is common between the Maiko, performers apprenticing to become Geikos, and the Nihon Teien, a Japanese garden designed on philosophical ideas? The answer lies in the austerity of lines. Yoshinobu Nochioka explored this link in his exhibition, Japan As Beauty (February 5-17), at the Harrington Street Arts Centre.

• Alfred Henry Maurer, the American modernist artist, was born on April 21, 1868. He started with realism but turned to modernist styles like fauvism and cubism later in his life. Although there is a tendency to compartmentalize his career into two segments, a closer look at his earlier works will reveal that he always tried to distil the essence of his subjects. The faces in his figurative pieces were intentionally indistinct, making them suggestive rather than descriptive. The abstracted sense of space in his realist work shows his dedication to capturing the nuances of conceptual relations between the setting and the subject. Should Maurer then be considered an exponent of modernism only?

A political blame game has started over the death of a tiger in a forest in West Bengal. But the real culprit is not just one community

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The following extract is being reproduced with permission from the Kalpanirjhar Foundation

THE ISLAMIC CONNECTION: SOUTH ASIA AND THE GULF Edited by Christophe Jaffrelot and Laurence Louër Viking, Rs 699

AMITABH BACHCHAN: REFLECTIONS ON A STAR IMAGE By Susmita Dasgupta,Bloomsbury, Rs 499