The Equator Line - October - December 2015

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In a hurry to prevent the miners’ further degradation of the mountains of West Virginia, she drives the rental car speedily along narrow roads on a bleak, foggy morning. Lalitha is inspired by her boss, Walter’s environmental idealism, the initiative of his trust to save the air, the forests, and many species of birds being killed by both domestic and feral cats, and follies of man. Born in India but raised in the US, ‘the suburban daughter of an electrical engineer’, she is beyond love and longing for a home across the oceans, and has sailed across the early struggle for adjustment to a new culture. Lalitha is unlike the characters you come across in Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction. There is no in-between-ness. Her transition is complete. With remarkable courage, clarity, and passion she drives dangerously around the mountain curves to secure the most pristine, therefore most vulnerable, parts of earth before they are devoured by the greedy industry.

At a rare intimate moment, drinking her second martini before dinner in a restaurant, she confides in Walter what she wants to do with her life.

“‘Can I ask a personal question?’ she said.

‘Ah – sure.’

‘The question is: do you think I should get my tubes tied?’”

Walter fumbles in shock, hastily looking around to see if the other people heard her. “‘It just seems logical,’ she said more quietly, ‘since I know I don’t want children.’”

The Equator Line Magazine Description:

The Equator Line is to India what The New Yorker is to America, Cicero to Germany and Granta to England: cerebral, incisive and entertaining as well. TEL revives an old tradition of journalism which combines new writing with a close account of the fresh developments in areas like business, culture, cinema and lifestyle.
The great periodicals of the past threw up new writers and triggered fresh debates about many issues. With the advent of 24x7 television periodicals lost their predominant position in intellectual discourse, in benchmarking our culture. A ‘breaking-news’ fever swept through India. The beauty of good writing was no longer recommendation enough. Newspapers carried more pictures and less copy. News magazines readjusted themselves to the television era with a new snappy, sharp look. And in the deluge of visual news the sensitive, sharp, upwardly mobile man seemed lost. Nothing was put into perspective for him. Nothing really tested his intelligence. The delight of surveying an altogether new horizon across the serried lines of good prose was missing!
The Equator Line is a journey to rediscover the glory of the written word. Promoted by Palimpsest Publishing House, the monthly magazine offers a brilliant spread – clinical analysis of trends, new fiction, deep examination of political events, latest in diplomacy, spirituality, diaspora, the remote and exotic captured through a sensitive camera, news from the world of books, all that and much more. When repetitive surface news grates on your nerves The Equator Line takes you on a trip to the land of good writing with an impressive line-up of well-known writers.
Waiting for your flight at the airport or in a hotel room in an unfamiliar city, the latest issue of TEL will help you rediscover your world in a new light.