A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

lly choreographed scam they pulled on unsuspecting tourists . The two boys would

 leave their home in the slums for the city 's busiest market center , where the

y would target a well-shod Westerner on a stroll . The fleet-footed Mantu would 

sneak behind him and squirt shaving cream on the back of a shoe . Raju of the sw

eet face and big doelike eyes would step into the tourist 's path , point to his

 shoes and say , `` Hey , man , your shoes are dirty . I clean them . '' He 'd t

hen fleece the tourist at 10 times the going rate for a shoeshine , more if the 

guy looked rich and overly gullible . Suresh `` Baba '' Varma , a movie producti

on executive who splits his time between Los Angeles and India , frequently walk

ed past the little scam artists and would tease Raju , the more gregarious of th

e pair : `` Some day I 'll make a film and give you a chance to be a star . '' `

` Ha , '' scoffed Raju , a rail-thin boy small for his age . `` No you willn't .

 Nobody gives me a chance . '' But in nothing less than a Cinderella story for t

he poor shoeshine boy , one of 11 children of a Rajasthani Gypsy who fed his fam

ily by making plaster gods and idols , Varma kept his word . In the summer of 19

93 , Varma was in Katmandu , Nepal , screening children for the role of a child 

Buddha in Bernardo Bertolucci 's `` Little Buddha , '' the tale of a Buddhist te

acher believed to be reincarnated in three modern-day children . `` I feel like 

I looked at every single kid in Nepal between the ages of 7 and 10 , '' says Var

ma . But none of the youngsters seemed right for the role . One day Varma spotte

d the Delhi shoeshine boys on the streets of Katmandu pulling their same old tri

cks . Raju and 11-year-old Mantu had joined their nomadic father on his annual m

igration to Nepal , following the holiday selling season for plaster gods and go

ddesses . Varma pulled them into a scooter rickshaw and took Raju for an auditio

n . `` I believe in karma , '' says Varma . `` I know the script . I see his fac

e this kid had a lot of energy in his face . I know this is the boy . He 's the 

one . '' One week Raju Lal Sehansra was pulling his scam on the streets of the c

ity by day and living in fetid slums by night , and the next week he was practic

ing lines in a foreign tongue , wearing chic new Western clothes and learning to

 love alien foods such as spaghetti , which he had to eat with a fork instead of

 his fingers . In the months of on-the-scene filming of `` Little Buddha '' in N

epal and Bhutan , Raju experienced the kind of lifestyle about which poor Indian

 families dare not even fantasize . For his scenes , he was draped in colorful r

obes and perched on a throne as a young lama . He watched his favorite movie , `

` Home Alone , '' dozens of times . He was showered with toys and Western clothe

s he 'd only seen from the outside of the stores . Not to mention that he was pa

id $ 12,000 more money than his father could expect to make in a lifetime . The 

conversion from shoeshine boy to movie star was not always easy . The language b

arrier was a major problem . The producers hired Mantu , who spoke more English 

than his little brother and was a faster study , to coach Raju and ended up cast

ing him in a small part in the movie . In Katmandu , Varma helped relocate Raju 

's entire family to the biggest house they 'd ever occupied . The good deed ende

d in disaster . After a few weeks , Raju 's father whose skills in plaster had b

een put to work on the movie set and even landed him a bit part as a mechanic in

 `` Little Buddha '' approached Varma and pleaded , `` Please take us out of her

e . I was living in the slums . If I had to go to the toilet I 'd just walk out 

anywhere . Here we have to wait in line . I want some fresh air . I feel like I 

am in jail . '' At the end of the shoot , there were promises of more movies , m

aybe even one based on Raju 's own life . Indian advertisers wanted to hire him 

to plug their products on television . Varma vowed to get the boys out of the sl

ums . He hired dancing instructors to coach them and planned to enroll them in D

elhi 's best schools . But with `` Little Buddha '' now playing in the United St

ates it opened in Europe months ago , to mixed reviews the Cinderella tale is di

mming . Raju has had no new movie offers , and Delhi 's private schools refused 

to admit the two brothers because their family is from a poor , low caste and th

eir father has spent a large chunk of their earnings on extravagant village wedd

ings for two of his older children . The movie production company has put the re

maining money in a trust and allows the family to draw only the monthly interest

 . Even so , that amount is more than the entire family earned each month making

 idols , shining shoes and selling maps at inflated prices to tourists . So , fo

r the most part , their father has stopped working and Raju and Mantu hang out i

n the slums , doing occasional interviews and hoping for another movie offer . L

ike many of India 's poorest people , the boys ' 47-year-old father , Jai Lal Se

hansra , doesn't think much about the future : `` We are small people . We can't

 have big dreams . My only dream is that all my children grow up and get married

 and become good people . That is enough for us . There is no basis for dreaming

 . If you can't have it , why dream at all ? '' But Raju and Mantu do dare to dr

eam . `` In the future I want to be a big actor , '' says Raju . `` Before I did

n't think about it . '' And that has given the other children the incentive to d

ream . `` If my brothers become so famous , why shouldn't I ? '' says 11-year-ol

d Meera , a delicate-faced girl wearing braided pigtails and a tiny nose stud . 

Has temporary stardom and a taste of life beyond the narrow alleys of the slums 

changed the two boys ? Their mother , Parvati , looks up from the bucket of blac

k water where she is washing her cooking pots just outside the front door of the

 house . `` I don't see any change . They sit and eat roti the same way . ''

 WASHINGTON The Democrats love to call theirs the party of compassion , and so t

heir reaction to losing a Kentucky House seat last week was all the more unusual

 : They shot the wounded . Joe Prather , the former Kentucky Democratic chairman

 and state Senate leader who lost his election to Congress on Tuesday , was atta

cked by his own party leaders for running a lousy campaign . Democrats sounded l

ike the Americans in Vietnam : They had to destroy the village to save it . Afte

r losing two House seats in a month , and every key race over the past year , th

e Democrats were desperate to tell people particularly their own nervous candida

tes that these losses had nothing to do with President Clinton 's unpopularity o

r with the party 's policies . That was not selling , even among many Democrats 

. Democratic leaders are the first to admit that this is likely to be a tough ye

ar . Internal forecasts say the party could lose from 18 to more than 30 House s

eats this fall . Losses on the high end of that range would wipe out Clinton 's 

majority in the House . Several things are working against the Democrats this ye

ar that go beyond the normal cyclical trends of midterm elections : Voters are s

till angry at Congress and incumbents . That puts the Democrats , with far more 

incumbents , in greater jeopardy . Retirements have hit Democrats harder than Re

publicans , and these open-seat races are more susceptible to switching parties 

than seats with an incumbent running for re-election . That was the case in Kent

ucky , where the late Rep. William H. Natcher ( D ) had held the Republican-lean

ing district for four decades . There are 46 open seats , and the number is like

ly to grow . Redistricting turned once-safe Democratic districts into competitiv

e ones . The Democrats still hold a greater share of House seats than is their s

hare of the national vote for the House , but Republicans believe the last round

 of redistricting helped to level the playing field in many districts . Republic

ans appear to be assembling a quasi-independent force of grass-roots workers , i

ncluding religious conservatives , anti-tax activists and term-limits advocates 

, who could offset organized labor 's aid to Democrats . That is why Democrats w

ant people to believe their problems have nothing to do with them . But the Okla

homa and Kentucky special congressional elections showed that in some parts of t

he country , particularly in Southern and border states , Clinton is a growing l

iability to Democratic candidates . In Oklahoma , the Democratic candidate kept 

his distance from Clinton ( and lost ) , and in Kentucky , Republican Ron Lewis 

wrapped Clinton around Prather and , when Prather failed to fight back , snatche

d away a seat that had been in Democratic hands for 129 years . The lesson , exp

ressed vigorously by Clinton and other top Democrats after Prather 's loss was :

 Fight back . They said Democrats who had run from Clinton over the last year su

ch as Prather and Virginia 's Mary Sue Terry and Texas 's Bob Kreuger got beat .

 And those who didn't ? Well , they got beat too , but not so badly . Exhibits A

 , B and C were former Georgia Sen. Wyche Fowler , former New Jersey Gov. Jim Fl

orio and former New York Mayor David N . Dinkins . To this reasoning by Democrat

s , Republican National Committee officials literally howled . `` I suggest Demo

crats in November take David 's ( DNC Chairman David Wilhelm ) advice and adopt 

a .. . Jim Florio , David Dinkins strategy , '' RNC Chairman Haley Barbour said 

in a statement . But there was a more serious point Clinton and Wilhelm tried to

 make to their fellow Democrats . With the economy growing , inflation low and t

he possibility of action on health care reform , the Democrats may have a messag

e of success to take to voters this fall . When Republicans lost 26 seats in 198

2 , two years after Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide , unemployme

nt had just hit 10 percent . This year it has been falling , and gross domestic 

product has been rising . Interest rates ? The Democrats will blame their increa

se on Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan . Democrats do not believe they ha

ve received enough credit from the voters for that record . Whether because of C

linton 's foreign policy problems , the nagging questions about Whitewater and h

is personal life that have eroded public confidence in his character or the stil

l-uncertain fate of health care , the Democrats have not been able to sell thems

elves nationally . Republicans are eager to see the fall elections turned into a

 national referendum . They argue that perceptions of Clinton , particularly in 

the South , have been shaped by controversy over homosexuals in the military , b

y the belief that his health care plan is a big-government approach and by the b

elief that his fiscal policy is to tax first , cut spending later . But presiden

tial pollster Stanley Greenberg said the Republicans may be overly confident in 

their belief that voters want to abandon Clinton and the Democrats . `` There 's

 denial that there was any criticism of the '80s in the 1992 election , '' he sa

id . `` The special elections reinforce that denial and may mislead them in how 

'94 will be defined and how '96 will be defined . '' Health care may hold the ke

y to the Democrats ' future . Successful passage of a reform bill that ultimatel

y guarantees coverage for all Americans could cap Clinton 's first two years in 

office and give incumbents something real on which to campaign . Failure to pass

 anything could , in turn , bring disgust with gridlock back to center stage .

 NEW DELHI , India Even for India , notorious for heat and dust , this summer ha

s been a sizzler . How hot has it been ? On Monday , New Delhi sweated though it

s hottest afternoon in a half-century , with the mercury shooting up to 114.8 de

grees . In the arid , mostly desert state of Rajasthan to the southwest of the I

ndian capital , at least 71 people have died over the past few days of heat stro

ke , news reports said . In the towns of Phalodi and Jhalawar , it was an overpo

wering 118.4 degrees . Dust storms were forecast for some areas . Rajasthan 's c

hief minister , Bhairon Singh Shekhawat , said more than 22,000 villages were in

 the grip of a severe drought caused by the two-week heat wave . The state will 

spend almost $ 65 million on aid and make-work programs for farmers whose crops 

have been singed in the fields , he said . New Delhi 's wide streets were desert

ed during much of the day as wary residents avoided the burning sun and searing 

breezes that felt as if they were venting from a brick kiln . Electric current e

bbed and surged throughout the day , sometimes failing entirely , as the already

 overtaxed power grid strained to run all the air conditioners and fans in this 

city of more than 8 million people . ( Begin optional trim ) Like the British be

fore them , many of India 's high and mighty fled the burning plains of northern

 India for the cooler hills . On a single day recently , 10 government VIPs were

 sighted in Dehra Dun , ostensibly on some official business . Finance Minister 

Manmohan Singh went to unveil a statue of Buddha at a hospital . Rajesh Pilot , 

minister of state for external security , was chief guest at a function staged b

y the Indo-Tibetan border police . Pressed by a reporter , he admitted he intend

ed to relax in the coolness of the nearby hill station of Mussoorie for four day

s . For those left behind at lower altitudes , no relief was in sight , forecast

ers warned . Ram Snehi , director of the Safdarjung Meteorological Office in the

 capital , said Monday that over the next few days `` the maximum temperature ma

y , at the most , show a difference of about a half a degree only , but no drama

tic change is expected . '' ( End optional trim ) May is generally the hottest m

onth of the year for Delhi . The weatherman 's outlook was bad news for people a

cross North India , who must expect another month of intense heat before the arr

ival of the cooling rains of the monsoon , expected to reach Delhi June 29 . May

 29 , 1944 remains the hottest day on record in India 's capital , with the temp

erature peaking at 117 degrees .

 WASHINGTON You hit the `` enter '' or `` return '' key and that soft , comforti

ng clicking begins . A colored light blinks on and off . Your hard disk , workin

g faster than a waiter at a wedding banquet , is serving information by the mill

ions of bits . We hear endlessly of rapid-fire advances in microprocessors . But

 just as important in keeping personal computing on that ever-upward plane are f

aster , cheaper , higher-capacity hard disks . And their gains are just as amazi

ng . Don't think so ? Consider these numbers . In a little more than a decade st

orage costs have been cut by close to 99 percent . That is , in 1982 , according

 to research firm Dataquest Inc. , the price of hard disks worked out at about $

 75 per megabyte ( 1 million characters ) of data . On average , hard disks sold

 back then could hold a mere 6 megabytes of information . But in 1993 , the pric

e of hard disks worked out to 92 cents per megabyte . The average disk size was 

240 megabytes . That 's progress . So , look at it like this way : the Windows r

evolution and the advent of multimedia computing happened because companies have

 built hard disks big enough to hold the bloated software that these innovations

 require . The disk makers have names like Quantum Corp. , Seagate Technology In

c. , Connor Peripherals Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. . They ar

e huge operations ; they sold about $ 9 billion worth of hard disks for PCs and 

laptops in 1993 , according to International Data Corp. . But few consumers know

 their names ( with the exception , of course , of IBM ) . That 's because most 

of these companies ' production is overseas , typically in Singapore or Malaysia

 . It also is because most people don't know what kind of hard disks they have i

t just comes as part of the computer . The hard disk is a holdout in the compute

r world it 's among the last components with moving parts . Its interior would w

arm the heart of a Swiss watchmaker . It is a miniature world of metal and motio

n discs that spin , heads that move back and forth in jerky robot like motion to

 fetch data and electric motors that keep the whole unit alive . When a hard dis

k fails , it is usually more painful than anything else that can go wrong with y

our computer system . You can replace all other components quickly and go on as 

before . But a failed hard disk can destroy years of information . ( Don't forge

t to make those backups ! ) But mostly what hard disks do is sell , not fail . T

he market is so vibrant that it has been unfazed by a potentially troubling deve

lopment : the appearance of compression software . It used to be the only way to

 get bigger capacity was to buy a bigger disk . Now companies such as Microsoft 

Corp. and Stac Electronics Inc. have sold millions of copies of software that sh

rinks the size of other software and data files , meaning you can get more onto 

the old disk . But Crawford Del Prete of International Data Corp. says compressi

on is being used mainly in laptops , where it 's hard to upgrade the disk . On e

asy-to-upgrade desktops , he said , prices are low enough so `` people are willi

ng to spend and upgrade '' the old way , by buying a new disk . How long will th

e hard disk remain ? You can count on a long , long time . While there are two m

ajor competing technologies , the CD-ROM and what 's called `` flash memory , ''

 each has drawbacks that make it unsuitable as the disk 's successor . The CD-RO

M , which has become commonplace these days , makes a wonderful storage medium ,

 holding about 650 megabytes of information . But access time is much slower tha

n with hard disks ( that file your hard disk can fetch in one second may take a 

CD-ROM five or 10 seconds ) . Plus there 's the lack of erasability . CD-ROMs , 

as we know them today , can't record once they 've left the factory . There are 

erasable optical units out there , but they are two and three times the price of

 hard disks . And even if costs came down , there is still the problem of slow a

ccess time . Flash memory is the other alternative . This is a memory chip that 

can store any information you want and , unlike its Random Access Memory cousins

 that hold data electronically in your computer , doesn't forget everything when

 the machine is turned off . Ideally , it would make a wonderful replacement low

 power , small size , an end to those darned moving parts . Ideally , I said . F

lash memory has found a fast-growing market in such things as PCMCIA cards used 

in laptops and personal digital assistants . Prices are coming down by about 50 

percent a year . But the technology remains far too expensive for general deskto

p use . Dataquest figures that flash sold in one megabyte dollops is about where

 hard disks were a decade ago $ 75 per megabyte . So , it would not generally ma

ke sense to store a 20-megabyte Windows program in flash when you could do the j

ob for about one-fiftieth the cost with a hard disk . Consider , too , that hard

-disk makers have hardly come to a standstill in product improvement . Manufactu

rers are shrinking the size and raising the durability of hard disks to the poin

t that popping them into mobile devices makes more sense all the time . And the 

basic , full-sized product is always getting stronger . Each year , engineers ma

ke progress on two basic challenges : One , building recording heads that are fa

ster and more sensitive and , therefore , can inscribe more information on a sma

ller piece of `` real estate '' on a disk ; two , developing materials that can 

hold information at denser ratios . The other force that is bringing prices down

 is economies of scale . Even without technological advance , prices would proba

bly fall as more and more computers are sold . Annual world demand for desktop d

rives is about 50 million units , up from basically nothing in the early 1980s .

 Phil Devin , Dataquest 's disk specialist , expects that storage costs will fal

l from 1993 's 92 cents per megabyte to 9 cents by 1998 . Imagine that . Or wait

 and see it for real . It 's only four years away .

 TOKYO A right-wing nationalist Monday fired a single gunshot near former Prime 

Minister Morihiro Hosokawa in a hotel lobby . He was unhurt . Police and members

 of Japan 's secret service arrested the assailant . Press reports said he told 

police he was angry at Hosokawa 's apologies last year for Japan 's aggression i

n World War II , and at Hosokawa 's inability to end Japan 's long-running reces

sion . The assailant was identified as Masakatsu Nozoe , 52 , said to be a membe

r of a nationalist fringe group that maintains Japan was in the right when it in

vaded East Asian countries and attacked Pearl Harbor . As Hosokawa walked throug

h the hotel lobby after a political rally , Nozoe fired a single shot from about

 30 feet away , witnesses said . The bullet hit the ceiling . Nozoe reportedly t

old police later that he had not intended to shoot Hosokawa . For many Japanese 

, Hosokawa is the epitome of change here . Last summer , he was a leader of the 

political revolution that ended four decades of one-party conservative rule . Ho

sokawa 's successor , Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata , has basically taken the same

 stance on apologies for the war . But he gave in to right-wing pressure earlier

 this month when he canceled plans , originally made by Hosokawa , to have Emper

or Akihito visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Honolulu during a trip to the Unit

ed States in June .

 NAIROBI , Kenya Somalia 's on-again , off-again peace talks were once again pos

tponed after the main feuding parties failed to show up . Diplomats said this la

test delay , prior to a U.N. . Security Council decision on the future of the op