L E T T E R S    T O    T H E    E D I T O R

Differing views with the West

I read Tarsem S. Bumrah’s letter (Perspective, July 9). Many people in India often either misinterpret or suspiciously look at any radical thing that happens in the West.

In the West, the state has recognised the civil agreement between the two individuals of the same sex whereby proprietary rights are transferable to the surviving partner in case of death etc. The agreement also provides all the benefits which a married couple of opposite sexes get.

Funnily, a lot of people, especially in India, look at it from the sex point of view only. In fact, the agreement has nothing to do what the partners do in their bedrooms.

Technically, the marriage can only happen between the two opposite sexes to produce their offspring. In that sense, the agreement between the two partners of the same sex cannot be called as marriage because they cannot biologically produce their offspring . If a partner of such an agreement commits sodomy, irrespective of the agreement, he is liable for prosecution.

AMAR THAKUR, London

Glaring lapse

H. Kishie Singh has rightly highlighted the glaring lapse on the part of the Chandigarh road department (Saturday Extra, Aug 8). Sometime back when I happened to drive on the said road I was stunned to see the folly of the person who had advised such a foolish action.

It will definitely lead to a serious accident one day, because you cannot anticipate the sudden narrowing of the main road. Some senior officer must inspect the work being carried out and guide the workers accordingly.

G. K. SAINI, Panchkula

Laudable action

The conflicts in society (“Help for children, women”, Spectrum, May 24) are all political. These have crippled the lives of common people. Women and children suffer the most.

By realising the lives of such victims, entrepreneur Nighat Shafi Pandit, along with her friends, has taken a laudable step by forming an organisation HELP in Jammu and Kashmir.

Not only are the orphans and underprivilleged children provided shelter and education, victim women, too, are encouraged to use their skills to become breadwinners for their families.

ANJU ANAND, Chambaghat (Solan)

Updike’s genius While reviewing John Updike’s My Father’s Tears and Other Stories, Harsh Desai has aptly observed (Spectrum, August 2) that “there will never be another John Updike”, and that his posthumously published book is his “last hurrah”. Updike was an American novelist, short-story writer and a poet, who established a reputation as a keen observer of modern American life with his short-stories in The Same Door (1959), followed by a major success with the novel Rabbit Run (1968). In this novel, he depicted the “little man” in America, who instinctively feels his own helplessness before the faceless reality surrounding him, and who, in fact, tries to run away from it, to save himself, to find peace and freedom. Nevertheless, Rabbit runs in circles, and life is constantly overtaking him, inflicting blow upon blow. The central character, Harry Angstrom, appears in the sequels, Rabbit Redux and Rabbit is Rich, both of which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and 1990, respectively. Thus, Updike presents the crisis of a human spirit under conditions fostered by commercialism. The brutal realism of these works was blended with a satirical tone and an artist’s depth of view and feelings. Updike has depicted the way of life of an average American vis-a-vis the first manned flight to the Moon, to set a contrast between the achievements of the human mind and the empty, petty, and insignificant lives of his heroes, and their spiritual emptiness in a “consumerist society”. Thus, like Saul Bellow, John Cheever, John O’Hara, Philip Roth, Reynolds Price, Joyce Carol Oats and Jon Gardner, Updike reflects the reaction of a humanistic consciousness to the most dangerous results of “post-industrialism”. DEEPAK TANDON, Panchkula