Word: fatherness
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...first fallen for as she watched him compete in a school singing contest, is working as a clerk. But he's a tortured artist, and a baby, for him, would only derail his lingering fantasies of making it big in Bombay as a Bollywood playback singer. Meera's father, meanwhile, still hopes that she'll go to college and make something of herself beyond being a housewife, which for him symbolizes the feudal India of illiteracy and ignorance...
...layers to this sweeping though uneven and too long tale. The first is Meera's Austenian struggle as a caged woman seeking self-realization in a chauvinistic world. Hers is a moving story in theory, as she fights against the reign of her petty tyrant of a father, against Dev's alcoholism and neglect, and later, when Dev dies, against advances from her oily brother-in-law Arya. But she's also an irritating egoist and self-styled tragedienne who blames everyone else for her problems while selfishly, and in one case quite perversely, smothering teenage son Ashvin with...
Early last year, the bush storyteller Murray Hartin penned a 14-stanza poem in three hours flat. Rain From Nowhere is about a farmer on the brink of ruin who receives an empathetic letter from his father. A celebration of resilience and hope, it is as moving a piece of Australian verse as has been published in decades. It's also pertinent. The driest continent on earth is in the grip of the worst drought in its recorded history. Beginning in 2002 and spanning, at times, the breadth of the country, the dry spell has pushed farmers to the limits...
...rice farming for 32 years. "The tractor's throwing up clouds of dust." Les Gordon recalls the disenchantment among farmers in 1982 when state authorities limited farmers to 60% of their normal water allowance. Now, "I would kill for a 60% allocation," says Gordon, who still farms with his father, Henry. "Dad planted his first rice crop in 1949. No one around here has seen conditions like this before...
...attraction of life in Naypyidaw is its 24-hour electricity supply in a country plagued by power shortages. But that's not enough to entice civil servants to bring their relatives here. Asked why her family stayed in the old capital, a 12-year-old girl visiting her father answers in impressive English, "Rangoon is better; here is bad," earning her a slap on the head from her anxious mother...