One of the challenges that seemed to have prompted Widmalm—a university teacher, to engage in this study was that the ‘intellectual climate in the field of development studies is in a rather poor condition in many Universities’. He also explains how he came upon the seemingly intriguing subject of his study:
This is a breathtaking, densely packed collection of essays on global finance that has as its core the themes of exclusion and fragility.
As India made its transition from colony to an independent nation, Nehru made the transition too from being a ‘rebel’ to a ‘statesman’. The two transitions were indeed connected.
Aparna Sen, who is making a film based on the title story of Kunal Basu’s The Japanese Wife and Other Stories is lyrical about the story in her blurb on the cover. ‘It’s an improbable and hauntingly beautiful love story, almost surreal in its innocence. And I immediately knew that this was the film I had to make.’
Writers and literary works have never been in isolation to the dominant forces of their times. One of Kannada’s early playwrights, Adya Rangacharya (1904-84, popularly known as Sri Ranga) was no exception to this.
The speaker of the above lines in the last story of this selection is someone who was forced by circumstances to murder her mother to rescue her from further indignities.