The Babu has never liked the acronym 'IWE' (Indian Writers in English/ Indians Writing in English/ Indians Wittering in English, whatever), and feels the same sense of distaste when he is forced to use such a circumlocution as he did back in the bad old days when they were known as the 'Indo-Anglian' (think Indo-Saracenic, etc) school. Whatever one calls the brigade, however, one is grateful to Keshav Desiraju--or at any rate, to one of his sub-editors--for pointing out in The Hindu that they share a "peculiar feature... the need to convey a message". Desiraju said this in the context of Githa Hariharan's In Times of Siege (see post for April 27), a book where the message outweighs the medium.