The rising frequency of public acts of violence has led to the dangerous routinisation of terror; its presence in our social lives has got perversely normalized as our sensitization levels have dipped and apathy levels have risen. How does Art confront Terror? When does violence get aestheticised in its depiction? How have acts of national and international Othering been rationalized/interrogated through expressive acts? These are some of the questions we ask in the course of this issue.

Gayatri Sinha, in her Lead Essay, assesses the various ways in which artists in India have addressed the horror-inspiring cataclysmic events that have unfolded around us over the last few years. In his Lead Essay, Amit Rai takes a long hard look at Hindi cinema's construction of the Muslim as the Monstrous Other and dwells on how video/computer game initiatives have forged complicated equations between propositions of identity and sovereignty, between acts of killing and winning, and between the body in its real and virtual avatars. The Lead Features have Sandhya Bordewekar and Amrit Gangar looking back at the Gujarat riots of 2002 and documenting the responses of the artist community to heinous acts of terror. The Special Report by Meera Menezes carries an introduction to B.V. Suresh's latest work - we carry a detail of his installation, that evokes the tragic gutting of the Best Bakery, on our cover. Gopika Nath re-visits Rameshwar Broota's canvases, which among other themes, explore brutalized lives led under the shadow of fear. Jehangir Jani talks to Georgina L. Maddox about belonging to a sexual/religious minority and about making considered choices while registering protests against orthodoxies. In Letter from Pakistan, Quddus Mirza informs us about how artists from across the border have used their expressive powers to critique the ascendancy of religious and political violence in public life. Derrick Adams, Arshiya Lokhandwala, and Uzma Z. Rizvi discuss how women artists of South Asian descent, at a group show in New York, have responded to the experience of terror. We also carry ace photographer, Kishor Parekh's documentation of the Bangladesh war of '71 - one of the most violent years in the history of the sub-continent.

As always, we carry reports and reviews of some of the most important initiatives and shows in the country and abroad.

Thanks for writing in about the last issue. Waiting for your responses to this one.

Regards,