“If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead,” VS Naipaul, the late Nobel laureate and celebrated British author, had once said.

True to his words, he generated a lot of hostility. All through his celebrated career, Naipaul made many scathing remarks on record about women, race and his homeland Trinidad. But that was VS Naipaul in a nutshell. Cold, unapologetic for his views, outspoken but a master storyteller with a flair of weaving unforgettable stories.

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 in Trinidad to parents of Indian descent. His father, an inspiration for the main character in his novel, “A house for Mr. Biswas”, was a journalist for Trinidad Guardian. Not willing to stay there, young Naipaul won a scholarship and went to Oxford to study. His time in Oxford was however filled with depression, loneliness and anxiety. With little attachment to his homeland, he described Trinidad as an “unimportant, uncreative, cynical…dot on the map”, and also said of being born there as a huge mistake.

He wrote book reviews to support himself and often bitterly complained to his wife, “These people want to break my spirit…..They want me to know my place”

First Novel

His breakthrough came in 1957 with his first published novel “The Mystic Masseur” a humorous book about the lives of people in Trinidad.

He caught people’s eye with “Miguel Street”, a collection of linked short stories that tend to focus on a character living on Miguel Street. This book was a success earning him the 1961 Somerset Maugham Award.

A House for Mr Biswas (1961)

It was his deeply autobiographical, fourth novel “A House for Mr. Biswas” that shot him to international fame. Set in Trinidad, the story follows Mohun Biswas who was born “in the wrong way” as he struggles to find a place both in society and to call his home. Said by Naipaul as a “tribute” to his father, the novel is post-colonial and explores themes like family, poverty and struggle for independence and dignity. This novel is regarded as Naipaul’s most significant work and was included in TIME magazine “TIME 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

An Area of Darkness (1964)

The first book in VS Naipaul’s Indian Trilogy, An Area of Darkness chronicles India. It is a travelogue describing Naipaul’s trip through India. He stayed for a year and experienced no attachment with the country of his ancestors. The work was immediately banned in India for wrong portrayal of the country and its people.

In a Free State (1971)

The book that won him the Booker Prize, In a Free State is a sequence of five works — two short stories (the prologue and the epilogue), two 40-page novellas and a 140-page short novel — linked by a common theme, displacement. The prologue and the epilogue present a detached view of an experienced writer writing his journal.

Among the Believers (1981)

The novel is about the journey that Naipaul took to Pakistan, Iran, Malaysia and Indonesia. He met people-old, young, men, women whom he termed as believers- people struggling to regain the original purity of their faith to restore order to the chaotic world.

He was knighted in 1990.

In 2001, VS Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”.

During his acceptance speech, he had said: “But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn’t fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will – with luck – come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise.”

In his career spanning half a century, VS Naipaul wrote more than 30 works that included fiction, non-fiction and autobiographical books.

He was an enigma- often feeling happy with his book when completed and then saying that there was no point of writing.

The Swedish Academy described him as a “literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice”.

Jobel Delos Angeles, 24, married the father of her two children on Saturday as Tropical Storm Yagi and the southwest monsoon brought heavy flooding to the capital Manila and nearby areas, including their home province of Bulacan.

In a Facebook video shared over a thousand times, Delos Angeles is all smiles as she walks through brown floodwaters in a white gown and veil before her suited groom clad in flip-flops takes her to the altar.

“Even if it floods or it rains, nothing can stop me. You only get married once, will you postpone it? I was marrying the man I love,” Delos Angeles told AFP by phone.

“My gown got wet and heavy but I told myself it was as if I was walking on a red carpet.”

The Philippines endures an average of 20 typhoons and storms each year.

The latest storm brought misery to many, with 20,000 residents fleeing the riverside district of Marikina in the national capital region where floods swept away cars, authorities said.

But for Delos Angeles, the weekend was cause for celebration.

She said she and her partner of seven years did not expect bad weather but never considered calling off their wedding even after floodwaters entered the church in Hagonoy town.

It was a double ceremony, with their five-month-old daughter baptised in the same event, she added.

Guests were photographed barefoot, including children who were afraid to slip.

“We didn’t want a new schedule as we were already stressed out. Our hometown is really flood-prone,” Delos Angeles added.

“No car wanted to bring us to the church so I just rode a boat. We didn’t expect so many people would still turn up, even the entourage.”

The bride’s aunt, Teresa Bautista, posted the video of her niece which has drawn comments from social media users hailing the event as the “wedding of year”.

“I felt bad for them but at the same time I am happy they got it through,” Bautista told AFP.

Delos Angeles said she had no regrets. “It is truly memorable. I am so happy. It shows the lesson that there are no what ifs.”

“The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean” but also to show that “nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment”, Nicolas de Villiers of the Puy du Fou park, in the western Vendee region, told AFP.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Rooks, a member of the crow family of birds that also includes the carrion crow, jackdaw and raven, are considered to be “particularly intelligent” and in the right circumstances “like to communicate with humans and establish a relationship through play”, Villiers said.

The birds will be encouraged to spruce up the park through the use of a small box that delivers a tasty nugget of bird food each time the rook deposits a cigarette end or small piece of rubbish, he added.

Istana Boneka has been given a permit to manufacture merchandise for the quadrennial event, namely dolls of its mascots Bhin Bhin, Atung and Kaka.

“We’re grateful to have been trusted to present Indonesia through [dolls of ] these endangered animals to [Asian Games] participants as well as guests from abroad; it’s not just about the money,” Istana Boneka owner Susan Soewono said at her factory in Malang on Friday.

An employee of Istana Boneka packs dolls of Atung the Bawean deer at the company’s factory in Malang, East Java, on Friday, Aug. 10, 2018. (JP/Nedi Putra AW)

Established as a home industry business in 2000, the manufacturer strives to develop new techniques in order to create better products at a faster pace.

“We first receive a style guide in 2D images. Then we process them as 3D images using a computer and finally create a doll from them,” Susan said, adding that the company – which employs about 300 workers – finally received approval to manufacture the dolls in April.

Read also: Positive responses to Asian Games posters unexpected: Creators

Istana Boneka has made hundreds of thousands of Asian Games mascot dolls.

“However, since they are a special order, we cannot sell them directly [to customers]. We only manufacture them and deliver them to license holders,” Susan explained.

Owner of Istana Boneka, Susan Soewono, poses with mascot dolls of the 2018 Asian Games. (JP/Nedi Putra AW)

Istana Boneka’s factory produces an average of 3,000 dolls every day based on orders from all over the world, including from Hollywood film studios like Disney and Universal Studios.

To ensure the quality of its product, the company offers a lifetime guarantee for all of its dolls.

“Other than sharing happiness with children and adults with our dolls, for me the most important thing is empowering the [Indonesian] people with this business,” Susan said.

    The Swiss-made Pilatus aircraft lost contact with air traffic control Saturday during what was supposed to be a flight of around 40 minutes in remote Papua province.

The wreckage of the plane was found in a heavily forested area on a mountain side in the Oksibil subdistrict on Sunday morning.

“Eight passengers were found dead and one was found alive,” Papua military spokesman Lieutenant colonel Dax Sianturi said.

“At the moment the cause of the crash has not been confirmed,” he told AFP, adding an investigation would be carried out by the national transportation safety committee.

The plane, which was owned by private charter company Dimonim Air, was carrying seven passengers and two crew.

Before the accident, villagers in nearby Okatem reported hearing a loud roar followed by an explosion.

Search and rescue teams walked two hours to reach the crash site and were still recovering the bodies late morning.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands but has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered several fatal crashes in recent years.

Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.

Five people died after a small plane crashed near Wamena in Papua province in July last year.

In August 2015, a commercial passenger aircraft operated by Indonesian carrier Trigana crashed in Papua due to bad weather, killing all 54 people on board.

Some addicts are forced by law to spend up to two years in Vietnam’s rehab centers, while others are admitted by family or check themselves in.

Most detainees undergo cold-turkey treatment in the notoriously overcrowded centres or are subjected to solitary confinement for breaking rules.

Several breakouts have occurred in recent years and the most recent started on Saturday morning in the southern province of Tien Giang, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that about half the escapees had already been captured.

“There are around 100 addicts still on the run and the police are still looking for them,” the officer said.

A disagreement with staff escalated into an assault, with patients wielding knives and bricks and encouraging others to break down the door, state-controlled website VnExpress reported.

Images circulating on social media showed dozens of men, many shirtless, wandering on a highway near the rehab centre.

“They passed my area holding canes and shouted like protesters. When we saw them, me and people around were scared and worried,” local resident Le Hai Trieu told AFP.

Residents pitched in to help local authorities capture the men.

Another state media outlet said that more than 650 people are registered at the Tien Giang facility, but it did not provide figures on the number of voluntary admissions.

There are more than 220,000 registered drug addicts in Vietnam, according to official statistics released last year, with heroin and methamphetamine the most popular narcotics.

While Vietnam is experimenting with more community-based treatment options in response to criticism over the centres, they remain the most-used form of recovery.

The centres are widely supported as a viable treatment option although addiction specialists say they don’t work and relapse rates are high.

Early last year 100 people escaped from a centre in southern Long An province because they were upset about spending the annual Tet new year holiday away from their homes.

That protest left one person dead and highlighted the growing boldness of the far right under Trump. Another far-right rally is scheduled for Sunday, right outside the White House.

Trump drew scorn after the Charlottesville violence for initially avoiding any condemnation of the torch-bearing white nationalists who took part in that rally.

On Saturday, as memorial ceremonies also got under way in Charlottesville, Trump wrote on Twitter: “The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division.

“We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!”

Last year’s protests began August 11 and saw hundreds of neo-Nazi sympathizers, accompanied by rifle-carrying men, yelling white nationalist slogans and wielding flaming torches in scenes eerily reminiscent of racist rallies held in America’s South before the Civil Rights movement.

They had gathered to protest efforts to remove statues of Confederate leaders, including one of the Confederacy’s top general, Robert E Lee.

When the demonstrations continued on August 12, fighting broke out between neo-Nazi supporters and anti-fascists from a black-clad group called Antifa.

‘Blame on both sides’

The violence culminated with a man driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 people.

In the immediate aftermath, Trump drew broad criticism when he initially appeared to establish a moral equivalence between the two groups of protesters and refused to criticize the far rightwingers.

He did eventually yield to immense political pressure and condemn white nationalism.

But just a day later, Trump said there was “blame on both sides” for the violence in Virginia, condemning the anti-fascists who came “with clubs in their hands.”

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump said. “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Trump is constantly fending off charges that he is misogynist and racist. He denies the allegations.

Trump has retweeted white nationalist material; said Mexicans crossing the US border are rapists and drug dealers; once referred to a Hispanic Miss Universe as “Miss Housekeeping,” and employed Steve Bannon, central figure of the new “alt-right” in America, as his campaign chief and top strategist for a time.

In one of the most recent race-related flare-ups, a black former White House employee, Omarosa Manigault Newman, has written in an upcoming memoir that Trump was caught on mic uttering the N-word “multiple times” during the making of his hit reality TV show “The Apprentice” prior to his presidential run, and that there are tapes to prove it.

Manigault Newman is a former “Apprentice” star. She served as director of communications for the White House office of public liaison until she was fired in December.

While she does not write that she herself heard Trump use the taboo language, she cites three unnamed sources, and adds that she experienced “truly appalling things” with Trump, according to The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book ahead of its publication next week.

The White House dismissed the book as riddled with lies and false accusations and the product of a “disgruntled former White House employee.”

Kerala, famed for its pristine palm-lined beaches and tea plantations, is battered by the monsoon every year but the rains have been particularly severe this season.

Those forced from their homes “have moved to 350 relief camps across the state”, an official at the Kerala State Disaster Management control room told AFP.

The army has been roped in for rescue efforts in Kerala after two days of heavy rain drove authorities to open the shutters of 27 reservoirs to drain out the excess water.

One of the five shutters of a large reservoir in the mountainous Idukki district was opened for the first time in 26 years.

“Our state is in the midst of an unprecedented flood havoc,” Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote in a statement posted on Twitter.

“The calamity has caused immeasurable misery and devastation. Many lives were lost. Hundreds of homes were totally destroyed,” he added, lauding the efforts of rescue teams working in the state from across India.

The US embassy Thursday advised its citizens to avoid the areas affected and monitor local media for weather updates.

More than a million foreign tourists visited Kerala last year, according to official data.

The government of Kerala, which has a population of 33 million people, has imposed a ban on the movement of lorries and tourist vehicles in Idukki.

Across the nation, Chinese officials have sought to limit religious freedoms for Muslims as part of a widespread attempt to bring believers in line with the dictates of the ruling Communist Party.

Protesters began gathering Thursday ahead of a deadline to demolish the grand mosque in the town of Weizhou in the northern Ningxia region, a restaurant owner surnamed Ma told AFP.

Videos posted on social media over the last two days show hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the building as police with riot shields stand by.

Holding Chinese flags, they sat quietly on the building’s steps and milled around a large plaza, before heading to Friday night prayers, according to the videos, which could not be verified by AFP.

“The government said it’s an illegal building, but it’s not. The mosque has several hundred years of history,” Ma said.

The mosque was rebuilt over the past two years, according to government documents, but the licensing process was not carefully managed and several officials received a “serious warning” from a local disciplinary committee.

In the process, the facade was changed from its previous Chinese style — featuring sweeping tiled roofs similar to a Buddhist temple — to what is often described in China as an “Arab” design, with domes and crescents.

Concerns have been growing in Weizhou since the circulation of a government order last week demanding the mosque’s demolition on the grounds that it had been rebuilt without the proper permits.

The document — which could not be verified by AFP — said that if the building was not demolished by Friday, August 10, the government would “forcefully tear it down, and you will accept responsibility for the consequences.”

Calls to the local county government and the regional Islamic association Saturday went unanswered.

The words “Weizhou mosque” appeared to be censored on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform when AFP tried to search for them.

– ‘Sinicization’ of religion –

Islam is one of five officially recognised religions in China, home to some 23 million Muslims.

Pressure has been building on the group in recent months as the Communist party moves to tighten the reins on religious expression.

China’s top leaders recently called for the “Sinicization” of religious practise — bringing it in line with “traditional” Chinese values and culture — and new regulations on religious affairs came into effect in February, sparking concern among rights groups.

The measures increased state supervision of religion in a bid to “block extremism”, and in areas with significant Muslim populations, authorities have removed Islamic symbols, such as crescents, from public spaces.

In the far western region of Xinjiang, things have gone much farther, with Muslims being harshly punished for violating regulations banning beards and burqas, and even for the possession of unauthorised Korans.

Concerns about the mosque standoff in Weizhou appeared to be spreading Saturday, as Muslims in other regions expressed solidarity with the protesters

“We are quietly waiting to see that the problem is satisfactorily resolved,” said one open letter posted on Weibo by a mosque in Shanxi province.

If it is not, “we reserve the legal right to go to Ningxia or call on the central government to petition”.

The Swiss-made Pilatus aircraft lost contact with air traffic control during what was supposed to be a flight of around 40 minutes in remote Papua province, police said.

“Villagers in Okatem reported that they heard a loud roar from the plane followed by a big explosion,” Bintang regency police chief Michael Mumbunan told AFP.

Search and rescue teams have been deployed but it will take them up to three hours to reach the suspected crash site by foot, he added.

The plane was carrying seven passengers, including a child, and two crew.

It belonged to Dimonim Air, a private company operating charter flights in and around Papua.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands but has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered several fatal crashes in recent years.

Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.

Five people died after a small plane crashed near Wamena in Papua province in July last year.

In August 2015, a commercial passenger aircraft operated by Indonesian carrier Trigana crashed in Papua due to bad weather, killing all 54 people on board.