October 17, 1999

FOR a few days last week, it took a split screen to watch developments in South Asia, where India and Pakistan seemed to take starkly divergent paths into the next political era. India anointed another democratically elected government and Pakistan applauded yet another military coup. But beneath the surface, are these events as different as they seem? Half a century after the partition of British India, some students of the area say, these two countries -- now nuclear powers -- may be demonstrating a common trend. In their search for identity, a new generation of Pakistanis and Indians are unveiling the face of home-grown politics -- pure Indian and pure Pakistani, more inward-looking, less cosmopolitan. And, perhaps, more prone to misunderstanding each other.

THE English are a pragmatic lot. Passionate belief or fixed opinions are something that always make your average English man or woman feel uncomfortable. Faced with a fundamentalist insisting that the Bible got it right and that God did, after all, create the world in six days, the English will stop for an embarrassed pause before continuing the ever-present discussion of the weather. It's rather strange, then, that one Creation Myth remains unchallenged in England. Read any book about modern theater, study drama at any level, talk to any group of people who work in English theater and you will be faced with the same cast-iron certainty: modern British theater began on May 6, 1956, the night that John Osborne's ''Look Back in Anger'' had its premiere at the Royal Court Theater in London's Sloane Square.

Will the humbling of the President on the nuclear test ban treaty permanently cripple his authority on foreign affairs? News analysis, page 16.

FOR weeks, the streets of Washington Heights played host to an exciting political circus. A convoy of sound trucks roamed the neighborhood, blasting the names and slogans of the competing candidates. All told, the political camps printed and distributed more than 100,000 pieces of literature. Posters were tacked up throughout the area, from travel agencies to liquor stores. But this was no high-stakes campaign. It was a contest for four seats for the relatively obscure position of district leader for the Democratic Party, all within the neighborhood of Washington Heights.

''IT was a good day,'' Ronnie Heyman was overheard telling a friend on Oct. 5, at the end of a Senate subcommittee hearing on legislation championed by her husband, Samuel J. Heyman, the chairman of the GAF Corporation. And so it was. Embraced warmly by the subcommittee, the bill and a similar one moving rapidly through the House of Representatives would limit sharply the crushing legal liability of former asbestos producers like GAF, which have been locked in a decades-long battle with hundreds of thousands of people who say they have been made ill by exposure to asbestos.