roads and railway settlements—gateways to the areas of darkness in North Madras. Here the grime from factory smoke blackens the walls of dilapidated houses and permeates the souls of their despairing inhabitants. Children with matted hair from the teeming slums forage in piles of rubbish for food and other takeaways. Their parents toil for meagre daily wages in the wholesale markets, the industrial estates, the mills and small factories that crowd the landscape in this part of the city. This is still Madras, and yet, it is another country.
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Nirmala Lakshman is a journalist and director of The Hindu, and has held senior editorial positions at the newspaper for more than three decades. She founded The Hindu Literary Review, and conceptualized and developed Young World, India’s only children’s newspaper supplement. She is the editor of an anthology of contemporary Indian journalism, Writing a Nation. She has a PhD in postmodern fiction from Madras University and a master’s degree in English from the United States. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Foundation of India and is the chairperson of its Media Fellowship Programme. She is also on the board of Pradhan, a prominent development organization. Besides Degree Coffee by the Yard: A Short Biography of Madras, she is working on a novel.
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The Book of Aleph