Predicament of a Woman in Manju Kapur’s Home

Manju Kapur is an Indian novelist. She was born on 25th October 1948. She is an archetypal representative of the postcolonial women novelists. She was a professor of English Literature at her alma mater at Miranda House College, Delhi. But she is retired from there. She joined the growing number of Indian women novelists, who have contributed to the progression of Indian fiction i.e. Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy, Kamla Das, Geetha Hariharan, Anita Nair, Shobha De. Her novels reflect the position of women in the patriarchal society and the problems of women for their longing struggle in establishing their identity as an autonomous being. Her works not only gives voice to the society’s effort to improve its women population but it is for every woman’s self–consciousness in order to improve the society. She has written five novels, Difficult Daughters (1998), A Married Woman (2002), Home (2006), The Immigrant (2008), and Custody (2011). Kapur’s most memorable female characters are Virmati, Astha, Nisha, Nina, Shagun and so many others. All of them strive to assert themselves. These characters give us a rare glimpse of modernized Indian women who are in their aggression may enter into a scandalous relationship with her married neighbor, the professor or develop lesbian relationship as Virmati does in Difficult Daughters and Astha in A Married Woman. But Nisha in Home is different from her predecessors.</jats:p

Deconstructing the “Ideology of ability”: Jhamak Ghimire’s A Flower in the Midst of Thorns

Jhamak Ghimire is a Nepali writer having got birth in 1980, in the eastern suburb of Nepal, Dhankuta. She was born with the severe disability i.e. cerebral palsy which has robbed her of her motor controls of her arms, slurred her speech and limited her movement. She writes with her foot. She has published eight volumes of poetry, stories and essays and is a regular columnist in Kantipur newspaper. She has won many awards for her writings in literature. She has won Madan Puraskar, Nepal’s most prestigious literary prize in 2011, for her autobiographical novel Jeevan Kanda Ki Phool which is translated by Nagendra Sharma and Safal Sharma, in English as, A Flower in the Midst of Thorns. The article attempts to explore the challenges which Ghimire has to confront for deconstructing the “ideology of ability” through her novel. So, this article selects some excerpts from the book to show her subordination at multiple levels.</jats:p

Machine learning risk prediction of mortality for patients undergoing surgery with perioperative SARS-CoV-2: the COVIDSurg mortality score

To support the global restart of elective surgery, data from an international prospective cohort study of 8492 patients (69 countries) was analysed using artificial intelligence (machine learning techniques) to develop a predictive score for mortality in surgical patients with SARS-CoV-2. We found that patient rather than operation factors were the best predictors and used these to create the COVIDsurg Mortality Score (https://covidsurgrisk.app). Our data demonstrates that it is safe to restart a wide range of surgical services for selected patients.</jats:p