Last week, common Americans found the prophecy of Thomas Jefferson coming true. Founding father of American Nation cautioned against the dominance of private banking system and concluded with a caution in case of such a situation – …Your children will awake to find them homeless..

A non-economist’s analysis of present economic crisis and impact in Indian IT sector. The analysis is fortunate to draw upon experience and input from three ex-Lehman employee. This is part 1 of this collaborative Essay. Part 2 will feature in Pentasect November issue.

We at Wordsmith Communication are all Freelancers. Hence we thought of asking one of our Freelancer Colleagues to write a simple primer for this emerging practice. Few sociologists have called this as Future of Work itself, culminating into something like medieval guilds. There are various incentives towards this evolution. Freelancing is slowly changing from the romantic option of a worked-out employee to the option for many – within our socio-economic framework: for example: mothers with young children, employees who find the corporate jungle intolerable or those who want to be Time-Rich with some trade-off with being Cash-Rich.

Ms. Pallabi Chakraborty sent this piece for evaluation. However, our editorial team liked this humourous observation on the battle of sexes in Kolkata Metro. In this short Notes from the (Kolkata) underground, we observe interesting facts, especially her last time - This is going so far in the city regarding the new endeavor, a daring step to take in a place which never tolerates abrupt changes.

Before we say banking crisis, we need to understand what banking in its core is. Banking, fundamentally is what the verb says – to bank on, to trust – to consider an institution as a custodian of value (money / share / order of money ) and valuables (gold / ming vases / Nobel citation – one’s own or stolen ).

Our first travel write-up – on a region which once represented Bengal’s flourishing maritime trade. The place also connects three enduring tradition of Bengal – the cult of Shakthi (Kali), the Vaishnav Tradition. One of the greatest sons of Bengal of all time – Sree Chaitanya is being remembered there. An intriguing question: Was Sree Chaitanya murdered? We can only hope that some future historian of this land would take up this great theme someday and would allow us to see how we can say, Chaitanya – Our Contemporary.

In a provocative tone, Lesley D Biswas puts certain stark and uncomfortable developments that career woman are facing today. Even in Kolkata. The short essay brings to light, sometimes in first person experience, the essential conflicts and crisis that connect varied issues like financial freedom of women, relationship and fertility choices, and social expectation. We find a very provocative, debatable, but representative line : A good employee or to be a good mother…. and the good news is that it isn’t necessary that being a full time mother will translate into a responsible mother and vice-versa…

A long lost essay – surfaced miraculously in clean-up searches. This was written while in Malabar – away from Puja somewhere in 2000-2001.

Anagata or Yet-to-arrive is a drama in Bangla which projects its settings into 2222 – somewhere two hundred plus years from now. The drama starts in a courtroom which needs to decide what malfunction has developed in an android – now a housewife in a hip society. The drama will be published in Pentasect@Bengla in two parts. This is the First part.

A short discussion on the most used conversational word in Bengali – “DADA”. Only another word can match its multi spectrum meaning – “MAL”.

Pentasect Team, especially Silchar and Calcutta team put these images for Puja 2008. Durga Puja is a part of Greater Bengali Culture - common and elite both. To many of us, Durga Puja seems like a multi-layered novel with ingredients so varied, conflicting and contradictory that there is something for everyone to enjoy.