The family had a pleasant house in Madras, and its members thought of themselves as modernisers.

ECONOMIST: R.K. Narayan | The

We have great neighbors and live in a pleasant established community that is in a convenient location for the family, with only an eleven-mile commute to downtown for my husband.

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He seems to be keeping the seat warm for her son, Rahul, a pleasant-seeming but unconvincing chap apparently destined to represent the fifth generation of his family to lead Congress.

ECONOMIST: Democracy in India

Raped and murdered by a misfit who has a habit of slaughtering young girls, 14-year-old Susie Salmon watches from a pleasant, convivial heaven as her family grieves her loss and gradually makes peace with the fact that her murderer is never prosecuted.

ECONOMIST: New fiction: Letting go | The