This volume of columns written for the Dhaka Courier, a national newsweekly, became popular under the caption Through the Glass Darkly. The phrase occurs in the Bible 1 Corinthians 13 :12 where Paul speaks to the Corinthians of man’s childhood as a phase of life when his understanding is imperfect but ‘when I became a man I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly: Paul then speaks about three cardinal principles — faith, hope and charity; but the greatest of all these, he says is charity. Anyway, it was not the Bible that was in my mind when I chose this title for my column. It was the lngmar Burgman classic film of the same name which I saw when I was at Cambridge that made me choose this name for the column.