CESC (p. 104): Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation.

Dhanu, the LTTE’s live human bomb (p. 105): Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, known as Dhanu, was a member of the Black Tigers, the suicide squad of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). She assassinated the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, Tamil Nadu. When Dhanu bent to touch Rajiv Gandhi’s feet in seeming reverence, she activated an RDX-based device embedded with approximately ten thousand two-millimeter steel pellets held in a blue denim belt. At least fourteen others were also killed. The LTTE is a militant organization from Sri Lanka; at the time India had just ended its involvement, through the Indian Peace Keeping Force, in the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Loadshedding (p. 107): An intentionally engineered electrical power shutdown where electricity delivery is stopped for nonoverlapping periods of time over different parts of the distribution region. Loadsheddings—which lasted up to twelve or sixteen hours sometimes—were very much a part of daily life in West Bengal during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.