Le Journal

Karno is a freelance writer and a failed marathon runner who lives in Delhi. He occasionally runs a bookstore. But he does not compare himself to the character played by the handsome Hugh Grant, the quaint bookstore owner from the iconic Hollywood movie Notting Hill, with whom the actress played by the beautiful Julia Roberts falls in love. Nor with Milkha Singh, the legendary Indian sprinter also known as The Flying Sikh, when he decides to chase a thief through the dusty lanes of Daryaganj.He is what you can call just another upper-middle-class educated man who loves the good things in life but is content with a “mid-range” mobile phone. He has good taste in music. He listens to Jim Morrison and David Bowie and craves Blue Tokai coffee. The other characters in the novel listen to Phil Collins and John Coltrane. They read David Foster Wallace and James Baldwin; they watch Ingmar Bergman films. They have long, writerly conversations over cold coffee at the Coffee House. They engage in enthusiastic debates about people living in hiding, in the forests of Chhattisgarh, beer in hand. You get the drift.A speculative messIn Sayantan Ghosh’s debut novel Lonely People Meet, Karno dreams of meeting a girl who might fix...Read more

The Congress on Saturday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “bulldozing” through Parliament the new bill that opens up the nuclear sector to private players in order to restore peace with United States President Donald Trump.Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh claimed that the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Bill, acronymised as SHANTI, was passed “to restore SHANTI [peace] with his once good friend,” referring to US President Donald Trump.Ramesh noted that Trump on Thursday signed the United States’ National Defence Authorization Act for 2026, which contains a reference to a joint assessment between the US and India on nuclear liability rules.The Congress leader remarked that this was the reason why the SHANTI Bill, passed by Parliament on December 18, removed key provisions of the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act. “The SHANTI Act may well be called the TRUMP Act - The Reactor Use and Management Promise Act,” he quipped.The bill proposes to grant licenses to private companies, joint ventures and government companies to construct, own, operate or decommission nuclear power plants or reactors.Among the bill’s contentious provisions was one that removed a clause that was part of the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act which allowed the operator of a nuclear power...Read more