Can I Speak, Ma'am??????

Many of us who felt pride on our liberal heritage and few who didn't missed any opportunity to blow the trumpets on the issue were seem to be dumbfounded when Qatar conferred its citizenship on MF Hussein. Acclaimed Indian painter after being in forced exiled by the fanatics for last few years has officially ended even the last remnants with Indian state.

Without getting into merits and demerits of what Hussein did, our citizens should have rights to express their views freely and their safety must be ensured. Borrowing Voltaire words "I may not agree with what you have to say but i will defend to the death yo? I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it?"

But what can we expect from a nation where first change in constitution was made to gag the free airing of opinion. While first amendment to US constitution enhanced its citizens right to air their opinions.

Not to be branded cynical about our the improvement in our society and to point that things are how worse in our neighboring countries here are some lines by Poet Kaifi Azmi

"The Sindhi that came from Pakistan to India is called 'Seth'. The Muslim that left India for Pakistan is called 'Mohajir'. Bade Ghulam Ali was asked by a Pakistani luminary, Mohammed All, to sing. He started "mohe na chhedo Nandlal" and was interrupted rudely with a "kucch Pakistani music gaiye". He retorted: "Mori gardan no marodo (don't twist my neck) Mohammed Ali". Then upped and left, returned to reclaim his Indian citizenship"

But a nation that has aims to be the NEXT Superpower can't be satisfied with Consolation prize......can we????????

Time Magazine's list of 100 best English novels

Full List

A - B

1. The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul Bellow
2. All the King's Men (1946), by Robert Penn Warren
3. American Pastoral (1997), by Philip Roth
4. An American Tragedy (1925), by Theodore Dreiser
5. Animal Farm (1946), by George Orwell
6. Appointment in Samarra (1934), by John O'Hara
7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), by Judy Blume
8. The Assistant (1957), by Bernard Malamud
9. At Swim-Two-Birds (1938), by Flann O'Brien
10. Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
11. Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
12. The Berlin Stories (1946), by Christopher Isherwood
13. The Big Sleep (1939), by Raymond Chandler
14. The Blind Assassin (2000), by Margaret Atwood
15. Blood Meridian (1986), by Cormac McCarthy
16. Brideshead Revisited (1946), by Evelyn Waugh
17. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder

C - D

1. Call It Sleep (1935), by Henry Roth
2. Catch-22 (1961), by Joseph Heller
3. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger
4. A Clockwork Orange (1963), by Anthony Burgess
5. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), by William Styron
6. The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
7. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), by Thomas Pynchon
8. A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), by Anthony Powell
9. The Day of the Locust (1939), by Nathanael West
10. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
11. A Death in the Family (1958), by James Agee
12. The Death of the Heart (1958), by Elizabeth Bowen
13. Deliverance (1970), by James Dickey
14. Dog Soldiers (1974), by Robert Stone

F - G

1. Falconer (1977), by John Cheever
2. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), by John Fowles
3. The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing
4. Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin
5. Gone With the Wind (1936), by Margaret Mitchell
6. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), by John Steinbeck
7. Gravity's Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pynchon
8. The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald

H - I

1. A Handful of Dust (1934), by Evelyn Waugh
2. The Heart is A Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers
3. The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene
4. Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow
5. Housekeeping (1981), by Marilynne Robinson
6. A House for Mr. Biswas (1962), by V.S. Naipaul
7. I, Claudius (1934), by Robert Graves
8. Infinite Jest (1996), by David Foster Wallace
9. Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison

L - N

1. Light in August (1932), by William Faulkner
2. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis
3. Lolita (1955), by Vladimir Nabokov
4. Lord of the Flies (1955), by William Golding
5. The Lord of the Rings (1954), by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Loving (1945), by Henry Green
7. Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis
8. The Man Who Loved Children (1940), by Christina Stead
9. Midnight's Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie
10. Money (1984), by Martin Amis
11. The Moviegoer (1961), by Walker Percy
12. Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf
13. Naked Lunch (1959), by William Burroughs
14. Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
15. Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson
16. Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
17. 1984 (1948), by George Orwell

O - R

1. On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), by Ken Kesey
3. The Painted Bird (1965), by Jerzy Kosinski
4. Pale Fire (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov
5. A Passage to India (1924), by E.M. Forster
6. Play It As It Lays (1970), by Joan Didion
7. Portnoy's Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth
8. Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt
9. The Power and the Glory (1939), by Graham Greene
10. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), by Muriel Spark
11. Rabbit, Run (1960), by John Updike
12. Ragtime (1975), by E.L. Doctorow
13. The Recognitions (1955), by William Gaddis
14. Red Harvest (1929), by Dashiell Hammett
15. Revolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates

S - T

1. The Sheltering Sky (1949), by Paul Bowles
2. Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut
3. Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson
4. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), by John Barth
5. The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner
6. The Sportswriter (1986), by Richard Ford
7. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964), by John le Carre
8. The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway
9. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston
10. Things Fall Apart (1959), by Chinua Achebe
11. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee
12. To the Lighthouse (1927), by Virginia Woolf
13. Tropic of Cancer (1934), by Henry Miller

U - W

1. Ubik (1969), by Philip K. Dick
2. Under the Net (1954), by Iris Murdoch
3. Under the Volcano (1947), by Malcolm Lowry
4. Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
5. White Noise (1985), by Don DeLillo
6. White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith
7. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys

ALL-TIME GRAPHIC NOVELS

1. Berlin: City of Stones (2000), by Jason Lutes
2. Blankets (2003), by Craig Thompson
3. Bone (2004), by Jeff Smith
4. The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2002), by Kim Deitch
5. The Dark Knight Returns (1986), by Frank Miller
6. David Boring (2000), by Daniel Clowes
7. Ed the Happy Clown (1989), by Chester Brown
8. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), by Chris Ware
9. Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003), by Gilbert Hernandez
10. Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1951793,00.html#ixzz0g0NOENsX