COLUMN

NEW DELHI: An Indian couple found an unwell 75-year-old woman lying on a garbage dump, apparently thrown out of her home by her daughter and grandsons who did not want to take care of her, the Hindustan Times reported. “She never complained about her family’s behaviour, only rued the fact that she couldn’t move without help,” Mohanasundari, one of the rescuers, said. The semi-paralysed Palaniappan told her rescuers her youngest daughter had quarrelled with other family members over who should take care of her. The daughter then got her sons to take their grandmother to the dump in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Politicians expressed outrage over Palaniappan’s fate and said they would ask officials to take action against the family.
“I have asked the collector (a local official) to take care of the old lady, and take legal action against the children,” state social welfare minister Poongothai, who like many in Tamil Nadu goes by one name, was quoted as saying. – Reuters
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LONDON: Even Jane Austen would have trouble finding a publisher today, a struggling author revealed yesterday. David Lassman sent off to 18 publishers assorted chapters from Austen novels in which he changed just the titles and the names of the characters. He called himself Alison Laydee after Austen’s early pseudonym A Lady. Seventeen publishers rejected or ignored his bid for literary glory. Only one spotted the ruse and told him not to mimic Pride and Prejudice so closely. Lassman, who decided on the experiment when struggling to get his own novel published, told media: “Getting a novel accepted is very difficult today unless you have an agent first. But I had no idea of the scale of rejection poor old Jane suffered.”
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LONDON: It entered the auction as an 18th century painting by an unknown artist worth a few hundred pounds, but emerged as a suspected early work by Renaissance master Titian possibly worth several million. Lot 403 in the sale by small family auctioneer Gilding’s of Market Harborough in central England has become the buzz of the art world since it sold for US$420,000 amid fierce bidding on July 10. “I have not seen the painting in the flesh, but I have seen a digital image of it and it looks like an early Titian to me from around 1512 or 1515,” Old Master dealer and art expert Simon Dickinson said. “The way the shirt and the face are painted – it is just the way Titan would have painted them,” he said. – Reuters

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