From The Editor

Best Wishes for a Happy New Year! Welcome to Taj Mahal Review, December 2005! London blasts on 77 and Delhi blasts on Saturday October 29, 05 prove once again the brutality of terrorism. The ethical poverty caused by a deplorable loss of human values, the unfortunate triumph of consumerism and materialism, worship of money and machine- all these make my heart bleed, yet I hope the bright and luminous artists will one day find an answer to the vices of contemporary reality. What a pity that fascist and terrorist powers and values are rising in such monstrous and terrifying times! 

The recent hurricanes in USA caused the death of so many persons. On behalf of the whole Cyberwit staff I express my anguish and sorrow, and pray for peace to the bereaved families. Another tragic incident was a terrible earthquake killing a great number of innocent persons in Kashmir in India. It is possible that the carbon dioxide by increasing the earth's temperature and thereby disturbing the ecological balance, has resulted in such disastrous hurricanes. Some kind of policy is the need of the present times, so that the tragedy is never repeated. 

Congratulations to Harold Pinter (b.1930), British playwright who was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. On October 13, 05 the Swedish Academy remarked "in his plays [Harold Pinter] uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms." His "comedies of menace" create "Pinteresque" atmosphere where the words and language are 'rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves'. 

Beware of "unfools of unbeing"! The best elucidation of this line by ee. cummings is by Norman Friedman: "people who are too stereotyped to be eccentric-people who are too dead spiritually to exist at all and who call alive individual fools" (ee. cummings the art of his poetry). 

I have found it a rich experience to read the following lines from "The Second Coming" by W. B.Yeats (1865-1939): 

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.

Poetry is the only panacea to end all the evils infecting mankind. I'm indebted to the authors and artists for their invaluable support and help. I thank all subscribers and benefactors. Without their cooperation, the publication of Taj Mahal Review is not possible.

--SANTOSH KUMAR